In this paper I'll be writing about slavery in the British Colonies of America. I'll write about the origins of slaveholding, when and why slaveholding began to grow rapidly, where the slaves came from, and how whites and slaves each responded to slavery.
The origin of slavery in the colonies is England. In the 1600's many criminals and/or poor people were coming to the colonies, from England, as indentured servants. They would work for a set amount of years to pay off their passage and other debts, and then they were set free. This method of getting workers for large plantations was too much work. There weren't enough workers, they didn't have to work very hard, they had to be paid, and they had to be replaced constantly. In 1619 the first slaves were brought to the colonies. The use of slaves as non-paid workers first occurred in Massachusetts in 1641, then in Connecticut in 1650 and then in Virginia in 1661. With the development of big plantations in the second-half of the 17th century, the number of slaves from Africa greatly increased, and some northern coastal cities became centers of the slave trade. In the North slaves were used in trade, and the Middle colonies they were used in agriculture, and in the South they were used as workers on plantations. Although many of the slaves were born in Africa, the real origin of slavery in the colonies was England.
Slaveholding began to grow rapidly in the 1600's due to the expansion on Southern plantations. They needed workers and the easiest way to get them was to steal them, not use indentured servants. If you brought them from Africa, they wouldn't be able to go anywhere to escape because they didn't know where to go. Indians would know where to go because they lived there. If they did run they wouldn't be able to blend into a crowd because they were black. Indians would be able to blend in. Another reason is that some of the weaker slaves, and maybe stong ones too, would be oppressed into submission on the boatride over. It wouldn't be fun to throw up every meal, sweat all day in an overcrowded prison where the people next to you die, have salt-water thrown on your open wounds, be made to dance by whipping and taunting, and have to stand the stench of the cabin below. One more reason was the fright factor. The slaves were probably scared of all the tall building, roads, strange people, guns, and all the things that weren't in Africa. The main reason was ease of getting and keeping African slaves.
Most slaves came from Africa. They came from the Slave Coast where whites personally captured slaves or they just got prisoners from wars fought between tribes. The Slave Coast is the section of the Gulf of Guinea coast of West Africa lying between the mouth of the Niger River on the east and the mouth of the Volta River on the west. It includes the coastal areas of present-day Nigeria, Benin, Togo, and eastern-Ghana.
There were mixed responses to slavery by both slaves and owners. Most owners were mean to their slave and had them whipped and punished. Then there were owners who looked down on the slaves, but were kind enough to talk to them. They were only nasty when slaves broke the rules. There were also the whites who didn't own slaves. They thought slavery was totally immoral and in some cases un-Christianlike. Blacks also had conflicting views. There were blacks who had known nothing but slavery their whole life and accepted it as their way of life. They didn't necessarily like it, but they knew that if they had a good master and followed the rules, they wouldn't get sold off, whipped, or beaten in any other way. The women especialy didn't like it because they were used like a baby factory. The masters also got pleasure out of it. "The more babies, the more slaves and workers for free," was a common idea. There were also the Africans who had known freedom. They had the hardest time dealing with slavery. They were also the most stubborn, dragged their feet the most in the fields, and they ran away the most. They were also sold away a lot so they couldn't get too connected to any one and plant some ideas about escaping in their head. The final kind of person was the slave who was born into slavery but still wanted to escape. They were probably the rarest kind because they knew what would happen if they were caught, unlike Africans who wouldn't know, and they had the will to be free, unlike many regular slaves. Those are all the different veiws on slavery.
From reading this paper I hope you have learned a lot about slavery in the British colonies in America.
