Chapter Four

Slavery and Empire,

1441–1770

Chapter Focus Questions

1. How did the slave system develop?2. What was the history of the slave trade and the

Middle Passage?3. How did communities develop among African

Americans in the eighteenth century?4. What connections existed between the institutions

of slavery and the imperial system of the eighteenth century?

5. What was the early history of racism in America?

American Communities:

African Slaves Build Their Own Community in Coastal

Georgia

Building an African American Community in Coastal Georgia

1. Georgia plantations were extensions of the South Carolina rice belt.

a. Rice was extremely profitable.b. With the expansion of rice came the expansion of the

slave trade.

2. Slaves endured great hardships in their capture, transport, and arrival in the new world.

3. Harsh conditions greeted slaves on the plantations.4. Some slaves resisted but most remained slaves.

Communities developed based on kinship networks, culture (music and arts), and a common heritage.

4.1:

The Beginnings of African Slavery

A. Sugar and Slavery

1. Europeans were concerned with the moral implications of enslaving Christians.

Muslims and Africans could be used as slaves because they were not Christians.

2. In 1441, the Portuguese opened the trade by bringing slaves to the sugar plantations on the island of Madeira.

3. The expansion of sugar production in the Caribbean increased the demand for slaves.

4. Caribbean sugar and slaves were the core of the European colonial system.

B. West Africans1. Slaves came from well-established societies and local

communities of West Africa.a. More than 100 peoples lived along the West African coast.b. Most important institution was the local community

organized by kinship.

2. Most West African societies were polygamous and based on sophisticated systems of farming and metalworking.

3. Extensive trade networks existed. 4. Household slavery was an established institution.

a. Slaves were treated more as family than as possessions.b. Children were born free.

This image of Mansa Musa (1312–37), the ruler of the Muslim kingdom of Mali in West Africa, is taken from the Catalan Atlas, a magnificent map presented to the king of France in 1381 by his cousin, the king of Aragon. In the words of the Catalan inscription, Musa was “the richest, the most noble lord in all this region on account of the abundance of gold that is gathered in his land.” He holds what was thought to be the world’s largest gold nugget. Under Musa’s reign, Timbuktu became a capital of world renown. SOURCE:Courtesy of Library of Congress.

A black slave deiver supervises a gang of slave men and women preparing the fields for the planting of sugar care in the West Indies, a colored engraving published in William Clark’s Ten Views Found in the Island of Antigua (London, 4823) SOURCE:The British Library.

4.2:

The African Slave Trade

A. The African Slave Trade

1. The Demography of the Slave Trade

2. Most slaves were transported to the Caribbean or South America.

One in twenty were delivered to North America (600,000)

3. The movement of Africans across the Atlantic was the largest forced migration in history.

4. Between 10 and 11 million African slaves came to the New World.

MAP 4.1 The African Slave Trade The enslaved men, women, and children transported to the Americas came from West Africa, the majority from the lower Niger River (called the Slave Coast) and the region of the Congo and Angola.

FIGURE 4.1 Estimated Number of Africans Imported to British North America, 1701–75 These official British statistics include only slaves imported legally, and consequently undercount the total number who arrived on American shores. But the trend over time is clear. With the exception of the 1750s, when the British colonies were engulfed by the Seven Years War, the slave trade continued to rise in importance in the decades before the Revolution. SOURCE:R.C.Simmons,The American Colonies:From Settlement to

Independence (London:Longman,1976),186.

FIGURE 4.2 Africans as a Percentage of Total Population of the British Colonies, 1650 –1770 Although the proportion of Africans and African Americans was never as high in the South as in the Caribbean, the ethnic structure of the South diverged radically from that of the North during the eighteenth century. SOURCE:Robert W.Fogel and

Stanley L.Engerman,Time on the Cross (Boston:Little,Brown,1974),21.

B. Slavers of All Nations

1. All Western European nations participated in the African slave trade.

2. The slave trade was dominated by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, the Dutch in the sugar boom of the seventeenth century, and the English who entered the trade in the seventeenth century.

3. New England slavers entered the trade in the eighteenth century.

4. Arrangements were generally made with local African headmen and chiefs to conduct raids to capture potential slaves.

C. Olaudah Equiano

1. In 1756, Olaudah Equiano was eleven years old and living with his family in Nigeria.

2. He was captured by African slave raiders and transported to America.

3. Purchased first by a Virginia tobacco planter and later by an English sea captain, Equiano served as a slave for ten years before buying his freedom.

4. He published his autobiography in 1789 as part of his dedication to the antislavery cause.

D. The Shock of Enslavement

1. Enslavement was an unparalleled shock.

2. African raiders or armies often violently attacked villages to take captives.

3. The captives were marched in coffles to the coast, many dying along the way.

4. On the coast, the slaves were kept in barracoons where they were separated from their families, branded, and dehumanized.

E. The Middle Passage

1. The Atlantic voyage was called the Middle Passage because it was the middle portion of the triangle trade.

2. Slaves were crammed into ships and packed into shelves 6 feet long and 30 inches high.

3. They slept crowded together spoon fashion.4. There was little or no sanitation and food was poor.5. Dysentery and disease were prevalent.6. Slaves resisted by jumping overboard, refusing to eat,

and revolting.7. One in six slaves died during this voyage.

A slave coffle in an eighteenth-century print. As the demand for slaves increased, raids extended deeper and deeper into the African interior. Tied together with forked logs or bark rope, men, women, and children were marched hundreds of miles toward the coast, where their African captors traded them to Europeans. SOURCE:North Wind Picture Archives.

Slaves below deck on a Spanish slaver, a sketch made when the vessel was captured by a British warship in the early nineteenth century. Slaves were “stowed so close, that they were not allowed above a foot and a half for each in breadth,” wrote one observer. The close quarters and unsanitary conditions created a stench so bad that Atlantic sailors said you could “smell a slaver five miles down wind.” SOURCE:The Granger Collection.

F. Arrival in the New World

1. The sale of human cargo occurred in several ways.a. A single buyer may have purchased the whole cargo.b. Individual slaves could be auctioned to the highest

bidder.c. The “scramble” had the slaves driven into a corral

and the price was fixed.• Buyers rushed among the slaves, grabbing the ones

they wanted.

2. In the sale process, Africans were closely examined, probed and poked.

Portrait of Olaudah Equiano, by an unknown English artist, ca. 1780. Captured in Nigeria in 1756 when he was eleven years old, Equiano was transported to America and was eventually purchased by an English sea captain. After ten years as a slave, he succeeded in buying his own freedom and dedicated himself to the antislavery cause. His book, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789), was published in numerous editions, translated into several languages, and became the prototype for dozens of other slave narratives in the nineteenth century. SOURCE:Portrait of a Negro Man,Olaudah Equiano ,ca.1780, (previously attributed to Joshua Reynolds)by English School.Royal Albert Memorial Museum,Exeter,Devon,UK/Bridgeman Art Library, London/New York.

G. Political and Economic Effects on Africa

1. The slave trade:a. resulted in the loss of millions of people over

hundreds of yearsb. weakened African states who became

dependent on European tradec. caused long-term stagnation of the West

African economyd. prepared the way for European conquest of

Africa in the nineteenth century

4.3:

The Development of North American Slave Societies

A. Slavery in North America

1. Slavery spread throughout the Caribbean and southern coast of North America.

2. By 1770, Africans and African Americans numbered 460,000 in British North America-- comprising over 20% of the colonial population.

MAP 4.2 Slave Colonies of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries By the eighteenth century, the system of slavery had created societies with large African populations throughout the Caribbean and along the southern coast of North America.

B. Slavery Comes to North America

1. Between about 1675 and 1700 the Chesapeake went from being a society with slaves to a slave society.

a. There was a decline in immigration of English servants.b. European immigrants had better opportunities in other

colonies.c. The Royal English African Company began shipping directly

to the region and the labor shortage was filled with slaves.

2. Expansion of slavery prompted Virginia to develop a comprehensive slave code.

3. More Africans were imported into North America between 1700 and 1710 than in the entire previous century.

Africans herded from a slave ship to a corral where they were to be sold by the cruel method known as "the scramble," buyers rushing in and grabbing their pick. This image was featured in an antislavery narrative published in 1796. Source: The Granger Collection, New York.

C. The Tobacco Colonies

1. Slave societies arose in areas where a commodity was produced that commanded an international market.

2. Tobacco was the most important commodity produced in eighteenth century North America, accounting for 25 % of the value of all colonial exports.

3. Slavery allowed the expansion of tobacco production since it was labor-intensive.

4. Using slave labor, tobacco was grown on large plantations and small farms.

5. The slave population in this region grew largely by natural increase.

D. The Lower South

1. South Carolina was a slave society from its founding.2. The most valuable part of the early economy was the

Indian slave trade.3. Rice and indigo were the two major crops.4. In South Carolina, large plantations employing many

slaves dominated.5. Georgia prohibited slavery until South Carolina

planters began to settle on the coast with their slaves.6. By 1770, about 80 % of the coastal population of

South Carolina and Georgia was African American.

Residence and Slave Quarters of Mulberry Plantation, by Thomas Coram, ca. 1770. The slave quarters are on the left in this painting of a rice plantation near Charleston, South Carolina. The steep roofs of the slave cabins, an African architectural feature introduced in America by slave builders, kept living quarters cool by allowing the heat to rise and dissipate in the rafters. SOURCE:Thomas Coram,Residence and Slave Quarters of Mulberry Plantation ca.1770.Oil on paper,10 •17.6 cm. Gibbes

Museum of Art,Carolina Art Association.

E. Slavery in the Spanish Colonies

1. Though the papacy denounced slavery it was a basic part of the Spanish colonial labor system.

2. The character of Spanish slavery varied by region.a. In Cuba, on sugar plantations, slavery was brutal.b. In Florida, slavery resembled household slavery common in

Mediterranean and African communities. c. In New Mexico, Indian slaves were used in mines, as house

servants, and as fieldworkers.3. Spain declared Florida a haven for runaway slaves from the

British colonies and offered land to those who would help defend the colony.

F. French Louisiana

1. Natchez Rebellion 1629a. The Natchez Indians and the slaves of Louisiana joined

together in an armed uprising killing ten percent of the colonial population.

b. Authorities crushed the rebellion but diversified economy and French Louisiana became a society with slaves.

2. French settlers used slave labor but slaves made up only about one-third of the population.

3. Louisiana did not become an important North American slave society until the end of the eighteenth century.

G. Slavery in the North

1. Slavery was a labor system in some northern commercial farming areas but only made up ten percent of the rural population in these regions.

2. In port cities, slavery was common.By 1750, the slave and free African populations made up 15 to 20 % of the residents of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.

3. Elsewhere in the countryside, slavery was relatively uncommon.

4. Antislavery sentiment first arose among the Quakers of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

The London Coffee House, near the docks of Philadelphia, was the center of the city’s business and political life in the mid-eighteenth century. Sea captains and Merchants congregated here to do business, and as this contemporary print illustrates (in the detail on the far right), it was the site of many slave auctions. Slavery was a vital part of the economy of northern cities. SOURCE:The Library Company of Philadelphia.

4.4:

African to African American

A. The Daily Lives of Slaves

1. The North American country-born, or “Creole”, slave population was rapidly growing.

2. Africans formed the majority of the labor force that made the plantations profitable and thus built the South.

3. As agricultural peoples, Africans were used to rural routines and most slaves worked in the fields.

4. Slaves were supplied rude clothes and hand-me-downs from the master's family.

5. On small plantations and farms, Africans may have worked along side their masters.

6. Large plantations provided the population necessary for the development of an African American culture.

B. Families and Communities

1. In the development of African American community and culture, the family was the most important institution.

2. Slave codes did not legalize slave marriages and families were often separated by sale or bequest.

3. Slaves created family structures developing marriage customs, naming practices, and a system of kinship.

4. Fictive kinship was used by slaves to humanize the world of slavery.

Bett, also known as Elizabeth Freeman, was born into slavery in a Massachusetts household about 1742. As a young woman she was subjected to the violent abuse of her mistress, who struck her with a hot shovel, leaving an indelible scar. Fleeing her owner Mum Bett enlisted the aid of antislavery lawyer Thomas Sedgwick, who helped win her freedom in 1772. This miniature was painted by Sedgwick's daughter Susan in 1811. SOURCE:Courtesy of Massachusetts Historical Society.

C. African American Culture

1. The formative period of African American community development was the eighteenth century.

2. The resiliency of slaves was shown in the development of a spiritually sustaining African American culture drawing upon dance, music, religion, and oral tradition.

3. Until the Great Awakening, large numbers of African Americans were not converted to Christianity.

4. Death and burial were important religious practices.5. Music and dance formed the foundations of African

American culture.6. The invention of an African American language

facilitated communication between American-born and African slaves.

This eighteenth-century painting depicts a celebration in the slave quarters on a South Carolina plantation. One planter’s description of a slave dance seems to fit this scene: the men leading the women in “a slow shuffling gait, edging along by some unseen exertion of the feet, from one side to the other—sometimes courtesying down and remaining in that posture while the edging motion from one side to the other continued.” The women, he wrote, “always carried a handkerchief held at arm’s length, which was waved in a graceful motion to and fro as she moved.”SOURCE:Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center,Williamsburg,Virginia.

C. The Africanization of the South

1. Acculturation occurred in two directions--English influenced Africans and Africans influenced English.

2. Africanization was evident in:a. cooking: barbecue, fried chicken, black-eyed peas,

and collard greensb. material culture: basket weaving, wood carving, and

architecturec. language: yam, banjo, tote, buddyd. music and dance: banjo

Buddy Qua of St. Vincent. African names for weekdays, such as “Qua” or “Quow” (Tuesday), were common among the slaves of the Caribbean and the Lower South. This sketch comes from an eighteenth-century series showing slaves going about their daily tasks. SOURCE:National Library of Jamaica.

D. Violence and Resistance

1. The slave system was based on force and violence.2. Africans resisted in the following ways:

a. Refusing to cooperate and malingeringb. Mistreating tools and animalsc. Running awayd. Revolt

3. There was always fear of uprisings but slaves in North America rarely revolted.

a. Conditions for a successful revolt were not present.b. Slaves had also developed culture and communities and

did not want to risk losing these things.

Fugitive slaves flee through the swamps in Thomas Moran’s The Slave Hunt (1862). Many slaves ran away from their masters, and colonial newspapers included notices urging readers to be on the lookout for them. Some fled in groups or collected together in isolated communities called “maroon” colonies, located in inaccessible swamps and woods. SOURCE:Thomas Moran,The Slave Hunt,1862,oil on canvas,86.4 •111.8 cm.Gift of Laura A.Clubb,The Philbrook Museum of Art,Tulsa,Oklahoma.

4.5:

Slavery and Empire

A. Slavery the Mainspring

1. The slave trade was the foundation of the British economy.a. Created a large colonial market for exports

that stimulated manufacturing

b. Generated huge profits that served as a source of investments

c. Supplied raw cotton to fuel British industrialization

Eighteenth-century ships being unloaded of their colonial cargoes on London’s Old Custom House Quay. Most of the goods imported into England from the American colonies were produced by slave labor. SOURCE:Samuel Scott,Old Custom House Quay Collection.By courtesy of the Board of Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

MAP 4.3 Triangular Trade Across the Atlantic The pattern of commerce among Europe, Africa, and the Americas became known as the “Triangular Trade.” Sailors called the voyage of slave ships from Africa to America the “Middle Passage” because it formed the crucial middle section of this trading triangle.

FIGURE 4.3 Value of Colonial Exports by Region, Annual Average, 1768–72 With tobacco, rice, grain, and indigo, the Chesapeake and Lower South accounted for nearly two-thirds of colonial exports in the late eighteenth century. The Middle Colonies, however, were also becoming major exporters of grain. SOURCE:James F.Shepherd and Gary M.Walton,Shipping,Maritime Trade and the Economic Development of Colonial America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1972),211 –27.

B. The Politics of Mercantilism

1. Mercantilism a. Colonies existed to benefit the mother country

b. The economy should be controlled by the state

c. The economy was a "zero-sum" game where profits for one country meant losses for another.

2. Competition between states was to hoard the fixed amount of wealth that existed in the world.

C. Wars for Empire

1. The English, French, and Spanish struggled for control over North America and the Caribbean in a series of wars that had their European counterparts.

2. Wars in the southern region of the colonies focused on slavery.

3. Wars in the northern region were generally focused on the control of the Indian trade.

D. British Colonial Regulation

1. European nations created state trading monopolies to manage the commerce of its empires.

2. The Navigation Acts passed between 1651 and 1696 created the legal and institutional structure of Britain's colonial system.

3. The Wool, Hat, and Iron acts reduced colonial competition with British manufacturing interests.

4. Great Britain did not allow colonial tariffs, banking, or local coinage.

5. The increase in colonial trade led Britain to pursue a policy of "salutory neglect."

E. The Colonial Economy

1. The colonial economy grew rapidly.2. The New England shipbuilding was stimulated by

trade.3. Benefits for northern port cities

a. Participation in the slave trade to the South and West Indies

b. Trading foodstuffs for sugar in foreign colonies

4. Between the 1730s and 1770s, the commercial economies of the North and South were becoming integrated.

The New England artist John Greenwood painted this amusing view of New England sea captains in Surinam in 1757. By the early eighteenth century, New England merchant traders like these had become important participants in the traffic in slaves and sugar to and from the West Indies. Northern ports thus became important pivots in the expanding commercial network linking slave plantations with Atlantic markets. SOURCE:John Greenwood,Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam, 1757.Oil on bed ticking,95.9 •191.2 cm.The Saint Louis Art Museum,Museum Purchase.

4.6:

Slavery and Freedom

A. The Social Structure of the Slave Colonies

1. Slavery produced a highly stratified class society.a. Elite planters held more than half of the land and

sixty percent of the wealth.b. Small planters and farmers made up half of the

adult white male population.• Many kept one to four slaves.

c. Throughout the plantation region, landless men constituted about forty percent of the population.

• Work included renting land, tenant farming, hiring out as overseers, or becoming indentured servants.

B. White Skin Privilege

1. Skin color determined status.2. Legal and other racial distinctions were constant reminders

of the freedom of white colonists and the debasement of all African Americans, free or slave.

3. Relationships between free whites and enslaved blacks produced a mixed-ancestry group known as mulattoes.

Majority of mulattoes were slaves.

4. Racism created contempt between African Americans and colonists.

Thomas Jefferson placed this advertisement in the Virginia Gazette on September 14, 1769. Americans need to seriously consider the historical relationship between the prosperity and freedom of white people and the oppression and exploitation of Africans and African Americans. SOURCE:Virginia Historical Society.