Chapter

Seventh EditionSeventh Edition

OOut of Manyut of ManyA History of the American PeopleA History of the American People

Brief Sixth Edition

Copyright ©2012 by Pearson Education, Inc.All rights reserved.

Out of Many: A History of the American People, Brief Sixth EditionJohn Mack Faragher • Mari Jo Buhle • Daniel Czitrom • Susan H. Armitage

Slavery and Empire1441-1770

4

Slavery and Empire1441-1770

• The Beginnings of African Slavery• The African Slave Trade• The Development of North American Slave Soci

eties• African to African American• Slavery and the Economics of Empire• Slavery, Prosperity, and Freedom• Conclusion

Chapter Focus Questions

• How did the modern system of slavery develop?

• What was the history of the slave trade and the Middle Passage?

• How did Africans manage to create communities among the brutal slave system?

Chapter Focus Questions (cont’d)

• What were the connections between the institutions of slavery and the imperial system of the eighteenth century?

• How and why did racism develop in America?

North America and Stono, SC

American Communities:Rebellion in Stono, South Carolina

• South Carolina rebellion Slaves go to Florida where freedom had been

promised

• Enslaved Africans greatly outnumbered white colonists

• Sense of desperation but also of community

• History of community: oral accounts of the rebellion persisted into the 1930s

The Beginnings of African Slavery

A portion of the Catalan Atlas

The Beginnings of African Slavery

• Moral implications

• Muslims and Africans slaves because not Christians

• 1441: Portuguese brought slaves to sugar plantations on Madeira

African slaves operate a sugar mill

Sugar and Slavery

• Expansion of sugar production increased demand for slaves.

• Portugal created brutal but profitable slave labor in Brazil

• Dutch merchants financed and directed the sugar trade France and later Britain developed own

Caribbean sugar plantations

Sugar and Slavery (cont'd)

• Caribbean sugar and slaves core of the European colonial system.

West Africans

• Slaves from well-established societies and local communities of West Africa

• More than 100 societies on West African coast

• Sophisticated systems of farming

• Extensive trade networks

• Household slavery an established institution

West Africans (cont'd)

• Slaves treated more as family than as possessions

• Children born free

• American slavery transformed, brutalized the African institution

The African Slave Trade

The Demography of Slave Trade

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

• One in 20 were delivered to North America (600,000).

• Men generally outnumbered women two to one.

MAP 4.1 The African Slave Trade

FIGURE 4.1 Africans Imported to Mainland British North America, 1626–1800

A Global Enterprise

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

• 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.

A Global Enterprise (cont'd)

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

• Of 10.5 million Africans who arrived in the Americas, 90% went to the sugar colonies.

MAP 4.2 Slave Colonies of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

The Shock of Enslavement

• Enslavement was an unparalleled shock.

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

• The captives were marched to the coast, many dying along the way.

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

The Middle Passage

• Middle Passage Middle portion of the triangle trade Shelves 6 feet long and 30 inches high Crowded together spoon fashion Little or no sanitation, food was poor Dysentery and disease. Slaves resistance:

- jumping overboard, refusing to eat, revolting

One in six slaves died during this voyage.

Portrait of Olaudah Equiano

Slaves below deck on the Portugese vessel Albaroz

Political and Economic Effects on Africa

• Slavery enriched a few in Africa, but slave wars ravaged populations, spreading death and destruction far inland.

• Loss of population and access to cheap European goods led to economic stagnation and prepared the way for direct European colonization in the nineteenth century.

The Development of North American Slave Societies

Africans herded from a slave ship

FIGURE 4.2 Africans as a Percentage of Total Population of the British Colonies, 1650–1770

The Development of North American Slave Societies

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

Slavery Comes to North America

• 1619: first Africans in Virginia

• From a society with slaves to a slave society Decline in servant immigration Better opportunities for English servants The Royal English African Company

- labor shortage was filled with slaves.

• Virginia: comprehensive slave code

Slavery Comes to North America (cont'd)

• 1700–1710: More Africans imported than in the entire previous century

The Tobacco Colonies

• Tobacco: 25% of the value of all colonial exports

• Slavery allowed expansion of tobacco production

• Using slave labor, tobacco grown on large plantations and small farms

The Tobacco Colonies (cont'd)

• Natural increase of slave population in Chesapeake 1750s: 80% of Chesapeake slaves were

“country born,” adding to planters’ capital.

The Lower South

• South Carolina: slave society from its founding

• Indian slave trade.

• Rice and indigo

• Large plantations—slaves dominated.

• Georgia prohibited slavery

The Lower South (cont'd)

• 1770: About 80% of the coastal population of South Carolina and Georgia was African American.

image of Mulberry Plantation, near Charleston, South Carolina, about 1800.

Slavery in the Spanish Colonies

• Papacy denouncement, but basic part of the Spanish colonial labor system

• Varied by region Cuba sugar plantations: brutal Florida: Household slavery as in

Mediterranean and African communities New Mexico: Mine labor, house servants,

fieldworkers

Slavery in the Spanish Colonies (cont'd)

• Spain declared Florida a haven for runaway slaves from the British colonies and offered land to those who would help defend the colony.

Slavery in French Louisiana

• Natchez Rebellion 1629 The Natchez Indians and the slaves of

Louisiana joined together in an armed uprising killing 10% of the colonial population, but were crushed

• French Louisiana became a society with slaves.

• Slaves made up only about 1/3 of population

Slavery in French Louisiana (cont'd)

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

Slavery in the North

• Slavery was legal and part of the labor system in some northern commercial farming areas but only made up ten percent of the rural population in these regions.

• In port cities, slavery was common.

Slavery in the North (cont'd)

• By 1750, the slave and free African populations made up 15 to 20% of the residents of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.

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

African to African American

A Musical Celebration in the Slave Quarters

The Daily Lives of Slaves

• Africans were majority of plantation labor force As agricultural peoples, Africans were used to

rural routines and most slaves worked in the fields.

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

• Small plantations / farms Africans worked along side masters

The Daily Lives of Slaves (cont'd)

• Large plantations Population necessary for the development of

an African American culture.

Families and Communities

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

• Families were often separated by sale or bequest.

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

Families and Communities (cont'd)

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

African American Culture

• Eighteenth century: formative period of African American community

• Development of sustaining spiritually dance, music, religion, and oral tradition.

• Great Awakening conversions

• Death and burial important religious practices

• Foundations of music and dance

African American Culture (cont'd)

• Gullah and Geechee languages

The Africanization of the South

• Acculturation occurred in two directions—English influenced Africans and Africans influenced English.

The Africanization of the South (cont'd)

• Africanization was evident in: cooking: barbecue, fried chicken, black-eyed

peas, and collard greens material culture: basket weaving, wood

carving, and architecture language: goober, okay, tote, buddy music and dance: banjo

• Even the Southern “drawl” may show African influence.

Violence and Resistance

• Slave system based on force and violence

• Africans resisted by: Refusing to cooperate and malingering;

mistreating tools and animals; Running away

• Revolting (NYC, 1721; Stono, 1739) Fear of uprisings but slaves in North America

rarely revolted- Conditions for a successful revolt were not

present

Violence and Resistance (cont'd)

• 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 Slave Hunt, Dismal Swamp,

Virginia (1862).

Slavery and the Economics of Empire

Eighteenth-century ships being unloaded

MAP 4.3 Triangular Trade Across the Atlantic

Slavery and the Economics of Empire

• The slave trade was the foundation of the British economy.

• Created a large colonial market for exports that stimulated manufacturing

• Generated huge profits that served as a source of investments

• Supplied raw cotton to fuel British industrialization

FIGURE 4.3 Value of Colonial Exports by Region, Annual Average, 1768–72

The Politics of Mercantilism

• Mercantilism First advanced in Louis XIV’s France, later

adopted in Britain Colonies existed to benefit the mother country The economy should be controlled by the

state The economy was a “zero-sum” game where

profits for one country meant losses for another.

The Politics of Mercantilism (cont'd)

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

British Colonial Regulation

• State trading monopolies

• 1651–1696: Navigation Acts legal and institutional structure of Britain’s

colonial system. “Enumerated Articles” such as sugar could

only be sent to Britain.

• Wool, Hat, and Iron Acts

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

British Colonial Regulation (cont'd)

• The increase in colonial trade led Britain to pursue a policy of “salutary neglect.”

Wars for Empire

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

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

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

Wars for Empire (cont'd)

• Down to 1744, the wars were a stalemate, with no nation winning the upper hand in the Americas.

The Colonial Economy

• Despite wars, the colonial economy grew rapidly.

• The New England shipbuilding was stimulated by trade.

• Benefits for northern port cities

• Participation in the slave trade to the South and West Indies

The Colonial Economy (cont'd)

• Trading foodstuffs for sugar in foreign colonies

• Between the 1730s and 1770s, the commercial economies of the North and South were becoming integrated as well as part of the British Atlantic economy.

Slavery Prosperity and Freedom, ,

Advertisement in the Virginia Gazette on September 14, 1769.

The Social Structure of the Slave Colonies

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

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

the adult white male population.- Many kept one to four slaves.

The Social Structure of the Slave Colonies (cont'd)

• Slavery produced a highly stratified class society. 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.

White Skin Privilege

• Skin color determined status.

• Legal and other racial distinctions were constant reminders of the freedom of white colonists and the debasement of all African Americans, free or slave.

White Skin Privilege (cont'd)

• Mixed-ancestry (mulattoes) Majority of mulattoes were slaves. Masters often fathered unacknowledged

children with female slaves—perhaps Jefferson with Sally Hemings.

• Racism created contempt between African Americans and colonists.

Conclusion

Slavery and Empire, 1441-1770

• Southern planters, Northern merchants and British traders were all equally involved in slavery.

• Slavery permeated colonial societies and made colonies profitable to the mother countries.

• Mercantilism supported and reinforced slavery as profits flowed back to England.

Chronology