Slavery in the New World

Asiento System

System that took slaves to the New World to work for the Spanish. Required that a tax be paid to the Spanish ruler for each slave brought over.

Indentured Servitude

A worker bound by a voluntary agreement to work for a specified period of years often in return for free passage to an overseas destination. Before 1800 most were Europeans; after 1800 most indentured laborers were Asians.

Maroons

Runaway slaves who gathered in mountainous, forested, or swampy areas and formed their own self-governing communities. raided plantations for supplies, had military skills from Africa.

Mita

Labor extracted for lands assigned to the state and the religion; all communities were expected to contribute; an essential aspect of Inca imperial control.

Plantocracy

a small number of rich men owns most of the slaves and land, as well as had all the power

Quakers

English dissenters who broke from Church of England, preache a doctrine of pacificism, inner divinity, and social equity, under William Penn they founded Pennsylvania

Atlantic System

The network of trading links after 1500 that moved goods, wealth, people, and cultures around the Atlantic Ocean basin.

Cash Crops

crops, such as tobacco, sugar, and cotton, raised in large quantities in order to be sold for profit

Columbian Exchange

The exchange of plants, animals, diseases, and technologies between the Americas and the rest of the world following Columbus's voyages.

Encomienda System

system in Spanish America that gave settlers the right to tax local Indians or to demand their labor in exchange for protecting them and teaching them skills.

Mestizo

The term used by Spanish authorities to describe someone of mixed native American and European descent.

Transatlantic Slave Trade

The brutal system of trading African Slaves from Africa to the Americas. It changed the economy, politics, and environment. It affected Africa, Europe, and America. It implies that slaves were used for cash crops and created a whole new economy.

Slave Revolts

Slaves fought back against their masters rather than escaping

Absentee Ownership

Owners do not live on the plantation with the slaves but manages the labor system from another location and hires overseers

Domestic Slave

slaves that worked in the "Big House" as cooks, nursemaids, footmen, house servants.

Slave-hunter

people who were paid to track down escaped slaves using bloodhounds

Manumission

A grant of legal freedom to an individual slave.

Pidgin

A form of speech that adopts a simplified grammar and limited vocabulary of a lingua franca, used for communications among speakers of two different languages.

Gang Labor

A system where planter organized their slaves into gangs, supervised them closely, and had them work in the fields all day. Primarily used on tobacco plantations.

Seasoning

An often difficult period of adjustment to new climates, disease environments, and work routines, such as that experienced by slaves newly arrived in the Americas.

Abolition

The movement to make slavery and the slave trade illegal. Begun by Quakers in England in the 1780s.