Africa and the Americas: The Plantation Complex (book)

Spain conquers Caribbean Islands

Unable to effectively exploit Indigenous inhabitant’s labor due to the strain of European rule and deadly diseases.

Indentured servants were transported. Vulnerable to tropical diseases, i.e., yellow fever and malaria.

Enslaved Africans and their ability to survive made them valuable.

Enslaved Africans:
Expensive but could survive

Slavery (in general)

The large scale and commercial orientation of the sugar industry was new for slavery.

Many societies had a society of slaves but slaveholding was different than slave societies

Societies with slaves: Islamic world (Ottoman) and Africa: Slaves were lower in status but had legal rights.

Slave Societies: Northeastern Brazil and the Caribbean: 80% of enslaved Africans were sent

Sugar Plantation

Took substantial capital to buy a plantation and slaves for it.

The need to provision the sugar islands with food, clothing, and manufactured goods stimulated economic development

Provided many Europeans with jobs and markets for their goods.

Absentee ownership common

Often middle class business men of property.

Strove to improve finances and elevate social standing (i.e, use sugar money to build cool English country houses)

Overseeing slave labor was done by lower-status European immigrants or mixed-race men.

Lighter skin often worked in the fields as well.

Slaves

Performed work of planting, weeding, harvesting, and processing of sugar cane.

Sugar production is organized like a factory line

Strenuous work and sometimes deadly

Many Africans died and had low birthrates due to being overworked with poor conditions and diets.

Planters imported another 50,000 over the next 40 years in Barbados just to keep a level population.

Tobacco

Tobacco Plantations existed in Virginia

Slaves had a better diet, lower mortality rate, and a higher birthrate.

African Culture

Constantly looking for ways to escape their bondage and resist captivity.

Owners, traders, and overseers were vigilant and brutal in their penalties for open insubordination

Slaves found safer ways to assert humanity and express defiance (songs and stories)

Slave ships often had nets to catch slaves that would jump off. Insurrections on ships were also common.

Slaves would use a coded language to talk bad about owners and they wouldn’t know.

Religious Rites.

Religion showed the strongest continuity. Africans in Brazil and Cuba mixed their beliefs with Christianity. (e.g., Yoruba gods turned into saints, Santeria)

Slaves sing hymns of liberation and biblical stories relating to themselves (Moses leading out his enslaved people)

Maroon Communities

Escaped slaves that banded together.

Some islands too small for communities to avoid recapture

Spanish in Jamaica fled the British in 1655 and left behind many African slaves.

Early 18th, British and Maroons fought to a stalemate and led to a Treaty. Maroons allowed autonomy if they caught and returned runaway slaves.

Palmares in northeastern Brazil

Free, Jamaican maroons farmed, fished, and occasionally pillaged British sugar plantations.

Threat to British was mainly freeing other slaves and providing a sanctuary.

Other Runaways

Some assimilated into Amerindian societies.

Africans escaping Carolina and Georgia go to Florida and ally with Creek Natives. Led to Black Seminoles.

Others recaptured or could not thrive in an unknown environment. Many resigned to being slaves but stills showed resistance by slowing down work.

Manumission

A Christian charity act of voluntarily freeing slaves by their masters.

Latin America, all men free until proven other wise.

Uncommon in British North America. Legal codes made no distinction between free and slave.

Mainly women, children, and elders.

Asante Kingdom

Pre- Slave Trade: Expanding power in west Africa. Great military power and expansion. War captives redeemed for ransom or house servants.

New motive for military expansion. War captives sold as slaves for guns.

Dahomey

Aggressive in using the slave trade for state interests

Raided neighboring villages and kingdoms for slaves to trade

Now neighboring kingdoms and villages have motive to trade Africans for guns for protection from Dahomey.

Fictive Kinship

Indigenous African slavery. A parent in desperate circumstances might pawn off their child to someone sufficient resources to keep them alive.

The child is not view as enslaved property but it was viewed as a good thing that the child would be incorporated and thrive in the master’s village.

Occasionally, descendants of captive outsiders would identify with local lineages and be recognized as a community member.

Master houses now re-sold slaves back into the slave trade.

Traditional Institutions

Warfare increased, and the climate of insecurity often led to more central political structures.

Some African “societies with slaves” became slave societies, where slavery became essential to the functioning of state and society.

Farming and herding remained principal economic activities.

Economic growth hindered by the decreasing population.