DC US History CH 3.4 Colonization: Slavery, Native Life, Environment, and Plant Cultivation

Demand for labor to grow New World cash crops (sugar, tobacco) drove reliance on enslaved Africans.
The Royal African Company was chartered by the English crown in 1672, giving a monopoly on transporting enslaved Africans to English colonies.
About 350000 Africans were transported over roughly four decades.
By 1700, Barbados had a large enslaved population (around 50000), and slavery was codified as chattel in colonial law.
English colonists shifted from servant labor to enslaved Africans; by the end of the 17th century, slavery was central in the Americas, especially the Chesapeake.
African slavery before European colonization was not race-based: it was war capture, crime, or debt; often temporary and not hereditary.
The slave trade enriched West African elites and merchants who traded for European textiles, alcohol, guns, tobacco, and food, and who taxed trade in enslaved people.

The Middle Passage was the transatlantic crossing of enslaved people, typically 1-2 months.
By 1625, more than 325800 Africans had been shipped to the New World; many perished on the voyage.
Some four million Africans were transported to the Caribbean between 1501 and 1830.
Enslaved Africans faced brutal, lifelong slavery in the Americas, often on tobacco or other cash-crop plantations.
Resistance existed everywhere: running away was common; maroon communities formed in Jamaica and elsewhere, often with spiritual leaders such as Vodun priests.

European goods (glass beads, copper kettles, metal utensils) rapidly altered Native life; items were repurposed (e.g., copper kettles into jewelry).
Native adoption of European textiles and metal cooking implements increased; European flint and steel made fire-starting easier.
By 1681, Native and European goods appeared together in daily life (e.g., in portraits like Ninigret’s).
European metalwork and muskets intensified beaver hunting and trade, fueling an arms race among tribes.
Native peoples reshaped weaponry by converting brassware into arrows and axes; muskets shifted power dynamics, benefiting groups with access to European trade.
Some tribes gained power against enemies (e.g., Algonquian allied with the French for muskets, challenging the Iroquois); eventually some groups used weapons against Europeans.

European demand for beaver hats led to overhunting; beaver became extinct in parts of the Northeast, removing beaver ponds that supported fish and deer habitats.
Europeans introduced pigs, which foraged in forests and reduced native game.
Private property and fences clashed with Native concepts of land use; Native usufruct and common land use were less aligned with colonial private-property rights.
Disease introduced by Europeans caused massive Native mortality and reshaped societies.
Epidemics: along the New England coast from 1616-1618, about 0.75 of native populations died; in the 1630s, about half of the Huron and Iroquois died of smallpox.
Mourning wars emerged as a response to disease, with captives adopted into communities.

The exchange of microbes between Europeans and Native Americans caused catastrophic mortality due to lack of immunity.
High death tolls disrupted generations, eroding knowledge and cultural continuity.
Some Native groups interpreted disease as a spiritual attack and engaged in warfare (mourning wars) to gain captives.

Europeans pursued new medicines in the Americas, giving rise to botany; notable figure: Sir Hans Sloane.
Plant transfer across the Atlantic included tobacco (became a major export) and sugarcane (introduced by Columbus in 1494).
A wide variety of herbs, seeds, and roots moved between continents, expanding European markets for American crops.
Sloane cataloged many new plants in the Caribbean, and the English palate soon embraced cacao-containing chocolate.
Tobacco and sugar deeply influenced colonial development and economies.

Native Americans and enslaved Africans had deep knowledge of local plants and medicinal uses, integrating their experience with new plant resources.
Africans, in particular, used medicinal plants learned in Africa and adapted to New World flora; they contributed to knowledge of local medicines within their communities.
Europeans distrusted medical knowledge from African or Native sources, limiting the incorporation of this knowledge into European medicine.
A notable example of traditional knowledge cited is the use of a plant (peacock flower) by Native American and enslaved women to induce abortion, illustrating complex medical practices under oppression.