Slavery in the British Colonies

Anthony the Planter

1607

Jamestown, VA established

• First permanent English settlement

1619

First Africans arrive at Jamestown

• Traded for supplies
• Could not be enslaved for life because they were Baptized.
• Indentured servants
  • 4 to 7 years of labor
  • Freedom Dues — A new suit of clothes, a bushel of corn and 100 acres of land (50 more acres for each servant).

1624

First black child born in the colonies

• William Tucker

Antonio a Negro

• Listed in the Jamestown census
• Eventually changed his same to Anthony Johnson.
• Became a planter, a wealthy landowner.
  • 5 workers, 250 acres
  • Black and white servants
  • Identity was tied to landownership.

1640

John Punch becomes, technically, the first slave.

• Given a lifetime indenture for breaking his indenture contract (running away)

The definition of a slave changes from non-Christian to non-white.

1641

Massachusetts recognizes slavery

1661

Virginia recognize slavery.

1662

Virginia Laws

• The condition of the child follows the condition of the mother

VA Law

1676

Bacon’s Rebellion — an uprising on the restrictive land policies of Virginia.

• Led by Nathaniel Bacon
• Freeman, slaves, and indentured servants

Defining Slaves — strangers, outsiders, alien, foreign, unknowable, “African,” “non-American”

“If any slave resists his master and is killed, it is not a felony.”

“If a Negro escapes labor and resist capture, it is lawful to kill the Negro.”

• Virginia Law (1980)

1691

Illegal to free a slave they were leaving the colony

1705

Slaves were real estate

Miscegenation and Creolization

Miscegenation — interracial sexual contacts.

Creolization — the producing of African American children from African parents.

• Cultural difference

Mulattoes — children of miscegenation.

• Biracial — black and white parentage.
• The word is outdated today.

Miscegenation

Interracial relationships were banned in some places.

• Biracial children could possibly sue for freedom.

Slave Societies vs. Societies with Slaves

The economic significance of slavery also varied significantly within difference English North American regions, which led to contrast legal structures, social hierarchies, and labor experiences for enslaved Africans.

• Northeastern colonies featured fewer plantations, and enslaved people often worked in domestic service or artisanal trades.
  • Carpenters, blacksmiths.

Southern colonies functioned as slaved societies, where slavery stood at the center of politics, the economy, the labor experience, and social identities.

The English colony of Georgia

• In 1749, Georgia leaders overturned the colony’s ban against slavery.
  • By the 1750s, white people planters from South Carolina began moving into Georgia to establish rice plantations based on enslaved labor, and they quickly transformed the colony of Georgia into a slave society.

In slave societies with large enslaved populations, the practice or threat of violence served to punish resistance, prevent rebellions, and maintain the master-slave power structure.

In societies with slaves, slaveholders could treat enslaved people brutally precisely because they were marginal to their economic needs.

Resistance

• Resistance include.
  • Procrastination (goldbricking)
  • Sabotage (breaking tools, harming animals)
  • Escape and Rebellion
  • Relief from a harsh condition
• In early America, this was for negotiations.

Escape was with others who shared a common culture.

• Applicable to “new” or “fresh” Africans.

Two types of escapees.

• Outliers — remain closely and raid the plantation at night.
• Maroons — established communities on the frontier

Rebellions

Slave Rebellions

More common in Jamaica and Brazil.

• Geographic factors, Jamaica is an island.
• Rebellions were more frequent in area where blacks outnumbered whites.
  • The lowcountry
  • Brazil

Stono Rebellion

The Stono Rebellion took place near Charleston, SC (1740).

• Led by an Angolan named Jemmy.
• They were attempting to go to Spanish, FL.

Slave codes were instituted in SC.

• White fear of revolt increase.

Seeking to quell resistance and gain control over the enslaved black majority population.

• Lowcountry slaveholders employed Christian religious instruction not only as a system of control but also as a process of acculturation.

These religious talks encouraged, among other behaviors, obedience to master.

• Religious practices that enslaved people had brought from their homeland were increasingly marginalized.

Fort Mose

To destabilize British-colonization in the north, Spain encouraged British slaves escape to Florida, where they could convert to Catholicism and become a Spanish citizen.

• Fort Mose is the only known free black town in the present-day southern United States that a European colonial government sponsored.

Slavery By Region

Rhode Island attempted to give the enslaved rights and freedom after 10 years.

New England Colonies’ Use of Slavery

Part of the reason slavery evolved differently in New England than in middle and southern colonies was the culture of indentured servitude.

The New England colonies began to show differences in their approaches to slavery.

Africans in French America

French America, or New France, was a frontier and a borderland.

Upon arrival to Louisiana in 1719, many Africans encountered indigenous people as fellow slaves. They eventually formed alliances and occasionally escaped together towards the promise of freedom

Slaves in Colonial New Spain

During the first period, 1519 to 1580, African slaves accompanied Spanish invaders and conquistadors as companions and servants.

During the second period, 1580 to 1650, disease and rigors of the Spanish labor system led to the rapid decline of indigenous populations, and the introduction and acceleration of African slavery.

During the third period, 1650 to 1827, experience a decline of the enslavement trade in African people and the enslaved Black population.