British North America Vocabulary

Introduction

The American colonies were diverse, including servants, enslaved laborers, free farmers, religious refugees, and powerful planters. Native Americans witnessed settlements expanding, monopolizing resources, and transforming the land. Colonial societies in the 17th and 18th centuries saw labor arrangements and racial categories evolve into race-based chattel slavery, which became central to the British Empire's economy.

North American colonies, initially marginal to the British Empire compared to the Caribbean sugar islands, were integrated into Atlantic networks. The Atlantic World connected Europe, Africa, and the Americas, influencing colonists' lives through civil war and religious conflict in Britain. Colonial settlements matured, developing the capacity to war against Native Americans and suppress internal revolts. The patterns established during this time, including slavery, would shape American society for centuries.

Slavery and the Making of Race

Reverend Francis Le Jau, a missionary in Charles Town, Carolina, in 1706, was dismayed by American slavery. He encountered enslaved Africans from the Middle Passage, Native Americans enslaving enemy villages, and colonists fearing French and Spanish invasions.

Le Jau criticized the English, who incited wars with Native Americans to enslave captives and justified enslavement by claiming white servants were unproductive. He baptized and educated enslaved people but couldn't overcome enslavers' fears of emancipation following Christian baptism.

The 1660s were a turning point for Black individuals in English colonies like Virginia and Barbados. Laws were enacted that legally sanctioned the enslavement of people of African descent for life. This permanent denial of freedom and distinct legal status maintained strict racial barriers. Skin color became a marker of division between white and Black races.

Seventeenth-century racial thought wasn't always aligned with modern racial hierarchy. Captain Thomas Phillips, a slave ship master in 1694, saw slavery as a matter of profit, not racial superiority: “I can't think there is any intrinsic value in one color more than another, nor that white is better than black, only we think it so because we are so.