chapter 6 history submodule 5

Introduction

• The American colonies were populated by diverse groups, including servants, slaves, free farmers, religious refugees, and planters, who shaped new societies.
• Native Americans witnessed the growth of settlements into dominant forces that monopolized resources and transformed the land.
• Colonial societies in the 17th and 18th centuries saw fluid labor arrangements and racial categories evolve into race-based, chattel slavery, which became central to the British Empire's economy.
• The North American mainland was initially a small part of the empire, with its colonies' output less significant than the wealth of Caribbean sugar islands.
• Despite being overlooked by some imperial officials, the mainland colonies were integrated into larger Atlantic networks.
• A complex Atlantic World emerged, connecting Europe, Africa, and the Americas.
• Events across the ocean influenced American colonists' lives, as civil war, religious conflict, and nation-building transformed Britain and its colonies.
• Colonial settlements matured, developing into societies capable of warring against Native Americans and suppressing internal unrest.
• Patterns established during the colonial era shaped American society for centuries, with slavery being a particularly brutal and destructive institution.

Slavery and the Making of Race

• Reverend Francis Le Jau, upon arriving in Charles Town, Carolina, in 1706, became disillusioned by the horrors of American slavery.
• He encountered enslaved Africans affected by the Middle Passage, Indians involved in enslaving enemy villages, and colonists fearful of invasions from French Louisiana and Spanish Florida.
• Le Jau criticized the English traders for encouraging wars with Indians to acquire slaves, and planters for justifying enslaved labor by claiming white servants were ineffective.
• Despite baptizing and educating slaves, Le Jau could not overcome masters' fears that Christian baptism would lead to emancipation.
• The 1660s marked a turning point for black individuals in English colonies such as Virginia and Barbados, with new laws legalizing the enslavement of people of African descent for life.
• The permanent deprivation of freedom and the separate legal status of enslaved Africans reinforced racial barriers, making skin color a marker of division between white and black races.
• Captain Thomas Phillips, a slave ship master in 1694, justified his work based on profitability rather than racial hierarchy.
• Wars were a common means for colonists to acquire Native American slaves, with European legal thought considering enslaving prisoners of war as merciful.
• After the Pequot War (1636-1637), Massachusetts Bay colonists sold hundreds of North American Indians into slavery in the West Indies.
• Dutch colonists in New Netherland (New York and New Jersey) enslaved Algonquian Indians during Governor Kieft’s War (1641-1645) and the two Esopus Wars (1659-1663), sending them to Bermuda and Curaçao.
• King Philip’s War (1675-1676) resulted in the enslavement of hundreds of Indians.
• New England colonists attempted to send Indian slaves to Barbados, but the Barbados Assembly refused to import them due to fear of rebellion.
• In the 18th century, wars in Florida, South Carolina, and the Mississippi Valley led to more Indian slaves.
• Some wars were contests over land, while others were pretexts for acquiring captives, or illegal raids by slave traders.
• Historians estimate that between 24,000 and 51,000 Native Americans were forced into slavery in the southern colonies between 1670 and 1715.
• Many enslaved Indians were exported through Charles Town, South Carolina, to other ports in the British Atlantic, such as Barbados, Jamaica, and Bermuda.
• Colonial governments often discouraged Indian slavery due to the violence it caused and the threat it posed to colonists.
• Native American slaves died quickly from disease, murder, or starvation.
• The plantation economies needed a reliable labor force, leading to the transatlantic slave trade.
• European slavers transported millions of Africans across the ocean in the Middle Passage.
• Olaudah Equiano described the fearsomeness of the crew, the filth in the hold, inadequate provisions, and slaves' desperation leading to suicide.
• Alexander Falconbridge detailed slaves' sufferings from infections and close quarters in the hold, including dysentery, chafing, and diseases like smallpox and conjunctivitis.
• The Middle Passage was a leg in the maritime trade involving sugar, manufactured goods, and African slaves.
• For enslaved Africans, the Middle Passage was the middle leg of three journeys: an overland trek in Africa, an oceanic trip, and acculturation and transportation to labor locations in the Americas.
• Slave ships transported 11-12 million Africans to the Americas, with regulations introduced only