The English settlers of North America only gradually turned to black slavery to solve their labor shortage. Spain brought at least 100,000 Africans to Mexico during the 16th century, but England did not extensively engage in the slave trade until the Royal African Company was established in 1663. Although a trickle of Africans began arriving in English North America in 1619, their status was initially similar to that of the white indentured servants, who remained the backbone of the agricultural labor force until the end of the century. As white workers improved their status during this period, however, both free and bonded blacks were subjected to new laws punishing slave disobedience, prohibiting racial intermarriage, restricting manumission, and otherwise ensuring that the political rights and economic opportunities granted to whites would not be extended to Africans or their descendants.
Resistance
Blacks resisted enslavement from the time of capture in Africa but, outnumbered by whites, North American slaves were less likely than Brazilian or Caribbean ones to engage in massive rebellions. Africans in North America typically underwent "seasoning" in the West Indies and a "breaking" process on the mainland, which was designed to supplant African cultural roots with the attitudes and habits of obedience required for slave labor. Retention of African skills and social patterns was not as common among North American slaves as among their Latin American counterparts, who were more likely to be born in Africa or have extensive contact with African-born slaves. Only in South Carolina, where slaves became a majority of the population, did planters commonly seek slaves from particular regions of Africa who possessed desired skills, such as the knowledge of rice cultivation. More often, white slaveholders attempted to suppress African culture, believing it was easier to control slaves who spoke English and depended on the skills and knowledge instilled in them by whites. These efforts were not completely successful, however. Slaves Africanized English, Christianity, and other aspects of Western civilization, thereby creating their own African-American culture that combined African with European elements.
Efforts to return to Africa or to establish Maroon (slave) colonies in North America became less common as the proportion of African-born slaves declined, but resistance continued under the leadership of slaves and free blacks, who used their knowledge of white society to improve the status of blacks. Despite the restrictions white masters placed on the education and religious activity of slaves, literacy and Christianity often became vehicles for individual and collective resistance, both to brutal treatment and to enslavement itself.
"Blacks in the Americas," Microsoft (R) Encarta. Copyright (c) 1994 Microsoft Corporation. Copyright (c) 1994 Funk & Wagnall's Corporation.
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Slavery: The Modern Period
The coastal exploration of Africa and the invasion of North and South America by Europeans in the 15th century, and the subsequent colonization of the Americas during the next three centuries, provided the impetus for the modern slave trade. Portugal, lacking in agricultural workers, was the first modern European nation to meet its labor needs by importing slaves. The Portuguese began the practice in 1444; by 1460, they were annually importing 700 to 800 slaves to Portugal from trading posts and forts established on the African coast. These were African people captured by other Africans and transported to the western coast of Africa. Spain soon followed, but for more than a century Portugal virtually monopolized the African traffic. Throughout the 15th century, Arab traders in northern Africa shipped African people taken from central Africa to markets in Arabia, Iran, and India.
In tropical Latin America during the 16th century, Spanish colonists first forced the native populations to work the land. The indigenous people, however, could not survive under conditions of slavery and were nearly exterminated, in part by exposure to European disease and excruciating labor. Africans were then brought to the Spanish colonies, primarily because it was believed that they could endure forced labor in the generally more enervating Caribbean and mainland Latin American climates.
England entered the slave trade in the latter half of the 16th century, contesting the right to supply the Spanish colonies held until then by Portugal. France, Holland, Denmark, and the American colonies themselves subsequently entered the trade as competitors. In 1713 the exclusive right to supply the Spanish colonies was granted to the British South Sea Company.
In North America the first African slaves landed at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. Brought by early English privateers, they were subjected to limited servitude, a legalized status of Native American, white, and black servants preceding slavery in most, if not all, the English colonies in the New World. The number of slaves imported was small at first, and it did not seem necessary to define their legal status. Statutory recognition of slavery, however, occurred in Massachusetts in 1641, in Connecticut in 1650, and in Virginia in 1661; these statutes mainly concerned fugitive slaves.
With the development of the plantation system in the southern colonies in the latter half of the 17th century, the number of Africans imported as agricultural slave laborers increased greatly, and several northern coastal cities became centers of the slave traffic. Generally, in the northern colonies, slaves were used as domestics and in trade; in the Middle Atlantic colonies they were used more in agriculture; and in the southern colonies, where plantation agriculture was the primary occupation, almost all slaves were used to work the plantations.
As African slaves became an increasingly important element in the English colonies in America, particularly in the South, where they were fundamental to the economy and society, the laws affecting them were modified. By the time of the American Revolution (1776-1783), they were no longer indentured servants but slaves in the fullest sense of the term, and laws defining their legal, political, and social status with respect to their owners were specific.
Contrary to what is commonly believed, slaves did have some legal rights, such as support in age or sickness, a right to limited religious instruction, and the right to bring suit and give evidence in special cases. Custom gave numerous rights also, such as private property, marriage, free time, contractual ability, and, to females, domestic or lighter plantation labor, which, however, the master was not bound to respect. Brutal treatment such as mutilation, branding, chaining, and murder were regulated or prohibited by law, but instances of cruelty were common before the 19th century.
The American Revolution and Black Rebellions
During the 18th century, black rebelliousness received a new stimulus from the growing popularity among whites of democratic and egalitarian ideas. Slaves exploited the divisions in white society during the American Revolution. Thousands responded to a royal offer of freedom for those who fought with the British, and after the war several thousand black Loyalists went to Canada, most of them settling in Nova Scotia. About 5000 blacks served in the Continental Army. After the war, revolutionary ideology and Quaker pietism inspired new antislavery activities by both blacks and whites. Blacks petitioned state legislatures for freedom, better treatment, or repatriation to Africa. The self-trained black scientist Benjamin Banneker argued against black inferiority in a famous correspondence with Thomas Jefferson.
The liberalization of white attitudes was reversed in the South as a result of the profits made possible by the invention of the cotton gin. During the 18th century, the spread of cotton cultivation to the Deep South and southwestern states fostered the rise of an archconservative southern political order based on the use of slave labor. Despite this retreat, however, ideas drawn from the American, French, and Haitian revolutions, as well as from Christian idealism and African folk beliefs, remained evident in 19th-century slave resistance, especially the major conspiracies led by Gabriel Prosser in Virginia (1800) and Denmark Vesey in South Carolina (1822). The bloody Nat Turner Rebellion (1831) prompted increased repression of slave activities, although small-scale resistance�running away, tool breaking, sporadic violence�continued to interfere with plantation operations.
Abolition of Slavery
Denmark was the first European country to abolish the slave trade, in 1792. Great Britain followed in 1807, and the United States followed in 1808. At the Congress of Vienna in 1814, Great Britain exerted its influence to induce other foreign powers to adopt a similar policy, and eventually nearly all the states of Europe passed laws or entered into treaties prohibiting the traffic. The Ashburton Treaty of 1842, between Great Britain and the United States, provided for the maintenance by each country of a squadron on the African coast to enforce prohibition of the trade, and in 1845 a joint cooperation of the naval forces of England and France was substituted for the mutual right of search. The limited supply of slaves led to a greater attention on the part of the masters to the condition of their slaves.
The French emancipated their slaves in 1848. The Dutch slaves had freedom conferred on them in 1863. Most of the new republics of South America provided for the emancipation of slaves at the time of their establishment. In Brazil slavery was not abolished until 1888.
Slavery in the U.S.
In 1800 the population of the United States included 893,602 slaves, of which only 36,505 were in the northern states. Vermont, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey provided for the emancipation of their slaves before 1804, most of them by gradual measures. The 3,953,760 slaves at the census of 1860 were in the southern states.
Eminent statesmen from the earliest period of the national existence, such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton, regarded slavery as evil and inconsistent with the principles of the Declaration of Independence. The Society of Friends (Quakers) uniformly opposed slavery and agitated against it. The Presbyterian church made several formal declarations against it between 1787 and 1836. The Methodist Episcopal church always cherished strong antislavery views, but in 1844, when one of its bishops was suspended for refusing to emancipate slaves he had inherited through his wife, a secession took place and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South was formed. Individuals and groups of people of almost all sects defended slavery. On the whole, antislavery views grew steadily; but many who personally held strong antislavery opinions hesitated to join actively in abolitionist agitation, unwilling to dispute what many citizens held to be their rights. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, abolishing slavery throughout the United States, was ratified in 1865.
Slavery in the 20th Century
An important achievement was the adoption of the International Slavery Convention in 1926 by the League of Nations. This convention provided for the suppression and prohibition of the slave trade and complete abolition of slavery in all forms. The convictions embodied in the convention were reaffirmed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948.
In 1951 a United Nations committee on slavery reported that the practice of slavery was declining rapidly, with only a vestige of slavery remaining in a few areas of the world. Nevertheless, the committee found that forms of servitude similar to slavery affected a large number of people. These types of servitude include forms of serfdom and peonage, various abuses arising from the adoption of children, and the transfer in marriage of women without their consent. At the recommendation of the committee a conference representing 51 nations was held in Geneva in 1956. The conference adopted a Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery to supplement the convention of 1926. The new convention condemns forms of servitude similar to slavery and provides for penal sanctions against the slave trade. Any disputes relating to the convention are to be referred to the International Court of Justice.
