American Slavery Research Paper

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Slavery and the Making of America is a four-part series documenting the history of American slavery from its beginnings in the British colonies to its end in the Southern states and the years of post-Civil War Reconstruction. Drawing on a wealth of recent scholarship, it looks at slavery as an integral part of a developing nation, challenging the long held notion that slavery was exclusively a Southern enterprise. At the same time, by focusing on the remarkable stories of individual slaves, it offers new perspectives on the slave experience and testifies to the active role that Africans and African Americans took in surviving their bondage and shaping their own lives. Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought…show more content…
The number of slaves today remains as high as 12 to 27 million. Most are debt slaves, largely in South Asia, who are under debt bondage incurred by lenders, sometime even for generations. Human trafficking is primarily used for forcing women and children into sex industries. In pre-industrial societies, slaves and their labor were economically extremely important. Slaves and serfs made up around three-quarters of the world's population at the beginning of the 19th century. In modern mechanized societies, there is less need for sheer massive manpower; Norbert Wiener wrote that "mechanical labor has most of the economic properties of slave labor, though ... it does not involve the direct demoralizing effects of human cruelty”. Episode one opens in the 1620s with the introduction of 11 men of African descent and mixed ethnicity into slavery in New Amsterdam. Working side by side with white indentured servants, these men labored to lay the foundations of the Dutch colony that would later become New York. There were no laws defining the limitations imposed on slaves at this point in time. Enslaved people, such as Anthony d’Angola, Emmanuel Driggus, and Frances Driggus could bring suits to court, earn wages, and
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