Europe quickly became the dominant region over the economic aspects of the Columbian Exchange, however their social influence in the Americas and Africa developed slower during the time period of 1492 to 1750. In the mid-fifteenth century, European interest in Africa expanded from goods to incorporate slaves. Europeans began to take over African civilizations and keep natives as their slaves. This was not a new practice to keep war captives as slaves. However the Europeans began to export these African slaves across the globe to established colonies in both North and South America for the first time.
Slavery in the United States lasted as a legal institution until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. It had its origins with the first English colonization of North America in Virginia in 1607, although African slaves were brought to Spanish Florida as early as the 1560s. Most slaves were black and were held by whites, although some Native Americans and free blacks also held slaves; there was a small number of white slaves as well. Slaves were spreaded to the areas where there were good quality of soil for large plantation of high value cash crops, such as cotton, sugar, and coffee. The majority of slaveholders were in the southern United States, where most slaves were engaged in an efficient machine-like
The reason that the African slaves were needed was because they were strong and good workers. The colonist had used the natives originally but they did not work as hard as they would have liked. The natives also had contracted small pox which took an enormous toll on them limiting the amount of slaves they had for labor. So they began trading and purchasing African slaves due to the fact that they had developed some immunity to these diseases. (McKay, Chap 21, pg 570) In order to get a good perspective on what being a slave was like, we will look into a narrative written by Olaudah Equiano.
With such a high percentage of native Africans they were able to keep their ways of their homeland. Slaves tried different ways to escape, very few succeeded. New groups of Africans who typically were from the same region of Africa would escape inland and form Maroon communities, other slaves who had been slaves for longer period of time would fake illness, feigned stupidity and laziness, broke tools, pilfered from storehouses, hid on the woods for weeks or took off to visit other plantations. Some would flee on their own and become skilled laborers such as craft workers, dock laborers, or sailors along the Seaports. During the end of the eighteenth century African American slaves living on large plantations began creating families and communities within the plantations.
Not until the development of the “plantation system” in the southern colonies in the later half of the seventeenth century, did the importation of African slaves greatly increase.With the success of tobacco planting, African Slavery was legalized in Virginia and Maryland, becoming the foundation of the Southern agrarian economy . By the time of the American Revolution, about 22 percent of the total population were African slaves, amounting to about 500,000 people. The transportation of slaves from Africa to America was known as the Middle Passage. because it was the second, or middle, leg in the triangular trading routes linking Europe, Africa,
Between 1790 and 1861, the year in which the Civil War began, plantation agriculture expanded, therefore, the demand for slaves increased. At that time, almost one third of all Southern families owned slaves -fifty percent in South Carolina and Mississippi alone- bringing the total number of southern slave owners to an estimated 385,000. The Southern economy was almost completely reliant upon slavery and the slave trade. To advance this agricultural wealth, money was invested back into slavery. Needless to say, southern slave owners were not willing to abolish slavery because of the money they stood to lose.
Around the late 1800’s many African slaves came to the new world, Africans became slaves either because of debts or of a religious conflicts. However, slaves were granted certain rights such as education, parenthood, and slaves could eventually work their way out of slavery. In 1492 slavery was legalized in Europe, which lead the people to trade slaves for goods or gold in Africa. Unfortunately later on a technique came upon, it was use to transport slaves to different places which was known as the Middle Passage. The middle passage lead to the death of many slaves, since slaves were being place in ships at the very bottom.
Chapter 14 Id’s Chapter Thesis: From 1450 to 1750, three regions: the Americas, Europe, and Africa impacted the world for the good as the exchanged goods, ideas, culture, but most importantly this mixing resulted in new people of the world with mixed races and new cultures, crops, economy, etc. 1) The Great Dying “The Great Dying” consisted of the Native American societies. The Great Dying was a phenomenon and was quoted “surely the greatest tragedy in the history of the human species.” In essence it was the demographic effect of diseases brought by Europeans on the Americas. It occurred between 1450 and 1750. It occurred on lands from Mesoamerica to the Caribbean islands.
F.Q.R In Britain’s North America from the period of 1607 to 1776 there was slavery and how slavery started because of the demand for tobacco and sugar cane and the African Americans were the only ones who knew how to grow it. The first Africans that were sent to America were the ones in the Caribbean. The demand for slaves in North America helped expand the slave’s trade. As the slave trade expanded it also got more terrible. The Africans were brought here into filthy dark and were packed onto the ships also known as the “middle passage”.
Miriam Barakat Due: 11/20/07 History Essay Slaves in the American Revolution Discrimination against blacks was intense throughout the United States. Owners tormented many slaves’ lives, but many slaves made it through by believing in their religion and in each other. The tormenting began even before the slaves reached the mainland of America. So the history goes way back in times, Americans weren’t the first ones. But in America they did have slavery; they were targeted and hunted down in Africa, their homeland, by their own African people who would capture them and sell them to slave owners in America.