Slavery and Servitude in the Colonies

After the United States gained its independence from Great Britain in 1776, Vermont was the first state to abolish slavery, which occurred in 1777. By 1804, slavery had been abolished in all the...

Slavery started in the North American colonies for two main reasons. First, there was a need for unfree labor. Second, other sources of unfree labor dried up and/or became less acceptable to the...

Indentured servants played an important role in American history. For example, there was a significant need for labor in the early days of the settlement at Jamestown. Most people could not afford...

As the new nation became settled, slavery became a part of it. Many of the new settlements were large areas where slaves became an essential part of maintaining and developing these areas. While...

In formal terms, the dominance of the Catholic Church in Latin America mitigated the harshest consequences of slavery. Slaves were allowed to marry, seek protection from harsh treatment by masters,...

The Middle Passage is remembered as one of the most atrocious periods in human history. African slaves were transported alongside other cargo in ships across the Atlantic Ocean, to be sold off in...

Slavery influenced society in the colonies in that the practice made a small number of people very rich. The planters controlled the best land and the politics of the region until the Civil War....

In 1619, two closely related events occurred in the Jamestown colony of Virginia. On 30th of June that year, the Polish craftsmen who had come to the colony with John Smith ten years before refused...

The plantation system relied on slavery to be profitable. Because of this, slavery persisted as a legal institution, despite a growing sensibility that it was immoral and should be outlawed....

Over the course of the 17th century, slavery in American colonies gradually became more racial. In the first half of the 17th century, black slaves in Virginia could sometimes save enough tobacco...

"Saltwater Africans" are African slaves who survived the dangerous and terrifying "Middle Passage," or the middle part of the Atlantic triangle trade in which slaves were transported from Africa to...

There are some similarities in the two labor systems: both involve importing labor, and the laborers are often sent to plantations, which need a larger labor pool than what is available locally....

First, it should be pointed out that forms of slavery have been around for nearly 4000 years. According to one source, there are more humans enslaved today--in the 21st century!-- than at any time...

The major reason that slavery took root in the colonies was due to a shortage of labor. The colonies did not have a large enough population to sustain surplus agriculture that could produce a...

Actually, Native Americans were used by European colonialists as slaves some time before the transatlantic African slave trade began. As well as being a method of economic exploitation, enslavement...

The impact of these things was different for different groups of people and different areas of the world. The major impact of these things was, of course, on the Africans who were taken from their...

European exploration and colonization in the 15th century drew attention to different “races,” planting seeds for racism that would later develop more fully. Before this, the primary distinction...

The Atlantic slave trade was one of the largest economic ventures and humanitarian tragedies of its time, if not in all of modern history. Its rise was the result of several factors mostly...

One historical anecdote can begin to provide an answer to this question. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her husband, Henry Stanton, were both abolitionists. They attended the World Anti-Slavery...

There are reasons why the economy in the South relied on slave labor. The South was mainly an agricultural region. The climate was very suited for farming, and the soil was very fertile. As farming...

There were several laws used to control the slaves. The plantation owners believed the slaves needed to be controlled to prevent rebellion. Rebellion was a constant fear the slave owners faced. As...

Originally, agricultural plots in the South were farmed by individual farmers, perhaps with a few additional workers to help them. These early farms mainly grew cotton and tobacco; however, as...

The answer to this question relies upon an examination of three main systems of forced labor in the seventeenth century. Indentured servitude was the most common practice throughout the early years...

Keep in mind this is a pretty specific question, and your instructor may be looking for a specific response from class notes or your textbook. In my opinion, there were two key reasons slavery so...

Triangular trade is the term given for the network of trade controlled by Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In this network, ships were loaded with manufactured goods in...

Indentured servants are individuals who trade labor in exchange for something of value. A person would become indentured if they were unable to repay a debt or if they were trying to earn enough...

The Atlantic Circuit is also known as triangular trade. The American colonies shipped fish, furs, and other raw materials to England in exchange for manufactured products. Other participants in the...

While slavery was prevalent in the colonies, indentured servitude may well have been the preferred choice for labor. An indenturing contract occurred when a man, woman, or child entered into a...

During the Atlantic Slave Trade, the Middle Passage refers to the transportation of slaves from Africa to the Americas. It was a horrifying experience for the captured African. They had no idea...

The first African slave arrived in Hispaniola, the island that now comprises both the Dominican Republic and Haiti, in 1502, ten years after Columbus accidentally sailed to Dominica in 1492. The...

The transatlantic slave trade was one of the earliest international trade networks. It was organized as follows: 1) Europe to Africa Merchants from Western Europe would load weapons, gunpowder,...

Slaves were brought to the colonies in order to solve a labor shortage problem on the major plantations. Sugar, tobacco, and cotton are very labor-intensive crops. Indentured servants would often...

European colonists justified slavery on a number of grounds. Some argued that the institution was openly endorsed in the Bible. The first settlers were staunch Protestants who believed in the...

Though every colony had at least some enslaved people, the colonies that took in the most African slaves were those that raised staple crop for the Atlantic market. In North America, these colonies...

"Unspeakable horror" is the phrase used by more than one author to describe the conditions captured Africans were subjected to on the ocean trek to the West Indies, which was named the Middle...

An exact figure for this question is not really possible to express because the records that would be necessary are either incomplete, unavailable, or poorly kept. We can work in estimates though:...

The very definitions of slave and human are incompatible. If you are a human, then you are the same as every other human in terms of your basic biology. To be owned by anyone else as a slave...

The treatment of indentured servants in colonial North America varied greatly. How they were treated depended largely on the attitude of the landowner for whom they worked. The landowners were...

Slavery in America began in the Virginia colony. During the early colonial period, there was a reliance on indentured servitude to supply workers for large tobacco plantations. The first of these...

First, it is important to remember that, in actuality, less than 5% of African slaves ended up in North America—most were either sent to South/Latin America and the Caribbean or died during the...

Those for slavery argued that the practice was an important aspect of production. Supporters of slavery stated that the slaves provided the necessary labour that ensured the plantations and...

Slavery was already an acceptable practice in England at the time North American colonization. The initial wave of British settlers struggled to survive and were only able to remain because of help...

A variety of factors caused slavery to rise in the Southern colonies between 1619 and 1670. These included factors in the colonies themselves and factors elsewhere. Let us examine a few of these...

Indentured servitude is a system where the wealthy can obtain unfree laborers in exchange for a fixed fee. It was most used in combination with slavery in colonial America to obtain laborers for...

Most slaves came from the region of West Africa. The country today where the largest number of them—nearly two fifths—came from is Nigeria. Nigeria didn't exist at the time of the slave trade. It...

In the American colonies, indentured servitude and slavery were vastly different institutions. Indentured servants began to arrive in America mainly after the Virginia Company colonized Jamestown...