Causes Of Indentured Servitude

The time period between 1492 and 1676 fell right in the middle the Age of Exploration. During the Age of Exploration many European countries were looking for new, faster, and easier trade routes and to find new crops and products to bring back to their mother country. In 1492 Columbus happened to stumble upon the New World and this changed the game for Spain and later for many other European countries. It not only changed the game for the Europeans and helped them prosper but it killed off many of the Natives and cause them to live in misery. Although the Europeans main cause for exploration was not to find slaves the idea of slavery began growing on many countries. Slavery in the Western Hemisphere grew tremendously with the arrival of Europeans and many factors contributed to this growth including the fact that slavery was cheaper than indentured servitude, the new labor intensive crops the Europeans discovered, and the Europeans believed they were helping the Natives by putting them in slavery.

New York would be much different than it is today, had it not been for slavery and indentured servitude. They both had an impact on how New York came to be. “...[indentured servitude and] slavery was a key institution in the development of New York, from its formative years" (Slavery in New York). In 1776, the daily lives of many people in New York City were confined by “chains” for both slavery and indentured servitude. These were both socially acceptable and similar in many ways.

In the Renaissance, slaves were starting to be used in plantations, mostly in America, but also in plantations in Italy and off the coast of Africa (Gascoigne). So, in both the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution, at least some slaves were used for hard labor. The Portuguese were the first to put slaves to work in plantations, and slaves soon came to be used on plantations in the Americas by nations such as Spain, Holland, France, England, and the Netherlands. The first slaves they enslaved in these colonies were the native peoples, but soon, the native population began to dwindle. Since Portugal had been exploring the coast of Africa and since Africa had a booming population of people, Africans became the people they predominantly enslaved (Guild). Thus, racial slavery was started. Blacks came to be viewed as lower than human, and this view spread to all the nations which came to have plantations in America. Millions of blacks were imported to plantations for sugar, spices, tobacco, coffee, etc. during the span of the Renaissance (Hornsby).

Europeans establish plantations in the fifteen hundreds among the coast of Brazil and Caribbean islands to grow sugar cane. Growing sugar cane was very labor-intensive. Early on, Europeans forced Native Americans to work for them on plantations. However, European diseases quickly devastated the Native American population, resulting in a shortage of Labor.

Slaves were bought and sold in many places, mostly for laboring farm land. In the Atlantic world during the 1500's and 1600’s there were many causes and effects to African slave trade. Many Europeans needed slaves to labor on their lands.

Slavery became an established activity in America by 1600’s. The slaves were mostly to provide free and cheap labor. Apart from America, slavery was practiced in other parts of the world throughout history, and in fact it can be traced back to the time of the ancient civilization. With industrial revolution especially with the rise of sugar plantations, the slaves were used to grow sugar in the periods from 1100. This intensified between 1400 and 1500 when Portugal and Spain ventured into sugar growing in the eastern Atlantic regions. The growth of the plantations required labor, hence African slaves were bought from Africa, to provide labor.

African slaves were shipped to the West Indies and America as part of the Triangular Trade. Many slaves died on the voyage due to the ghastly conditions that accompanied the Middle Passage and others committed suicide. Portugal held a near monopoly on the export of African slaves for a period of about 200 years from the early 14-1600s. The peak years of the slave trade were during the 16th and 17th century, but Africans were forced across the Atlantic for an astonishing timeframe of around 400 years.

Document B is a journal entry from a man named Charles Mackay on his experience in the North. It gives us what blacks should be able to do and what restriction the had. According to Doc B, “We shall not make a black man a slave; we shall not buy or sell him; but we shall not associate with him”. This document tells us what rights black’s should have and what restrictions they could have.

From 1450 to 1750, slavery continued to be an important system of labor. The institution of slavery expanded dramatically across the Atlantic Ocean as enslaved Africans were brought over to the New World.Slavery existed in many parts of the world, such as Africa,the Middle East, and other areas of the world throughout this period. In many places of the world, people would trade enslaved people through out the world. Because Europeans were looking for a large labor supply,they started a transatlantic slave trade. The enslaved men and women grew sugarcane and cash crops on plantations.Because of slavery, after a while, slavery became "the norm". Ever since then, slavery had a whole new meaning to it. When the Spanish and the Portuguese came to

The decline of indentured servitude and the rise of chattel slavery were caused by economic factors of the English settlers in the late 17th century. Colonists continually tried to allure laborers to the colony. The head right system was to give the indentured servant a method of becoming independent after a number of years of service. Colonists chiefly relied on Indentured Servitude, in order to facilitate their need for labor. The decreasing population combined with a need for a labor force, led colonists to believe that African slaves were the most efficient way to acquire a labor force that would satisfy their needs.

The Atlantic Slave Trade lasted between 1450 and 1750 and drastically impacted the lives of both European and African people. During this time, the Europeans, such as the British, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Dutch, traveled to Africa in search of labor workers. In total, over twelve million slaves were taken, mainly because they workers to make money, but it also had to do with their race, religion – as they were not Christian – and to civilize them because the Europeans did not believe that they were humans. Due to these European beliefs, the Europeans saw themselves as the most powerful group and viewed slave trade as a business. The Africans, on the other hand, had a harder time transitioning into slavery. Many of them were taken from their homes and forced to accept a new life working as a slave. These events did not come without many sacrifices from the African people. One of the major reasons the slave trade was so expansive is due to the low life expectancy of the slaves after their capture. While the Europeans believed that they were helping the African culture, as well as themselves, the African society as a whole suffered the most.

Since English colonization triggered toward North America, American society evolved its own cultures and institutions. Most areas of British colonies were primarily agricultural; in the South, people heavily depended on cultivating marketable crops for export such as tobacco, cotton, and rice. A scarcity of labors within a plantation led to an enduring demand of slaves or indentured servants. During the time period from 1619 to 1750, the enslavement of Africans was provoked socially by the instability of white servants and uncertain status of blacks and economically by the emergence of labor-intensive crops and large plantations and thriving slave trade in the Atlantic trade system.

After reading the through the power point on the scarcity of food globally, I was sad for the people that were starving. They did not ask to be born where they were. However, it is a seeds job to grow where it lands. These people in their starving nations could theoretically be feed if waste was eliminated according to the World Resources Institute.

The Atlantic slave trade which was inevitably began by the Portuguese, but later in time taken over by the English, was the sale and exploitation of African slaves by Europeans that occurred in and throughout the Atlantic Ocean from the 15th century to the 19th century. Most slaves were transported from West Africa and Central Africa to the New World. Although slavery and slave trading already existed it became well known and practiced in all cultures. During this time while Europeans obtained most slaves through coastal trade with African states, some slaves

Europe has had a long history of slave trade already by the time the 16th century came around. Many slaves worked on various types of plantations where they would grow sugar, tobacco, and coffee beans, creating large amounts of profit. All of