Economic Viability Of The Slave Trade System

From “The Journal of Economical History”, Vol. 41, No. 1, author David W. Galenson provides a nine-page article published in March 1981 entitled “White Servitude and the Growth of Black Slavery” which I thoroughly read and will present my own analysis.

The introduction of Africans to America in 1619 set off an irreversible chain of events that effected the economy of the southern colonies. With a switch from the expensive system of indentured servitude, slavery emerged and grew rapidly for various reasons, consisting of economic, geographic, and social factors. The expansion of slavery in the southern colonies, from the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to just before America gained its independence in 1775, had a lasting impact on the development of our nation’s economy, due to the fact that slaves were easy to obtain, provided a life-long workforce, and were a different race than the colonists, making it easier to justify the immoral act.

The author also explores the profitability of slavery as an institution, as while the tendency of slave owners to keep their capital invested in slaves rather than industry resulted in a lack of economic diversification in the South, it also resulted in great profits during times of high demand for agricultural products. Phillips states that more research is required in this area.

The perspectives of African slave merchants, the female slaves, and the plantation workers in the Americans which are missing in this collection might add other dimensions to our understanding of this commerce in people. Knowing the perspective of the African slave merchants who were present during the slave trade in Africa would have

There is no doubt that the United States was built upon the hard work of Black-American slaves, referred to at the time as bondpeople, who were the main labor force in producing important American exports, such as cotton or tobacco, which were, in fact, the backbone of the American economy during that time. Due to bondpeople’s overall importance in keeping the United States the powerhouse that it was, the domestic slave trade was a value market that “‘was roughly three times greater than the total amount of all capital, North and South combined, invested in manufacturing, almost three times the amount invested in railroads, and seven times the amount invested in banks’”(23). In “‘In Pressing Need of Cash,’” Daina Ramey Berry, a professor for the Departments of History and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas, looks at a fifteen year period, from 1850-1865, of the economic factors of the domestic slave trade. Berry uses Steven Deyle’s findings in his study, "Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life” which examined both the "long-distance interstate trade" and the extensive local or "intrastate" trade of enslaved males and females, who were priced differently depending on their perceived market value (23). With Deyle’s findings, Berry specifically discusses the relationships among gender, age, skill, or type of sale and how those factors, generally, determined the priced paid of enslaved workers.

An estimated seventeen million men, women, and children were enslaved and transported from Africa to the West Indies by Europeans between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Before these individuals became slaves, there were indentured servants. Between the colonial era and Revolutionary War many changes in the practice of labor were made. Expansion of slavery throughout America brought about different conditions of slave life and Paternalism. Slavery in America was very different before and after the year 1790; these changes greatly affected the conditions in which these individuals lived and are worth analyzing.

The economic problem relating to the increasing dependency on slavery is also related to the increasing demand of slave trade as a way to make profit (document 9). Slave trade is unreliable because of the fluctuating demands of slavery. English slave imports to American between 1600 and 1780 would gradually increase in the West Indies and Southern Mainland, but not at a constant rate (document 9). On the other hand, slave imports in the Mid-Atlantic and New England varied around 1,000 to 2,000 slaves from 1701 to 1780, which would drastically impact the profits of slave traders (document 9).

“The Slave Ship: A Human History” written by Marcus Rediker describes the horrifying experiences of Africans, and captains, and ship crewmen on their journey through the Middle Passage, the water way in the Atlantic Ocean between Africa and the Americas. The use of slaves to cultivate crops in the Caribbean and America offered a great economy for the European countries by providing “free” labor and provided immense wealth for the Europeans. Rediker describes the slave migration by saying, “There exists no account of the mechanism for history’s greatest forced migration, which was in many ways the key to an entire phase of globalization” (10). African enslavement to the Americas is the most prominent reason for a complete shift in the

Mann demonstrates to the reader the important role that slave trade had in developing the current United States. He explains that before the 1800s, the large majority of people who were crossing the Atlantic were in fact, African slaves. He claims, “Roughly speaking, for every European who came to the Americas, three Africans made the trip” (367). Mann also points out that slavery’s development was helped by the fact that many Africans are immune to malaria, which allowed them to successfully survive the outbreaks. This fact added plantations that were fielded by African slaves opposed to the plantations that didn’t use African slaves but local servants as the African slaves were not as likely to become sick from the diseases.

Another major question to be dealt with in dealing with the importance of the slave trade to the development of plantation economies is how strong was the like between the slave trade and the development of plantation economies, Eric Williams in his book Capitalism and Slavery argues that in the production of crops such as sugar and cocoa with the use of slave labour, when producing in large units such as a plantation the cost of production goes down. So by this argument slavery is a necessity for the maximization of profits in the plantation system and as has been previously shown Indian slavery ended in failure and whites could not be enslaved so therefore that left only Africa with its large population and close proximity so the slave trade became a necessity to bring African slaves without which maximum profit could not be achieved Williams quotes Merivale as writing "slavery was an economic institution of the first importance." An example of this what ids

Slavery was a driving force of the sugar trade because the profits from selling slaves had driven sellers to sell more. Also, the The increase of sold slaves produced more sugar, thus expanding the sugar trade. Documents 9 and 11 deal with the market of slaves, while Document 10 compares slave population to sugar production. According to David Richardson, after purchasing slaves off the West African coast, selling them to British Caribbean would give sellers very high profit. In fact, in 1748, a seller’s profit would be about £18 per slave sold. In 1768, however, both purchase price and selling price of a slave had increased; yet remarkably a seller’s profit reached £25 per slave sold (Doc. 9). Sellers such as grocers and tailors and other commoners were able to take part in this trade by buying a share of a venture (Doc. 9). Craftsmen involved in the trade did not use money to trade slaves. African slaves were traded with material goods such as bullets, tobacco-pipes, brass pans, and copper bars (Doc. 11). The economic growth from the slave trade had produced both money and slaves, which increased sugar production. The massive amounts of slaves working had produced tons of sugar from a plantation. Although working in deplorable conditions, the “free” labor from the slaves had produced extremely high yields (Doc. 8). For

Slave trading was a business and “over the four centuries of Atlantic slavery, millions of Africans and their descendants were turned into profits.” (Johnson) The Atlantic trade was highly depended on by slave owners as the life expectancy of a slave working in the sugar cane plantations was about seven years in the Caribbean. Due to the use of slave labor by the 18th century surplus capital was being invested in European industry.

For numerous centuries land owners were dependent on a free source of labor provided by slaves. They were to pay for these slaves and then allowed to do as they pleased with them. Slaves cooked, cleaned, worked on plantations, and devoted their lives submissive to the orders of their masters. For over 150 years now, historians continue to argue whether or not slaves helped countries as a whole move economically at a faster pace, or whether after calculating the head cost and transporting the slaves, the trade ended up making having little significance to the country pace and the slave owner’s wealth. The Atlantic slave trade, when a massive number of slaves from Africa were taken on enormous

During the development of the colonies and the nation as a whole, slaves were utilized in order to produce the crops and perform laborious tasks that were “below” white people. In the 1660s, there was an increased demand for tobacco products as well as indigo and rice in England (“African American Slavery in the Colonial Era, 1619-1775”). In order to fulfill the demand, there was a spike in interest in purchasing slaves. More and more slaves were needed to produce larger amounts of crops for the plantation owners.

In today’s world it is widely know and accepted that money makes the world go round but, unfortunately that is not the question. The question is: what made the world go round in the early 1600’s? Surprisingly, just like the world today money made the world go around back then also. One major difference is that in today’s world machines do all of our dirty work, back then it was all up to the slaves. Finding the perfect slave was a challenge to the colonists. First, there was the indentured servants, second, came the Indians. However because Indians and indentured servants could escape to freedom with ease, they were not the ideal slaves. The colonists’ third attempt proved to be a gold mine. The unfortunate people who were forced in to