History Of Slavery: The Irish Slave Trade

Everyone has their own understanding of what slavery is, but there are misconceptions about the history of “slavery”. Not many people understand how the slave trade initially began. Originally Africa had “slaves” but they were servants or serfs, sometimes these people could be part of the master’s family. They could own land, rise to positions of power, and even purchase their freedom. This changed when white captains came to Africa and offered weapons, rum, and manufactured goods for people. African kings and merchants gave away the criminals, debtors, and prisoner from rival tribes. The demand for cheap labor was increasing, this resulted in the forced migration of over ten million slaves. The Atlantic Slave Trade occurred from 1500 to 1880 CE. This large-scale event changed the economy and histories of many places. The Atlantic Slave Trade held a great amount of significance in the development of America. Africans shaped America by building a solid foundation for the country.

The origins and development of slavery in Britain’s North American colonies during the colonial period can be traced down to the fact that North American colonies were created for the economic profit of Great Britain. Reasons for the development of slavery in the North American colonies can be the switch to slavery from indentured servitude due to the desire of free labor and the results of Bacon’s rebellion, the introduction of cash crops such as sugar and tobacco and the introduction of the plantation system, and the easy access of slaves due to the triangular trade and the middle passage.

Ophelia Settle Egypt, informally known as Ophie, was an African American woman ahead of her time. She attained the educational status of less than one percent of the American population, was liberal and accepting of others despite the criticism around her, fought to end racism, worked independently of her husband, and believed in limiting family growth. All of Egypt’s beliefs and lifetime achievements represent a new type of woman: a woman who refuses to assimilate to her gender stereotype of weak, inferior, and domestic. Egypt dedicated her life to social work through various activities. She worked as a sociologist, researcher, teacher, director of organizations, and social worker at different times in her life. Egypt’s book, The Unwritten History of Slavery (1968), and the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Southeast Washington D.C. named after her represent Egypt’s legacy and how one person is capable of social change.

The slave trade in the North American colonies began to grow in the 1600s. The African slave trade sourced their slaves from many different West African villages and countries. The business of slavery was a growing and profitable field, not only for the slavers, but also for the slaveholders. With the decrease of indentured servants, settlers in the English colonies looked for a new source of labor to satisfy their growing labor demands. The next source was Africa. “By the 1690s slaves outnumbered indentured servants four to one” (45). Europeans largely disregarded the ethical dilemma posed by slavery due to the European view of Africans and their culture as uncivilized, foreign, and heathen (44). The largest forced migration in history (44)

Slavery is a topic that has many victims across a plane of different ethnicities, the Irish and African just happens to have the biggest majority in the last 300 years. The market for this trade was always expanding, and cheap labor was always in demand. Plantations needed workers that would work no matter the conditions, slaves fit that profile. They worked without any pay, with minimal housing/food, and did their jobs even enduring the horrible abuse. We wrote this paper to help shed light on the Irish. A group that has been looked over quite simply because they weren't mentioned as widely in text books.

For over 2,000 years, slavery has been conducted in various parts of the world. From year 1500 to year 1900, Europeans stole individuals from West Africa, West Central Africa, and Southeast Africa and shipped them to the different parts of the Atlantic. This process dehumanized them of their identity. Europeans stole husbands, wives, merchants, blacksmiths, farmers, and even children. They removed them from their homelands and gave them new names: slaves. European slaveholders never thought to take ownership of their actions by killing humans with brutality and degradation. Slave trade was considered popular in England and soon after more countries began the process of taking slaves to newly claimed territories. These countries include

The labor system used in the English colonies of North America experienced developmental shifts from 1607 to 1750 as the institution of slavery became firmly established in law and in society. In 1607, English settlers founded Jamestown, in Virginia. A Dutch ship brought around 20 Africans to the colony in 1619, where they became indentured servants. Both white English people and Africans worked as indentured servants during the seventeenth century, though some Africans served for life. Slavery strengthened as an institution during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and African slaves became the dominant source of labor. The strengthening of slavery in the English North American colonies and its development into a powerful institution with criteria for determining the roles and rights of slaves were caused by the establishment of the status of slaves among whites and the decline in the popularity of white indentured servants.

In the first half of the 19th century the Untied States quickly expanded westward, but as the country grew the expansion of slavery became a hotly contended issue. Those states that already allowed slavery, mostly the South, wanted to expand the institution into newly established territories and states, while non-slave states in the North wanted to curtail it. In response, a series of compromises were reached in Congress where each new non-slave state admitted to the Union was balanced by a new slave state. This balance maintained the peace between pro-slavery and non-slave states for most of the first half of the 1800's. But as both sides continued to compromise over the issue of slavery, radical splinter groups began to emerge on both sides which sought to disrupt the compromises.

Slavery in the United States was not uncommon in the sixteen hundreds. In fact, slavery was tremendously prevalent among plantation owners. Slaves consisted of countless races of people who were captured and forced to work, but a majority of those slaves were enslaved Africans. Many slaves came to the United States from Africa especially during the Transatlantic Slave Trade between Britain, Africa and the Americas.

During 1619 was the first time North America would see slaves (history.com). At the time it was unknown as to how long slaves would be kept in bondage and to labor the goods of the whites. Many slaves had been kidnapped, traded, and sold. The South was pro-slave and the reason black slaves would end up freed (Goldfield 2007). Abolitionism began during the early 1830’s when Christians realized that slavery was opposite of their belief and a sin (http://americanabolitionist.liberalarts.iupui.edu). This lead to the “Abolition Movement,” that would eventually help to free some of the slaves. Post Civil War slavery during the 17th through 19th centuries, in Southern United States, the growth of slavery, the system, free slavery, and abolitionism.

Slavery was a very monumental happening in history, and it, in turn, affected many different parts of society at the time. Slavery was the owning of a person and, eventually, their families to work for them, whether it be manual labor or housework or work of any kind. However, the majority of slaves served as field hands. At the time, slavery was very popular and very much used by many people, especially in America. Slavery helped to increase the amount of and the success of agriculture in America. To explain, cotton was a large cash crop at the time, and it was being planted and grown immensely. Cotton tallied more than half of America’s imports, and Britain was a major importer of the crop. More cotton that could be planted meant more slaves, so as increases in land continued, so did the increases in

Slavery in America began as the first African slaves were brought to North American colonies. We live in a society where it is said that we have freedom, but even in these modern times, our freedom is sometimes questionable. It is important to know our history and to understand what our ancestors lived as well as the outcomes of their decisions as they tried to manage the government and the constitution.

The phenomenon of new world slavery was a well-run business and the slaves were the product. Slavery was one of the few industries in history where assets exceeded liability and owner’s equity, which is an unusual occurrence considering the equation is normally that assets equal liability and owner’s equity. Throughout this essay, the rise of slavery and the slave trade will be explained and slavery will be illustrated as the product of a domino effect. Slavery was a process and it took many people and pieces to fall into place for it to become the most profitable industry in its day, progressing over a 400-year time span. The economic analysis in this paper will show that the ideology of slavery in the new world came after the economic incentive.

Talking about southern expansionism would not be complete without the mention of the interstate slave trade. This is most applicable when we talk about one aspect of the slave trade that often gets overlooked, the Atlantic Slave Trade. When mentioning the Atlantic Slave Trade, it is the fact that southerners considered reopening the trade after its dissolution in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Interestingly enough, there were movements by southerners to reopen the Atlantic Slave Trade that were in the name of southern expansion. One such individual was a man by the name of Leonidas Spratt, a young South Carolinian editor who bought the Charleston Southern Standard and turned it into a mouthpiece for promoting the issue of reopening the Atlantic Slave Trade (Deyle 78-79). One of the many arguments individuals like Spratt used was that reopening the trade would enhance the political power of the south by adding more population, thus adding more slave states. This is central to the idea of this essay, as the growth of cotton was not entirely responsible for instigating expansion. Likewise, Spratt also argued that reopening the trade “strengthen[ed] the southern economy by lowering the costs of production and increasing the profits” (Deyle 79). While not explicitly mentioning cotton, the same idea of expansion stands in its place. Individuals like Spratt were eventually unsuccessful in reopening the trade due to a minimal amount of support, but it goes to show how even

The South boasted that the bond between slaves and their owners resembled a familial relationship. [Doc. C] Slaves were taken care of and protected by their owners. These statements were both true. Factory workers, most notably Irish immigrants, endured horrible working and living conditions and slaves were taken care of by their masters. The factory workers in the North were forced to live in tightly packed slums and were paid very little to do the work that was too dangerous for anybody else to do. In fact, as slaves became more and more valuable, slave owners sometimes considered the idea of hiring an Irishman better than forcing their slaves to do life-threatening work. It would cost a slave owner more money if their slave was killed than if they just paid the Irishman. Slaves, in some instances, were considered part of the family and saw many benefits of serving a rich plantation owner. [Doc. C] Still, in too many cases, slaves endured horribly cruel conditions from intensive masters. [Doc. F] Masters took care of their slaves as investments rather than human beings. The immigrants at least had a choice to do the work they were doing. Slaves were the property of their owners. If they chose to rebel, they were severely punished. Slaves were not considered citizens and therefore had no right. Even the Irish Catholics, who were hated by Protestant Americans, were