Slavery As A Business Enterprise And Economic System

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

In the United States, slavery had an overwhelming impact on their political, social, and economical. Jamestown, Virginia in 1619, the first African slaves were brought into the United States. Reasons were because the tobacco, sugar, rice, and coffee fields were expanding which led to increasing the demand for labor. The Atlantic slave trade was an inhuman systematic importation of slaves between the African traders, American planters, and the European merchants bargaining over human lives which led to the Middle Passage. 1675-1775, the slaves were the backbone of monoculture labor and so it was put into law to keep the Africans as slaves. “So prevalent was this Italian-operated slave trade that the word “slave” was derived from the word “Slav,” name for people from Slavic countries” (Williams 3). In both seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the African-American slaves helped build the economic foundations of the new nation.

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.

Eugene D. Genovese’s book, The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and Society of the Slave South, challenges the accustomed belief which concluded the immorality of Slavery was the underlying main factor of conflict between the North and the South, partnered with materialistic interests. Instead, he presents the idea which observes the social system and civilization as a whole, identifying its distinct structure and their reasoning behind their disagreeing actions. Drawing upon information from four categories which highlight the main arguments, Genovese is able to convey that the power Slavery gave to holders, dissimilated the appeal of a North bourgeois and industrialist structure and Slavery itself overall, being ineffective

Ratified by the states in the winter of 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment was put into play. It declared, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude…shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” (Primary Documents). Officially, this amendment outlawed the practice of slavery, there was, however, an exception. That exception was the use of involuntary servitude, or slavery, as a form of punishment. More than four million African Americans walked free in 1865, this had a rather negative impact on the Southern economy. And so came the Convict-lease system. Many white Southerners saw this system as a solution to their economic hardships; nonetheless, it was often seen as being worse than slavery. In addition to the convict lease system was the practice of Sharecropping and Peonage. These forms of subjugation brought even greater distress to the newly freed African Americans. Despite the ratifying of the Thirteenth Amendment the abhorrent treatment of this newly freed race did not change significantly thanks to programs like the Convict Lease system, Peonage, and Sharecropping.

What is slavery? Slavery is forced labor and this forced labor is what built America and made them become more developed. “Africans peoples were captured and transported to the Americas to work. Most European colonial economies in the Americas from the 16th century through the 19th were dependant on enslaved African labor for their survival.” Many claim that enslavement was very necessary in order for America to thrive and not die off for it is now one of the best countries in the world. However, slavery was not necessary in the Americas it was just a mechanism that just stripped Africans of their human rights, giving the slave masters the “right” to abuse them. Slavery was not necessary in the Americas because without slavery America would

Slaves performed many different services, they worked in homes, factories and helped even as skilled laborers but their most common work was in the fields, “Slaves grew a variety of crops including rice, sugar, and tobacco, but the “white gold,” cotton was central to the southern and national economies” (Foner 598-600). Cotton slowly grew into a major US export, with its exportation swelling from only a few thousand bales in the late 1700s to five million bales before the start of the Civil War (Foner 587). With the cotton crop at the time rising to unprecedented levels, not only nationally but also globally, this put extra emphasis and value on the slaves shouldering the vast workload of this economy. “By 1860 the economic value of property in slaves amounted to more than the sum of all the money invested in railroads, banks, and factories in the United States” ( Foner 595). There was so much money and business invested, tied into and benefitting from the exploitation of the free labor of these slaves. Southern Planters had major political pull and a significant portion of this country’s wealth, “Planters dominated the antebellum southern society and politics and exerted enormous influence in National affairs as well. The wealthiest Americans before the Civil War were planters in the South Carolina low country (where rice was the principal crop) and the Mississippi Valley cotton region around Natchez” (Foner 621). I believe that with all the money, power and land that was reliant on the work of the slaves there was no way these southerners were just going to give that up without a

1. According to the reading, why was slavery such an important part of the American economy at the time?

was missing key data to support his claims of slavery being unprofitable. Phillips completely left out the overall productivity of a slave, which was the ultimate difference in the revision of 1958. A major factor Conrad and Meyer took into consideration concerning production was the reproduction rates for females. Their researched showed that “prime hand wenches produced anywhere between 5-10 kids, and was one-half to two-thirds productive as prime field hands” (C.M. 106-107). However, an average 3 months time is lost due to pregnancy. After calculating return rates they found that women bearing 10 children would have an 8.1 percent rate of return and a women with 5 children will have a 7.1 percent rate of return. Furthermore, the rate of return per slave averaged out to 10 percent (Weiher).

Slaves play a major roles in shaping the south. For obvious reason southern society took slavery to be a critical factor in economic and social identity. Slaves was the ultimate source of the south finances, through crops, marketing, trade monopolies slavery and industry productions. Slavery labor was excessive and slavery produce, one hundred percent return on of capital profits for south. The enforce labor works of slave was free and made easy for southern society obtain their status. Through their expropriation of slave distribution a great deal of southern land proprietor, industrial, business and the society flowing exchange industry could withstand. (Cobb, 2015) A great deal of farm and business and business dispensing slaves labor because they were consider property and did free labor service without

In modern society, people often try for minority groups to feel equal to majorities, however, when slavery existed, blacks were undermined and denied many freedoms entitled to them under the Constitution. There were many topics argued about, but slavery caused the most dispute within the country. In the 1850’s, the pro-slavery South and the anti-slavery North collided when the case of Dred Scott, a black slave who attempted to gain liberation, was brought to court. The North and South had vastly different views on the subject of slavery, Scott had resided in the free state of Illinois with his master, illegally, after being taken from the slave state of Missouri. His residency in Illinois, which was a free state, automatically nullified

Howard Zinn began his writing by describing how quickly the production of cotton increased between 1790 to 1860. As the cotton progressively increased across America, so did slavery. The life of a slave was very difficult. Families were separated as they were sold to different slave owners, and the work they did was long, hot and hard. Slaves began to attempt to escape and revolt. Slavery was a major social decline for America at this time. There was much resistance to slavery, which included stealing property, slowness at work, killing overseers and masters, burning down plantation buildings and the most common, running away. By 1850, nearly one thousand slaves escaped to North Canada and Mexico in a year. The slaves

Like many others demoralized cultures during the Atlantic Slave trade period, Africans fell victim to the sixteenth century discovery of Columbus' so called "New World." Europeans used the Atlantic Slave Trade to capitalize on Columbus' so called "Discovery." For more than three centuries, the regions of Africa were in a state of destabilization. More than thirty million Africans were taken out of Africa and put in the Americas and surrounding countries.

This paper will question the relationship between Slavery and Capitalism, and the extent to how dependent Capitalism was on slavery. Chattel slavery first arrived to America in 1619 and from there the business just kept on growing. It leads to the invention of the cotton gin and helped push forward the young country into the developed powerful nation it is now. This can be gained from the readings from Bailyn, Beverly, the Declaration of Independence, and other works that show not only how profitable slavery was, but also how important it was to the development of America as a country.

Branwen Gruffydd Jones questions why slavery and racism is not addressed as essential in capitalism and the development of industry in Europe. The reason behind IR’s ignorance towards slavery and the history of slavery is due to as highlighted by Krishna that IR is race blind and often forgetful about race hence why when thinking about capitalism IR forgets about slavery. Despite the world economy evidently being influenced by racialized labour through importation and trafficking, when analysing history owing to the history being partially portrayed due to it only being centred on Europe, slavery is often overlooked. The transatlantic slave trade played a significant role in the growth of Britain’s trade and industrialisation and in his book ‘Capitalism and Slavery’, Eric Williams argued how slavery and the profits made from the slave trade set the scene for Britain’s industrial revolution. Williams highlights how the slave trade in the 17th and 18th century resulted in slaves working in the cotton and sugar industry, in turn transforming Britain’s economy as cotton and sugar were two of Britain’s main exports, the slave trade was arguably Europe’s most profitable industry as large amounts of profit was made from both cotton and sugar. The profits made from the cotton and sugar industry helped to finance the industrial revolution in Britain and the US as the immense profit made from sugar and cotton plantations allowed for large wealth surpluses to be accumulated as well as