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Summary Of The Old World Slavery In The New World

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Old World slavery started with the beginning of agriculture to the 1600’s. Indentured servants made up the labor workforce in efforts to pay off debts, criminals, or as prisoners of war. Within Old World, class was the social barrier that separated indentured servants from land owners. Conversely, the time spent as an indentured servant was set to be temporary unlike the generational slavery in the New World of slavery. The work of Old World slavery was also more diverse as they weren’t just in the labor force. They could be seen working as cooks, butchers, and clerks. New World slavery began just after the 1600’s began. Initially, the religions practiced by the indigenous populations in Africa provided adequate European justification for their capture and enslavement. Moreover as a way to avoid religious exemption, European slaveholders in the New World justified the enslavement of the Africans by constructing the concept of a white European race as separate and superior to non-Europeans. European legal, military, and religious support for slavery based on racial hierarchies allowed for a long term coerced labor force in the Americas, and Europeans could use the myth of white superiority to avoid their own enslavement. In New World slavery, slavery was permanent and hereditary, a slave born into slavery, would more than likely also become a slave. The size and scale of this new slavery was substantially larger than ever before. The economic system with slavery driving the

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