The Complexity Of African Slavery

Slaves in Spain were mostly Native Americans. New Spain valued Native Americans because they knew the land. The Native Americans knew the land so well that farming was easy for them. Not only did the Spanish enslave Native Americans but they also used some Africans for slave labor. The Spanish colonies eventually used African slaves only because the Natives often died from diseases. The same diseases the Europeans had brought over from England. Spain also had indentured servant who would work for a couple of years. In exchange for their work they would get food, clothing and a way to the new world. New France used Africans for slaves because they could get them in large amount. The French had many plantations that requires a lot of labor and because African slaves were cheap they had lots of them.

Brazil lacked the large work force provided by the greater Amerindian population of Mexico. The Amerindians of Mexico were already familiar with working for native overlords, making the transition to working under a Spanish overlord a relatively smooth process (Suchlicki 31). To compensate for the lack of an indigenous work force, the Portuguese began to bring African slaves into Brazil as early as 1433. Out of the total population of the Brazilian colony in 1585 numbering some 57,000 people, 14,000 were African slaves (Burns 49). Although the Spanish who colonized Mexico were by no means innocent of enslaving Africans, the large numbers of Amerindians provided the bulk of the work force on Mexican plantations (Suchlicki 31).

Africa was once a thriving and wonderful continent filled with luxurious and wealthy kingdoms, but that had all changed when a new and appalling type of slavery was introduced. Around the 18th century, Africa became an ideal place for Europeans to trade and buy slaves from. The slave trade in Africa seemed to be manageable and somewhat peaceful before the Europeans brought in a new type of slavery. When the Europeans bought slaves from Africans, they kept them as slaves for life which were very different from how long slaves were kept in Africa. Europeans kept slaves in extremely poor conditions and treated them as if they were less than human. These actions caused a great spike in the slave trade all over the world and many

It can be argued that Mexican and Peruvian heritage have been influenced by African traditions and genealogy. During the 17th and 18th century, slaves were transported to Latin America. Within Latin America, slaves were expensive and viewed as a luxury, rather than a commodity. As a result of the high price of slaves; slaves would be treated with slight dignity within Mexican culture.

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)

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.

African people began to attack opposing tribes and taking captives, and then would sell the captives to the Europeans to use for slaves. They would be placed on slave ships, where they would be packed in, forced to sit with sicknesses, death and whippings. “I feared I should be put to death, the white people looked and acted, as I thought, in so savage a manner; I had never seen among any people such instances of cruelty”(Equaino, Document D) The slaves were whipped on ships and treated like animals. The statement above was a quote from a previous slave. When slavery was brought to the New World, places with large agricultural based economies had many slaves. Sugarcane slaves were slaves that worked in the fields, planting, taking care of, picking and processing sugar cane. Life expectancy for these slaves was five years. The Silver mining slaves worked in conditions that would have them underground with poor ventilation, almost complete darkness, and natural disasters. They lived longer than Sugar Slaves, and most of the time could buy their freedom. The Columbian Exchange expanded the Atlantic Slave trade, which killed too

One thing being disease, such as malaria. Christopher Columbus introduced the “Columbian Exchange”, an exchange of pathogens, causing 90% of people to die off. The Portuguese captured many Tupi Indians and either killed them off or they died of the flu. Since the native people had never been exposed to disease before, they would die off quickly once exposed. When they began digging for gold and silver in North America, they needed people to do the work for them. They could not enslave the indigenous people anymore since they had mostly died off, so they brought over 9 million African American slaves who had already been exposed to disease and had a likely chance of surviving. The Portuguese also used slaves to produce sugar. There were 4-5 million slaves brought to Brazil over a span of about 200 years. Many Portuguese men mated with the slaves, and this is the reason that Brazil’s population is so diverse today. There was such a demand for slaves that they become a major part of trade. The Europeans were trading slaves as well as trading fish, grain, and cheap textiles to feed and clothe the slaves. The reason for this is that the slaves mainly produced sugar, cotton and tobacco, not their own food or textiles. This concept is termed “peculiar

The history of Africans in Mexico is an oft-neglected facet of the cultural complexities of that country. In 1519, Hernando Cortes brought 6 African slaves with him to Mexico; these individuals served the conquest as personal servants, carriers, and laborers.[1] In the years to come, slavery would become a critical component of the colonial economy with approximately 2,000 slaves arriving each year 1580-1650; it is estimated that a total of 200,000 Africans were brought to Mexico during the colonial period.[2] Given this large number of slaves, the lengthy period of their importation, and the inevitable mixing of races, which took place throughout the colony, the historical and cultural significance of

As the Europeans set up colonies in America, they brought the plantation ideas with them, which led to the need for labor hence they tried to enslave the Native Americans to work in their mines and fields. The Native Americans were prone to diseases hence most of them died as a result of diseases and overworking. Apart from the ones who died, a number rebelled and formed alliances forcing the Europeans to look for other sources of labor. They started to acquire African slaves due to a number of reasons: The African slaves were more stronger and immune to a number of diseases in Europe and America; the Africans had no friends and family in America hence it was not easy for them to form alliances or to escape; they provided a permanent and a cheap source of labor; and most of them had worked on farms before in their

Per CBS news’s timeline for the slave trade, 1502 was the first year that African slaves were reported in the new world. The reasons for this was a need of a labor force that would be very economically substantial but very effective and Africans who, at the time, were thought of as less-than people, not smart, but strong enough to help work for their captors, were the perfect fit for the roll. This wasn’t just in the British colonies and north America. The Atlantic slave trade had massive amounts of Human labor being shipped all over the Americas. The

Because certain forms of slavery had existed for centuries on the continent of Africa, Brazilian historians used to say that blacks imported from across the Atlantic were docile and ready to accept their new status as slaves. This assertion is based on the unwarranted assumption that was true of a limited area of Africa was typical of the continent as a whole.

These were slave born on the African continent with little or no acculturation with the Spaniards

One of the industries that was very popular in Mexico was the agricultural industry. In Mexico, there were many different crops that grew very well that wasn’t common anywhere else. One of those crops was sugar. When it came to producing sugar, settlers believed that the slaves were the perfect people for the work. They were seen as perfect, because of the idea that they could easily withstand the heat from sugar refining houses. (Richmond 5). This is actually one of the features that led slaveowners to believe that Africans were perfect to be slaves in general.

The reason that slavery was introduced is due in fact that in 1542 Spain passed contrevisal royal decrees the Nuevas Reyes, which prohibited the use of indian slave labour. Later in the 1550s the number of slaves in Puebla was starting to increase where they were used in and around the city in number different occupations. This example shows that not every town in colonial Mexico saw large increase in slavery but that as time began to pass the Spanish became dependent on slaves to meet the demand of the trade markets. In addition, there became a clear importance for the need of slavery in colonial Mexico. Henry Kamen points out that those who were in charge in colonial Mexico acknowledged slavery moved beyond need to necessity in order to meet the production demands. They being used in agricultural, sugar mills and even being used in the silver and gold mines. Blacks were also used in the defense of the Spanish Empire against the indians and they were taken along with conquistadors such as Cortes during his war with