Was Slavery Inevitable

Throughout the book, The Origins of Slavery, the author, Betty Woods, depicts how religion and race along with social, economic, and political factors were the key factors in determining the exact timing that the colonist’s labor bases of indentured Europeans would change to involuntary West African servitude. These religion and racial differences along with the economic demand for more labor played the key roles in the formation of slavery in the English colonies. When the Europeans first arrived to the Americas in the late sixteenth century, at the colony of Roanoke, the thought of chattel slavery had neither a clear law nor economic practice with the English. However by the end of that following century, the demand for slaves in the

Slavery was created in pre-revolutionary America at the start of the seventeenth century. By the time of the Revolution, slavery had undergone drastic changes and was nothing at all what it was like when it was started. In fact the beginning of slavery did not even start with the enslavement of African Americans. Not only did the people who were enslaved change, but the treatment of slaves and the culture that each generation lived in, changed as well.

Slavery has been around for a very long time. However, it is not always how it seems or put out to be. Like the Barbarians, a Greek slave, for example. Their inability to speak Greek indicated their slave status because it kept them from talking back to their masters. This has lead the Greeks to consider otherness a characteristic of slaves. And in the 18th century, slave trade is just another trade for merchants and people involved, like the fact Europeans actually obtained African slaves by trading for them in exchange for goods; usually like guns or metal tools; and for those Africans, slaves were a form of property and a very valuable one.

Slavery has been in existence around the world nearly as long as humans have. But what developed in the New World was very different from what the rest of the

The New England colonist living in the new world in the early 1600’s went from a society that had a few slaves, to a society that accepted slavery as a way of life by the early 1700’s. Not one single event or year can be definitely set as to when slavery became a permanent staple of the colonies. The institution of slavery was introduced over time. It took a little over a century of perpetuating laws, codes, and failed rebellions before African slavery became a corner stone of colonial life.

Economic, social, and cultural factors all played roles in the expansion of slavery in America. Economically, Africans became free laborers by substituting the position of indentured servants and Native Americans. Socially, blacks were considered outcasts and was treated as property instead of human beings. Culturally, slaves were discriminated against because of their skin and were treated dishonorably wrong. This concludes that "prejudice itself did not create American slavery." (Foner 132,

The institution of slavery, which was a system in which African Americans were forced into labor and had their freedom restricted, was seen as a positive necessity to Southerners. Slavery was seen as though it was essential, it was seen as an entity they could not live without. The Peculiar Institution began in 1619 in Jamestown, Virginia when the colonist first began arriving in Colonial America. Slavery was first introduced when the colonists, who happened to be privileged in the sense that they never did their own work, needed to get their work done. Since no one wanted to do the work such as building houses, farming

From 1450 to 1750, slavery continued to be an important system of labor. The institution of slavery expanded dramatically across the Atlantic Ocean as enslaved Africans were brought over to the New World.Slavery existed in many parts of the world, such as Africa,the Middle East, and other areas of the world throughout this period. In many places of the world, people would trade enslaved people through out the world. Because Europeans were looking for a large labor supply,they started a transatlantic slave trade. The enslaved men and women grew sugarcane and cash crops on plantations.Because of slavery, after a while, slavery became "the norm". Ever since then, slavery had a whole new meaning to it. When the Spanish and the Portuguese came to

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.

For the colonists slavery was an easy concept. African slaves had practiced slavery before and were more skilled. When they were introduced to the new world they had no idea where they were. They started to work again for the colonist because they had so few choices for themselves and didn’t know the best for them. They need a lot of labor with the Native population decreasing they needed some.The slaves were experienced in intensive agriculture and raising livestock and knew how to raise crops. They started bringing more and more slaves across the Atlantic ocean and to the new world. They started to take them out of England and make up all the American colonies.

Slavery existed heavily in the South by the 1700’s. What started out with indentured servants, quickly but slowly, became slavery in a more brutal and disheartening way. European colonists turned to slavery because for every one indentured servant there were 17 slaves. (Chapter 2, page 46) This made it easier for European colonists to be able to replace slaves rather than waiting for indentured servants. Also, during Bacon’s Rebellion, Europeans quickly learned that servants were dangerous, because they had a right to fight back. Servants expected to be free within seven years in exchange for working the Europeans land. This also created the image that slaves would be easier to control simply because they had nothing to look forward to, once a slave always a slave. Once the Virginia slave law came out, it initially separated blacks and whites by skin color thus beginning the road to the new definition of “race.” In the south, slavery was in higher demand due to the increase of land to grow crops, indigo and tobacco. The more land you had, the more slaves you needed to pick and grow these crops which increased your money value.

Have you ever wondered why Africans were the main ones targeted by slave owners? Well, Slavery originated in 1619 began as a way for farmers and plantation owners to get cheap labor off of people. Because the land was vast and there was a lot of work to do when it came to farming. The European slave owners originally targeted Native Americans. To work and

Contrary to what we learned in school, the transatlantic slave trade actually began in the 1450s when the first Africans arrived in Europe. You see, slavery existed in some capacity since the beginning of human interaction. As early as 2,000 years ago, the Romans enslaved people of color as servants. Around 600 AD the Arab Muslims started enslaving Africans. However, slavery was not based on race until Europeans began slave trading with Africans. It is also worth mentioning that Africa had a slavery system that existed within the country long before the Europeans arrived. The African slavery system was based on tribal ethnicities and economic status as thousands of Africans were captured during various wars between African nations and sold into slavery. In 1440, Spanish and Portuguese explorers sailed

Slavery became an established activity in America by 1600’s. The slaves were mostly to provide free and cheap labor. Apart from America, slavery was practiced in other parts of the world throughout history, and in fact it can be traced back to the time of the ancient civilization. With industrial revolution especially with the rise of sugar plantations, the slaves were used to grow sugar in the periods from 1100. This intensified between 1400 and 1500 when Portugal and Spain ventured into sugar growing in the eastern Atlantic regions. The growth of the plantations required labor, hence African slaves were bought from Africa, to provide labor.

Slavery developed in the Americas because of exploration and need or labor. Europeans captured Africans and transported them across the deadly Middle Passage, to the Americas, where they would be forced to poor under harsh conditions. Slavery had many lasting effects. Africa was depopulated, and Africans in America lost their cultures and identity while Europeans made money from the resources being exported in the Americas at the expense of Africans’ lives and culture.