African Slavery Essay

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African Slavery

The periods in history in which the African peoples were subjected to slavery represents a complex phenomenon with a plethora of factors that can be used to try to explain this practice. Not only do you have to consider the factors responsible for the imperial expansion motivations for the slave owners, but there were also many responses to slavery by slaves and non-slaves alike that were made from different perspectives. Supporters of colonialism and colonial rule in Europe would often claim that the Africans were better off under then the protection of the colonist that they would have been otherwise. They would make arguments that the imperial nations made beneficial contributions such as bringing the end to African conflicts that were occurring between different tribes.

Although there may be cases where the Colonist did help end conflicts between tribes most of these accounts were pure propaganda. Furthermore, there were many attempts to form a resistance to the slavery capturers at various points in the practices development. Before World War I began in 1914, most of Africa, with the exception of Liberia and Ethiopia, was under colonial rule. Furthermore, after the African nations lost their independence, the political and social infrastructure to control the colonies became more advanced. As the imperial power tightened over these nations the slaves became increasingly discontent with the foreign influence and began mounting counter efforts towards liberation. Although the resistance was initially fragmented, it later became more organized and effective. This analysis will look at the development of slavery in Africa from the perspective of the response that it was meeting with through the course of its developments and the implications it had for the North American British colonies.

Slavery in the American Colonies

Beginning in roughly the fifteenth century, slave traders were able to build the infrastructure to operate a large-scale African slavery trade. This trade was quickly introduced into the English colonies of North America around the middle of the seventeenth century. Although the slave trade had many forms in different geographic regions, slaves provided a critical proportion of the total labor supply in most of the colonial area. Yet it slavery took many different forms depending on its importance to the type of labor being performed. Slavery was mainly used in those areas where there were large plantations of high-value cash crops, such as tobacco, indigo, sugar, rice and coffee; predominately in the southern states. The Southern colonies for example, had a significant portion of their entire economies directly affected by the labor that slavery provided. However, in New England and the Northern colonies, slavery was not as essential since agriculture was not one of the key economic drivers.

The settlers' in the south were heavily dependent on cheap labor to work on their plantations. This was the primary reason that British colonies began to import enslaved Africans in the first place. In the much of the south successful tobacco operations required an abundant land area since the crop quickly drained soil of nutrients. The plantations would gradually spread out along the region's rivers as the industry developed. As a result many of the plantations quickly found themselves having more land than they could successfully use productively.

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During the beginning the farms would use an indentured servant relationship to help them fill their labor requirements. The original plantation workers were composed of young English men who would agree to work in the plantation for a period of several years in exchange for their transportation costs to the British colonies.

There were two basic types of slaves that were used in America, indentured servants and African slaves. While the indentured servants were men from Europe who made labor contracts in exchange for passage in America, eventually this labor pool could not keep up with the labor demand. After the demand grew to sufficient size, African slaves were deemed as an effective source of labor. After slaves in Africa were captured, they then were sold by their captures to plantation owners to work in the American colonies. By contrast, indentured servants worked in their professions with substantially better working conditions and were also contractually obligated to their freedom once they finished the period of servitude. The African slaves were treated harshly often with whips and beatings that were administered regularly. Furthermore, the African slaves had no promise of any freedoms in the future in a majority of the arrangements.

In the 1660s, the supply of indentured servants began to slow as conditions became more prosperous in their domestic lands. It was during this time that mainly tobacco plantations were desperate for a new supply of labor and the answer to this problem was provided by African slaves. The first wave of slaves that came to the colonies represented enslaved Africans that were already working on the Caribbean sugar islands (the "Atlantic creoles"). However, this supply was eventually exhausted and then plantation owners looked to begin purchasing slaves directly from Africa without the need for the middle man. Despite enslaving the African was expensive at first and required significant resources, it provided many benefits over the traditional indentured servitude. Slaves were not entitled to any freedoms after a period of servitude and they would work their whole lives on the farm rather than a few years. Furthermore, the slaves' offspring would also be required to be slaves in the same roles that their parents served.

The southern states were the primary locations for the most dense slave populations because that is where most of the manual labor existed. As a result, some states were populated by slaves that represent about half of their total population. Many of these slaves had the ideal skill sets to work in this type of environment. They could handle the heat and the extreme workloads. Their skills were vital for the cultivation of the South's cash crops such as rice and indigo, which were developed with the contributions of the African slaves. The Africans also made several contributions to the culture and a unique dialect was formed by combining English words with the African language.

By contrast to the Southern areas, the northern colonies were not as dependent on slavery as their chief source….....

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