Colonial American History

1 . The demand for labor in the New World triggered what we consider the modern slave trade ' that eventually brought 11-15 million Africans to the Americas . It is thought that 2 million were sold to the British colonies and 80 went to the West Indies . Most of the African slaves were captured and sold by African rulers . The Dutch , British , American colonists , and other countries engaged in the slave trade . European countries established forts on the west coast of Africa , where they held the slaves they purchased from local rulers . Sometimes the slaves

were bought with cash . More often they were traded for textiles , tools guns , beads , or liquor . A slave trader frequently had to make several stops along the African coast to secure a full cargo of slaves and the supplies needed for the voyage to America . These stops were the middle passage . Economics was important in the middle passage . In the last 17th Century , when slaves could be bought cheaply in Africa , shipboard conditions were so horrid that almost a quarter died in transit to America

The American colonists were already used to having white , European indentured servants . Indentured servitude had drawbacks that African slavery did not . Indentured servants had terms of service that ended Slavery was forever . When legally freed , indentured servants were entitled to a suit of clothes , a barrel of corn , an ax , a hoe , and a parcel of land , which made them potential competitors of their former owners . Africans came to the colonies involuntarily for use of their labor and were entitled to nothing . Slavery already existed in Latin America , so there was established precedent for the colonists . Planters could use the color difference and lack of Christianity to place Africans lower than indentured servants . The cost of maintaining a slave was less than that of keeping an indentured servant . Three to four slaves could double their owners ' income . Both men and women could do field work , unlike a female indentured servant

The first Africans arrived at Jamestown in 1619 . By 1649 , Virginia 's population included 300 slaves . Africans were not allowed to bear arms Female Africans could be put to work in the field . By the mid-17th Century slaves were commonly considered to be serving a life term . The colonists overcame the commonly held belief that only heathens might be enslaved and that Christianity freed one from bondage by ignoring the problem and enacting laws that becoming baptized did not affect slave status . The colonists needed the cheap workers

The African slaves protested their working conditions by exhibiting discontent . They did not work hard at their assigned tasks . They malingered , ran away , injured themselves , assaulted their overseers broke tools , stole , burned barns , and had slave revolts . The most serious slave revolt was in South Carolina , where field labor was harder and there was the largest number of slaves . Two whites were killed and three slaves were executed after a 1720 uprising . Several revolts took place in 1739 during the war between England and...