History of American Colony

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Table of Contents

Introduction
How America was conceived
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

The formation of the American colony is laden with instances of coercion, manipulation, oppression and outright violence. The elite were at the forefront of these vices owing to the need to protect their interests. Land owners had to resort to retrogressive tactics in order to secure labor and property in the newly established British colony.

They also employed divide and conquer tactics amongst the masses in order to quell potential rebellions. In the new American colony, the elite did not epitomize liberty; they used their positions of power to control the natives, indentures and African Americans such that they could secure their own places.

How America was conceived

The first category of individuals that had to be pacified or controlled were the indentured servants. In order to secure adequate labor, the elite imposed heavy fines upon indentured servants who attempted to flee their masters. In Virginia, a person caught doing this would have to provide additional labor equal to the period of time that he or she was away. “Over the next century, a good deal of time of Virginia’s House of Burgesses would be taken up with how to keep servants in check.” (Jordan and Walsh 95).

As a result, disgruntled white servants had no choice but to serve the complete term of their contract thus securing the aristocracy’s interests. The latter group of people also disciplined their white servants by whipping them at home or inside whipping posts. Their objective was to instill fear as well minimize instances of mild rebellion.

Not only did land owners employ physical means to keep white servants in order, they also controlled their social relations. They forbade indentured servants from marrying bridal maidens from England. Any indentured worker, who wanted to marry, had to obtain permission from his master. Females could not get pregnant without serving some extra time as servants (Jordan and Walsh 95).

One should note that the indentured-servant system was not prevalent from the beginning. Rich capitalist created it because they wanted to establish the most profitable means of tobacco cultivation. In the early 1620s, Virginia hired a consultant who stated that sharecropping was not effective in yielding high profits.

Sharecropping relied on the use of tenants for production. This specialist suggested the use of servants rather than tenants in agriculture. As a consequence, new entrants from England were bitterly disappointed when they realized that their transporters had changed the terms of their contract (Jordan and Walsh 104). They would no longer be tenants in the colonies but mere servants whose term of service would expire upon their master’s pronouncement.

Research shows that the aristocracy’s preoccupation with control was not unfounded. Many indentured servants were frustrated with their conditions and if untamed, then they would upset the delicate class balance in the American colonies. A case in point was Thomas Hellier, whose masters had frustrated him for long. He chose to take matters into his own hands by killing his master, his master’s wife and another servant (Jordan and Walsh 106).

When pleading his case, the defendant explained that he had a lot of resentment against slave traders. He argued that such merchants lured desperate people from England into the colony without any intention of keeping their end of the bargain. It was sentiments like these that caused a lot of apprehension among the elite who opted to use brutal tactics to keep their laborers in check.

Taylor (154) explains that a rebellion eventually took place in 1676 when a group of frustrated freed men took up arms; this was known as Bacon’s rebellion. After completing the terms of their contract, land owners released their workers into a society with minimal economic opportunities.

Most of these white laborers owned no property and lived in deplorable conditions. The extravagance of the elite disturbed them to a point of causing a rebellion. However, the state quelled the rebellion and tamed possible uprisings among newly freed while servants.

African slaves were also another mechanism for securing the interests of rich landowners in the American colonies. Unlike white servants, who cost more to own and who had no lifetime guarantee, black slaves remained their slave master’s property all their lives. It was more economical to invest in slaves than white servants (Clark et. al. 111). Taylor (154) explains that “planters shifted from servants to slaves for economic security and security against another rebellion by angry freedmen.”

Despite their promise, African slaves still had the potential to rebel too. In the early 1600s, African slaves were few in number and possessed same rights as their white counterparts.

They could work for their freedom, own land and even buy slaves. However, in the latter half of the 17^th century, black slaves had multiplied in number. White land owners worried that they could come together, take up arms and attack their white masters. Therefore, colonists saw the opportunity to utilize former indentured servants to preserve their position.

They would give poor whites a range of privileges that blacks could not enjoy. The aristocracy’s sole intention was to divide society on the basis of race in order to prevent an alliance that could upset social order. If poor whites got together with disgruntled black slaves, then the elite would have no chance of staying in power. They thus created several laws designed to subjugate black slaves and fool poor whites into supporting them.

Some of the laws forbade Africans from gathering in large numbers. They elongated their work days, increased their work load, gave them less food than before, and neglected their medical needs (Taylor 155). On the flipside, they allowed whites to bully blacks as much as they wanted with no fear of punishment from authorities; the laws forbade blacks from striking whites. This created a feeling of solidarity among all members of the white race.

Divide and conquer tactics did not just stop at the highly oppressive colonial labor laws; it was cemented by a series of social controls too. Colonists forbade blacks from marrying whites while perpetrators of the crime would immediately become indentured servants. Children born from these unions were condemned to slavery.

Even if a child was born of a black mother and white father, their identity would still remain black (Shifflett 107). They needed to pass this law in order to protect many white masters who frequently raped their black slaves and fathered mulatto children. Plantation owners secured a whole generation of slaves for themselves. They could violate black women’s rights (by raping them) but did not have to take responsibility for their actions. Instead, they were rewarded by having yet another laborer in their plantation.

As is the case with several capitalists, the land owners had to justify their actions using arguments that the masses would believe. Many of them used technical justifications such as an increase in the number of blacks and their intellectual backwardness.

Others even employed just-war principles; they explained that when capturing a person in war, “a subjugator could offer them enslavement as an alternative to death” (Gallay 46). However these capitalists were simply making their brutal actions acceptable among the masses. Their just-war claims were false because African slaves were forcefully captured; they were not products of war.

Native Americans were also affected by the need to perpetuate capitalist interest in the new colonies. Most Indians were not useful sources of labor in the colonies for a number of economic reasons. The elite often traded with them by purchasing animal skin and other useful items.

Additionally, this was an opportunity for self preservation as enslaving Indians would lead to an increase in war. Indians were indigenous to the Americas, so it made more sense to evacuate them from certain portions of land rather than rely on them for labor (Gallay 47). The colonists exercised a lot of discretion in determining where to place the indigenous population in the land-labor hierarchy.

The use of race was a divide-and -conquer tactic for rich land owners. They made poor whites feel superior by granting them voters rights and a few superficial benefits.

This had the effect of obscuring common class distinctions between themselves and black slaves. The wealthy cemented their place by creating a lesser creature than the indentured servants. Native Americans could not liaise with poor whites or black slaves because they perceived their problems to be unique to their community. In essence, rich whites had quelled opportunities for rebellion.

Conclusion

The most interesting aspect to me was the impunity with which the elite exercised their privileges and abuses. I also found the contradictory nature of the libertarian values espoused by the colonists and the gross violation of human rights that took place in the new colony out of the ordinary. Lastly, it was enlightening to learn that oppressive systems did not start out that way, but grew as a need for self preservation.

Works Cited

Clark, Christopher, Nancy Hewitt, Roy Rosenzweig, Nelson Lichtenstein, Joshua Brown, David Jaffee. Who Built America? Working People and the Nation’s History. Bedford: St. Martin’s Press, 2008. Print.

Gallay, Alan. The Indian Slave trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670-1717. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. Print.

Jordan, Dan and Michael Walsh. White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain’s White Slaves in America. New York: New York University Press, 2008. Print.

Shifflett, Crandal. Selected Virginia Statutes Related to Slavery. Virtual Jamestown 2007. Web.

Taylor, Alan. American Colonies: The Settling of North America. New York: Penguin, 2001. Print.

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History of American Colony

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