Category: Slavery in the World

Introduction

Nowadays, when human rights are said to be accepted all over the world, it might seem that slavery is an obsolete form of labor that seized to exist. Indeed, it is hard to imagine that some people are forced into work without proper compensation. Nevertheless, slavery is not a part of human history, it continues thriving in various forms and contexts in modern business, including traditional slavery, bonded labor, human trafficking and forced labor (Quirk, 2006). According to several researches, there are up to 30 million of slaves who are still a part of the global workforce (Bales, 2004; Kara, 2009). What is more, there are incidences of modern slavery on every continent. It is mostly found in subcontinental Asia, West Africa, East Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America but it also takes place in developed countries. That is why addressing this issue is of paramount importance, even the UN has declared that slavery and slavery like practices continue to be among the greatest human rights challenges facing the international community.

The main aim of this paper is to familiarize the reader with the “Modern Slavery as a Management Practice” article by Andrew Crane, which provides the framework for the analysis of the abovementioned issues. Furthermore, this theoretical work will also be supported with the real-life examples of globally known companies that either exploit or combat them. We strongly believe that such information will allow to draw public’s attention to the existence of slavery and will come into play in bringing an end to it.

Andrew Crane’s vision

The article focuses on enterprises directly practicing slavery as part of their routine business. It aims to explain how these organizations manage to 1) exploit particular competitive and institutional conditions that can give rise to slavery, 2) insulate themselves from institutional pressures against slavery, and 3) sustain or shape those conditions that enable slavery to flourish or prevent it from flourishing. In other words, it can be referred to as a “theory of modern slavery”.

First things first, just like with any other theoretical concept it is important to agree upon certain definitions. In case of slavery this is especially important because of its long history and numerous variations that appeared in different civilizations and turned the notion into a constantly-developing and ambiguous concept. The current definition of modern slavery is the following: «Slavery is the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised» (Allain, 2009). There are four conditions that must be present for an arrangement to be considered an example of modern slavery. So, the so-called slaves are threatened to work; owned or controlled by their employer; dehumanized and treated as a commodity and physically limited or restricted in freedom of movement.

Obviously, both the environment in which a company operates and certain characteristics of the company facilitate the appearance of modern slavery. In Crane’s framework there are conditions enabling slavery, including industry, socioeconomic, geographic, cultural and regulatory contexts, and capabilities of the company that are classified as either exploiting and insulating, or sustaining and shaping. Let us look at them in detail.

Conditions enabling slavery

There are some external factors that have influence on slavery’s likelihood and they can be separated into five groups. We will start with the description of the industry context. According to recent research, agriculture, mining and extraction, construction, and some forms of manufacturing are the fields that suffer from modern slavery. Definitely ‘modern slaves’ are needed in such areas, which are labour-intensive and also lack stable and sufficient supply of workers (Domar, 1970). Slavery practices give an opportunity to minimise main costs, and that is why modern slavery is so popular among primary industries.

Not only business feasibility pushes companies to adopt slavery practices, the next vital factor why modern slavery can occur is a legitimacy of an industry. Slavery is more likely to persist in low-legitimacy industries (such as sex work or domestic work), because enterprises in these industries usually break the law, since the work itself might be prohibited by the legislation.

The second group of conditions consists of socioeconomic context that plays a fundamental role in influencing the supply of slavery. Undoubtedly, poverty forces people into undesirable work. It is acknowledged by the UN that modern slavery in all of its forms is rooted in the fact that millions live in extreme poverty (Rassam, 2004: 844). Moreover, GDP per capita will have a correlation with a percentage of “enslaved” people.

Unemployment is another factor that is almost as important as poverty. Inadequate qualifications among workers and limited job opportunities in the region can have a synergetic effect with poverty. That’s why shady offers from a farm or a mine are the only chance for poor families to get by. In order to fight slavery, it is important to have a decent education and be aware of dangers of bad employment. If these conditions are met, people will be less vulnerable and will be able to avoid making mistakes.

According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO): “Much forced labor today is in the informal economy, in remote or hidden locations in developing and industrialized countries alike’, this statement has led us to the geographic context. The primary industries, which are plagued by modern slavery, are usually connected to the geographic location due to the fertility of earth or presence of fossils. Furthermore, these locations are often in remote places so that there is a shortage of labour. Also, physical, political, or psychological differences from home affect enslaved employees in such a way that they are controlled, depended and prevented from an escape. As a result, they might become ‘socially a non-person in a marginal state of social death’ (Patterson, 1982:48).

As for cultural context, slavery is most likely to appear where informal institutions do not create obstacles for it. There are various reasons why modern slavery could appear including traditions, inequalities, and religious beliefs. Traditions consist of community norms. Although legal and social changes have brought an end to the acceptance of slavery, there are some regions where these traditions have a profound influence. Slavery can exploit inequalities, such as exploitation or discrimination against women, racial minorities, or children. Religious norms can also justify some forms of slavery.

Last but not least is regulatory context. Strength of the government and power distribution are key factors resulting in incidences of modern slavery. If the government is not effective and, moreover, is corrupted, and country is politically unstable, it is more likely that modern slavery will occur. Furthermore, attention to the issue of modern slavery given by the government plays a vital role in tackling this problem.

Exploiting and insulating capabilities

Having covered the conditions that have a direct impact on modern slavery, it is important to understand that if organizations themselves want to exploit these slavery-supportive conditions, they cannot simply stay passive. Instead, they also need to avoid legal and moralistic pressures and in order to do so, they have to possess certain competences. Andrew Crane calls them ‘slavery management capabilities’. Slavery management capabilities are a set of unique abilities that explains how enterprises successfully deploy slavery as a management practice despite widespread illegality and public opprobrium. According to the author, they can be divided into 2 separate groups. The first one contains exploiting and insulating capabilities, whereas the second refers to the sustaining and shaping ones. Although their names already seem to be self-explanatory, a deeper insight into these notions will be provided.

The exploiting and insulating capabilities represent arcane knowledge of how to control the slavery within one of the existing environments, which were already discussed. One of the integral parts of this group is the access and deployment of violence, which today is even more important than ever. The reason for that is because nowadays legal systems no longer support slavery and it is the only tool of forcing the labour. Nevertheless, it should be mentioned that modern slave providers rarely resort to the deployment of violence and it is the access to it that plays the most important role.

The next important capability for slavery using companies is debt management, which in conjunction with accounting opacity allows organisations to quickly inflate the workers’ debts and trap them into forced labour. Another important thing is the debt transferral, which ensures the high liquidity of such debts and allows to use it in order to buy or sell slaves through the slavery supply chain.

To sum up the set of exploiting and insulating capabilities, we have to touch upon the last but definitely not the least important aspect of labour supply chain management. Like the supply chain of any other commodity, this one also consists of several distinct stages, starting from recruitment and trafficking and ending with the deployment. One of its noteworthy characteristics, though, is its illegality, which in its turn involves the cooperation and trust within the supply network. For this reason, for instance, they often can be characterised by ethnic bonds that work as a kind of defense mechanism insulating the supply chain from external pressures.

Sustaining and sharping capabilities

Besides the exploiting capabilities that allow to use existing conditions, slavery organisations also have to develop capabilities that sustain favorable environments and change the unfavorable ones. Andrew Crane identified these as moral legitimization and domain maintenance, which we would like to characterize.

So, according to the author, moral legitimization is the situation where “deploying slavery is at least minimally accepted within the immediate institutional field around the organization, including among non-slave employees, enslaved workers, clients of the organization and local communities.” This situation can be achieved, when rationalization that neutralizes the negative feelings or regrets about their behavior is present. Such practices can be referred as the “denial of victim”- proof that enslaved people deserved it, “social weighting”- alleging that others are guiltier, or “appeal to higher loyalties”-saying that it is what the employer wants. Because of these psychological schemes, the environment could justify and accept slavery, creating the new norms of the field and outline the frames of exploitation.

It goes without saying that slavery organizations are aware of the threat of governance and they need to deal with it. Thus, organizations should be capable not only of managing internal audiences, but also of domain maintenance. Enterprises work out strategies that aim to undermine the law and governance by using informal lobbying, bribery, threats and many others forms of influence. The main goal of these actions is to foster support in the political, social and legal environments. According to Richards (2004), the interdependence between slave operators and law enforcement is fostered, creating a “symbiotic relationship” between corruption and slavery. Unfortunately, this is the key factor of success of slavery companies.

When the calendars show the 9th of April 1965, and seven months later on when the 13th Amendment ratified by congress, Henry Blake and his family was finally free. He was a son of farmer family and as his family did, he farmed for most of his life. The conditions didn’t change much after their freedom, slavery replaced by a new labor system called sharecropping; ‘After freedom, we worked on shares a while. Then we rented. When we worked on shares, we couldn’t make nothing—just overalls and something to eat. Half went to the other man and you would destroy your half if you weren’t careful. A man that didn’t know how to count would always lose. He might lose anyhow. They didn’t give no itemized statement. No, you just had to take their word. They never give you no details. They just say you owe so much. No matter how good account you kept, you had to go by their account and now, Brother, I’m tellin’ you the truth about this. It’s been that way for a long time. You had to take the white man’s work on notes and everything. Anything you wanted, you could git if you were a good hand. You could git anything you wanted as long as you worked. If you didn’t make no money, that’s all right; they would advance you more. But you better not leave him—you better not try to leave and get caught. They’d keep you in debt. They were sharp. Christmas come, you could take up twenty dollars in somethin’ to eat and much as you wanted in whiskey. You could buy a gallon of whiskey. Anything that kept you a slave because he was always right and you were always wrong if there was difference. If there was an argument, he would get mad and there would be a shooting take place.” From the memoires of Henry Blake we see that although slavery ended, slavery-alike conditions survived after the emancipation. Is sharecropping, labor system which Henry Blake and many freedmen worked with the white planters, a continuum of the slavery? Is sharecropping slavery by another name? To answer this question, we need to check the consequences of the sharecropping which they will be presented in this paper. In summary, sharecropping brought massive economic dependence of black men to the white planters due to its nature and economic conditions of the black men. With the support of black codes which were emerged from the local governments, independence and free labor of freedmen restricted greatly. Twenty years after the emancipation, labor of black men who imprisoned by the ridiculous black codes, sold to the factories by the counties which arrested them. Freedmen had to work under dictated conditions of the factories as slaves, for a time which they had sentenced to be imprisoned. Until a hundred years from the emancipation, black people racially segregated by the law in all aspects of life from schools to public transportations. Although sharecropping is basically a market response labor system, it created a peonage environment for the freedmen which legally lasted hundred years, but it`s social and economic consequences are still a huge negative factor in black people`s lives.

After the Civil War, South was both physically and economically collapsed. Plantations and the factories were destroyed by the Union troops. Levees and canals were deteriorated because of the war. Monetary system was collapsed, Confederation bonds and currency worth nothing. The consequences of the defeat in the Civil War seemed even much bigger when the freedmen fled away from the plantations to enjoy their mobility, move to the settlement where black communities live or went away to find their families and relatives that slavery separated. According to Wesley Allen Riddle wealth in South decreased by 59% due to freedmen`s emancipation and influx. To emphasize the loss even more, by estimation the total labor force in the United States in 1860 was 11 million and almost 3 million of these labor force consisted of the slaves. Approximately 90% of the slaves engaged in agricultural labor which is still a huge amount when you considering the total agricultural labor force was 6.2 million in the United States. Many freedmen like Henry Blake, no matter how loyal they were, left their masters plantations to enjoy their mobility and freedom. For these emancipated slaves who worked in gang labors on the lands for their whole time, freedom meant: owning lands, mobility and having control over their own labor. Now, they could have own lands that once they forced to work by their white owners. They could harvest their crop (mostly cotton) that they were familiar with it more than any men. They had the mobility to go anywhere, they didn`t have to be stuck in the plantations anymore. They taught they had the right to own lands due to their support in the Civil War and countless unpaid labor that white men forced them to do during their slavery. However the reality was much bitterer than the fantasy. Eventually, they had to generate some income to provide themselves and their family. Freedmen`s dream of owning lands were crushed by the economic realities and the attitude of their former owners. Naturally, recently emancipated black men mostly didn`t possess enough money. Although after the Civil War, prices of the lands were quite low and planters usually couldn`t find any buyer for their fields even though they were very eager to sell, they refused to sell their lands to their former slaves. The ones who sold their lands to the black people or even considered to sell, faced with great pressure from their white communities. Freedmen`s Bureau possessed one-million acres of confiscated land after the Civil War. However, many of the lands distributed to the white Southerners back, in the name of the Redemption policies of the Federal Government. Ineligible to own lands and desperate to generate an income, freedmen`s return to the plantations brought bigger problem: What labor system should replace slavery?

Although there was clear cash shortage in the south due to collapse of banking and monetary system, many of the planters wanted to have wage labor. It was a system where planters still could dictate their terms, supervise their employees, has control on black men`s labor and would be able to decide what to pay on what they deserved. Planters were in large debts to the merchants, so they would only able to pay the freedmen’s wages after the harvest which would only mean guaranteed labor without any expense until the end of the contract. Wage labor also required gang labor and planters thought gang labor was best option to discipline their laborers. Although it would seem sweat deal for the planters, these conditions were conflicting with the freedmen’s idea of the freedom on every basis. Federal Government also supported the wage labor and expected it to rise the Southern economy. With the support from the Federal Government, local governments in South ratified laws called Black Codes to push the black men back into fields under the wage labor. Codes required freedmen to sign contracts immediately by defining mobility as vagrancy and claimed that it was a crime. In 1865 Freedmen`s Bureau established to help black people to stand up on their feet and prevent the exploitations that can be occurred because of the white planters and local governments, Bureau dismantled some of the contracts that contained obvious violations of free labor. However, Bureau also perceived compulsory contracts as in guidance to push freedmen into free labor. To clear the path between the wage labor and black labor, alternative ways of supply necessities such as hunting, fishing and gathering were increasingly restricted Despite of the all the efforts that made by the governments, wage labor usually abandoned after the first year of the end of Civil War.

Hammond discussed that the only reason of wage labor`s fail was black men`s idleness and involuntary behaviors on working. On the other hand, Riddle claims; wage labor`s similarity to the slavery, supervision costs to the planters and the planters` often irresponsibility on paying the wages (partly related to cash shortages in South) also caused abandonment of the wage labor. Wage labor required work in gangs, under the terms of planters and the under the watch of overseer. Planters had the absolute control over the freedmen`s labor and what to crop in the field. In some of the contracts, laborers couldn`t leave the plantations without of the permission of the landowners until the harvest season. Landlords forced these contracts unilaterally. According to Edward Royce black men rejected the wage labor because of hoping to enlarge their independence and power, by owning land or engage in similar labor activities. They compelled planters to adopt the sharecropping Economist Gerald David Jaynes claims that black laborers often felt cheated, lost incentive to labor as hard as they can under the wage labor, however, planters couldn`t offer higher wages due to cash shortage. As a result, despite of the huge amounts of labor shortage, wages didn`t rise. Thus, wage labor abandoned by the South

When the Civil War ended and all the slaves in the United States emancipated. However, freedmen continued to be exposed to white landowners` strict control over their lives, labor and families. Centralized labor and life continued around the landowners` lands. Political mobilizations of the Northerners against the Andrew Jackson and freedmen`s gain of citizenship rights in 1866-1867 gave freedmen the leverages on their contracts. Now with the labor they had, they could negotiate their demands with the landowners to obtain control over their labor and avoid exploitation of the white men. However, these leverages weren`t enough for the freedmen`s biggest desire; owning a land. Desire of economic independence led them to prefer sharecropping to wage labor. Freedmen believed owning land would complete their independence and without land there would be no economic autonomy and freedmen would be vulnerable to labor exploitation by former owners. Yet, Riddle presented that; “lands that provided to freedmen in South Carolina and Georgia didn`t raise the freedmen from the poverty.”(p.71) At the point where they were betrayed by the governments and lost all the hope for owning a land, sharecropping was the closest thing to their definition of the freedom. Rising cotton prices since the Civil War and labor shortage in the South pressured the planters to give concessions on the labor contracts with freedmen and compete with each other to attract black labor. Riddle claims that planters divided their lands to small parts to assign each parts to the family units on shares. The centralized life around the plantation broke by the sharecropping system. Sharecropping became the popular system to attract black labor in the South.

One Southern newspaper claimed in 1867 that this “new system” of labor originated in Mississippi, and it seems to have developed faster on the smaller farms of the Southern Piedmont than on plantations where employers clung to the hope of retaining gang labor. Of course sharecropping wasn`t something invented after the Civil War. We can see it roots going back until the Ancient China (722-481 BC). Although historians are not certain about the conditions and agreements of the sharecropping in Ancient China, sharecropping shown itself after in Ancient Greece, Roman Empire and Ottoman Empire with different names and versions. In United States, sharecropping was deeply related with the emancipation of slaves and their post-bellum conditions. When it emerged, planters were deeply concerned and desperate to retain labor. Black people`s increased skills on cropping and harvesting the cotton, gave planters dependence to the freedmen on farming cotton. When the wage labor failed (not just because of the freedmen`s preferences but also costs and cash shortages of the planters), increasing labor shortage, pushed the planters to give concessions. But why did South specifically needed black labor? As one planter commented, it was impossible to hire poor whites to “step into the shoes of the negro” on the plantations: “They most have small plots of land and prefer tending them, poor as may be the return, to lowering themselves, as they think it, by hiring to another.” Foner also claims that: Independence was crucial for the white men, as we have seen, was the credo of upcountry yeomen, and independence meant, among other things, freedom from debt. Thus, for these large numbers of labor demand required especially black labor.

“When I lived back there in South Carolina, my people they sharecropped, sometime we would come out behind. We raised [?], cotton, [peas?], potatoes, and vegetables. The landlord would take half of it like corn and cotton. If we did not make enough to pay way he would take it all, but the vegetables. Sometime if you [?] out you could have [a?] of cotton left for your part. During the year he would furnish you so much a month that would run to the size of your family. They just figu’ out how much it takes to do you month.” Sharecropping is a market response labor system, where peasants rent portion of the landowners` fields and cropped the fields for agreed amount of time without any wage of pay. Landowners mostly obliged to supply the plantation expenses and tools for his tenant. In many of the cases, landowners also would supply food and other necessities to his tenant on debts. When the harvest season came, landowner take the agreed amount of harvested crop to himself, leaving his tenant with the rest of the shares. Croppers would sell off these shares either by their landowners or merchants. According to Wesley Allen Riddle the shares that left to the tenants was about quarter of the crop in 1868 but because of the bargaining power of the freedmen by 1870 this shares increased to one-half of the crop.

Rise of sharecropping was highly rapid in the South. Besides of the market`s effects, political powers also boosted the sharecropping among the freedmen. The Union Leagues, which were anti-slavery union grops, encouraged blacks’ quest for economic autonomy. “Their leaders,” complained a South Carolina planter, “counsel them not to work for wages at all, but to insist upon setting up for themselves.” The main reason of this rapid popularity was freedmen`s preferences and their bargaining power on their contracts against the landowners. Sharecropping in theory contained no supervision of overseers, freedmen could control their labor independently and most importantly freedmen was responsible from their share of the field which gave freedmen the closest thing to the being a landowner. Freedmen used the sharecropping as escaping from the gang labor which mostly reminded them their peonage days. In sharecropping, freedmen would be able to choose their coworkers, as in most cases from their families and relatives. They persisted on the work independently, without any supervision as family units rather than working as gangs. They were working much less and earning much more compared to slavery era. They had job security until the end of the contracts and mobility on whether they renew the contract or not. In addition, sharecropping would give freedmen the less collective and more isolated life which they didn`t have before their emancipation. Although Foner quoted from an 1870 report of the Department of Agriculture, which claimed that sharecropping didn`t develop as “a voluntary association from similarity of interests, but an unwilling concession to the freedman’s desire to become a proprietor” and also he claimed that “many planters continued to resist the system because, under the conditions of Reconstruction, it failed to allow for adequate supervision of the labor force even when, as was sometimes the case, share contracts contained detailed instructions as to what corps were to be raised and how.” Sharecropping presented many advantages to the landowners as well. As Riddle claimed earlier, one of the reasons of the failure of wage labor was supervision costs of the landowners. These supervision costs didn`t exist in the sharecropping, because by renting a share of the land to the croppers there wasn`t need for the supervision. Freedmen would take care of the land as it belongs to them since they had shares on the crop. Also, landowners had still power to decide on which crop to grow. Which was mostly cotton because of the revenue it brings. Although freedmen didn`t want to produce cotton since cotton was the slavery crop, cotton`s increasing prices and demand help freedmen to make concessions. Unlike in wage labor, freedmen wouldn`t idle or leave the plantations before the harvest since they had own share on the harvest. Cash shortage would affect the planters less compared to wage labor in sharecropping since they wouldn`t need to pay anything until they had their harvested crop. Sharecropping was a partnership rather than a patronage of landowner, they could work without any supervision. But how the labor system that was in theory so efficient, failed so significantly that led to exploitation and segregation of black people for more than hundred years?

King Cotton, was the term for cotton referred to how indestructible was the Southern economy and the Confederation which is supported by cotton production and trade against the Union Army before the Civil War. After the Confederation`s collapse and Southern economy`s nearly destruction, cotton and black labor expected to be front horse of the Southern economy. Increasing prices and demand of the cotton also thrilled the Southerners. Despite of their debts due to cash shortage and economic destruction after the Civil War, Hammond stated that “farmers borrowed more money and invested high on cotton trusting in the high prices of cotton.”(p.122). Where did farmers borrow money? In 1867, Act to Secure Advances for Agricultural Purposes ratified by local governments and legalized a crop lien system which was a common credit system in South even before the Acts. Due to cash shortage in the South, many of the farmers borrowed money from certain merchants to invest on their farming. After the Acts ratified, any men whether he is planter or sharecropper could go to certain merchants to borrow money in return of their share of the crop with exorbitant interest rates which they were often exceeded 50%. Riddle discussed that the purpose of the crop lien system was to help croppers and workers to escape dependency on their employers. However, the debts to the merchants gave merchants the power of deciding what crops should be planted by the croppers and landowners. As cotton prices declined, many croppers found themselves in debt and not enough income to settle their accounts.

In Aristotle’s Politics, Aristotle poses the question “Is there any one thus intended by nature to be a slave, and for whom such a condition is expedient and right, or rather is not all slavery a violation of nature?” (Aristotle, Politics, Book 1 here) In other words, are some people born and destined to be slaves? If so, does that mean they should be proud of such a thing? Aristotle answers his own question by stating “There is no difficulty in answering this question, on grounds both of reason and of fact. For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule.”(Aristotle, Politics, Book 1, same link as up there). To put it in a simpler manner; some are born to rule and others are just born to serve. The passage from Aristotle’s politics serves two purposes. One, many societies and cultures after Aristotle have used his book as a foundation on how to run their society and control the people. Two, the passage serves as a foundation to answer the main question posed; “How have cultures and societies evolved from the effects and ramifications of slavery?”. Slavery has long existed before the time of Aristotle. A well recognized example would be the enslavement of the Hebrew people by the Pharaohs of Egypt. Would Aristotle justify such enslavement by stating that the slaves should be elated that they are slaves because that is what they are meant to be? Moses could not agree with the notion that others are born to rule their “inferior”. Moses freed the chosen people and gave them a religion with one central theme; “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” That would mean that no man could be greater than another because man is created in his image.

Moses & Aristotle are clear contradictions on the view of humanity as a whole. Are humans all equal and created in the image of God? If Aristotle only paid more attention in Plato’s academy, he would’ve realized that Socrates had the answer all along. In Plato’s Meno dialogue, there are three characters. Socrates, Meno, and Meno’s slave boy. Socrates, in an attempt to show Meno that knowledge is innate, proposes to Meno that he can grab a young, unlearned, slave boy and have him solve a geometrical problem by simply asking him questions. Meno is stunned and does not believe that a slave boy who doesn’t know anything could solve such a problem. Socrates takes the ignorant slave boy to the beach where in the sand Socrates draws a square and proposes to “double the area of the square”(http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/meno.html). Through provocation and questions from Socrates, the slave boy was finally able to double the square. Why was the slave boy, in his own mind, able to formulate a solution to a problem he has never encountered before? Because Socrates is right, knowledge and understanding exist in every individual regardless of race or class. This only further proves how & why man is created equally, and therefore refuting the existence of classism. Every human being has the potential to make discoveries and understand their own nature.

If it was known since the time of the ancient Greeks that every slave was just as capable of genius as any ruler, why is it that Aristotle has been pushed to mainstream thought and seen as the leading philosopher for the past two thousand years? Aristotle did not speak his philosophies for the common man but rather spoke his philosophies for the rich and powerful as guidebooks to keep them in power. For the last two thousand years, the idea that some people are born to rule and others to serve has dominated societies and cultures. Kings, Queens and other rulers have benefited so greatly that their worthiness to rule is deemed not by their competency or knowledge but rather their lineage.

People in power have also benefited from this philosophy by keeping the lower classes ignorant. After the fall of the Roman Empire in the late 5th Century, the next six hundred years in Europe consisted of the highest illiteracy rates, highest rates of infant mortality and the shortest life expectancy possible(here). This is when Feudalism was at its peak. People lived only to work on the kings land and they were considered property of the noblemen and were part of the land. Though these people were not in chains, they were very much slaves. Even though every single one of these people had the innate potential to know just as much, if not more, than the rulers in their land, they were treated like cattle.

What event eventually broke the cycle of ignorance and disparity in this population? The Renaissance brought about a refocusing on classical literature. At its center, the Renaissance brought the focus back to the potential that lies in every individual. The scientific discoveries made by the greatest thinkers gave passage to everyone else to become greater than what they may think of themselves. However, this may have been a positive notion for humanity as a whole, yet for those who wished to maintain power it became a pressing issue. In an attempt to keep their reign, the British led the colonial race by starting colonies in Africa and America. They enslaved African natives and brought them to their colonies all over the world. Because of this occurrence, the narrative then focused upon people of color. They were chosen to be the ones born to serve because they were believed to not be able to know anything other than field work.

The African slaves were now, unfairly, put into a position where they had to prove their humanity. The slaves responded to their captive states with acts of non-violence rather than bloodshed. The slaves made a profound discovery through their singing of the spirituals. These spirituals consisted of coded messages in the songs that gave direction and instructions on how to flee the plantation and where to go afterwards. Take the song “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”. In the song, the words are as follows: “Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home”. The “sweet chariot” inevitably refers to the group of stars that form the big dipper. When observed at night, the big dipper rotates around the north star. So when the song says “swing low, sweet chariot”, it refers to when the big dipper is at the lowest point in the sky. That was the time in which to make the escape. The slaves were able to compose music like this while surrounded in an environment that was designed to keep them subdued. The Negro spirituals, the most American of all music, is an expression of the beauty that can be brought out of people when conditions demand it the most. As Martin Luther King Jr. said in his famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, “Only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars”(quote from here). The famous Harry Burleigh represents an African-American, post slavery, who continued the traditions of the spirituals by passing them onto the next generation. In an interview after being asked about his students such as Paul Robeson and others he says, “Through the genius of these people, I hope that my race will reach the end of a dark, long road of discrimination.”(Lee, H. (1974). Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. The Black Perspective in Music, 2(1), 84-86. doi:10.2307/1214154)

However, it was not only through the spirituals that slavery in America diminished. The civil war, at its core, was about slavery. Apart from Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, it was Lincoln’s motivation for the country to rapidly develop and bring in an industrial revolution that rendered a slave economy useless. As a result of the Emancipation Proclamation and the rapid industrial revolution, the country as a whole began to modernize and bonded slavery was no more. However, despite the slaves now being newly free, the country was now dealing with racial tensions as a result of slavery. This is what kept classism alive, to this very day. The balance of the United States was thrown out of proportion because there were no more slaves to rule over anymore. As a result of this, new forms of oppression were bred out of this void.. Jim Crow Laws were implemented all over the country as a form of discrimination against African-Americans disguised as being seperate but equal. As Dr. David Pilgrim stated, “Jim Crow was more than a series of strict antiblack laws. It was a way of life.”(Pilgrim, D. (2000). What was Jim crow. Ferris State University, 16, 2007.) Because of the Jim Crow laws, new forms of slavery now existed in the country that no longer involved chains and whips but rather disrupting the way of life for many black families.

History repeats itself as the struggle continued for decades as many black families continued to fight for a common living. What overcame Jim Crow was not a bloody revolution, but rather a reemergence of non-violence spearheaded by people like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.. In his speeches he often spoke about a ‘strength to love’. It took more courage to not hit someone back when they hit you and it took even more courage to love someone who hated you. His non-violent revolution ultimately worked because it showed the real strength and beauty that lies within all of us when we choose to fight for justice and supercede the conditions and thinking that allowing slavery and all its forms to exist in the first place.

As for today, many people of color are still suffering the ramifications of a post slavery world as it was only 50 years ago since the Civil Rights Movement ended. Yet despite that, people are no longer bonded in chains and are free to educate themselves to become conscious to advance the human race. The future looks brighter than ever if we choose it to be so.

In 1562, the Rev. Richard Hakluyt transported his cargo of “300 Negros … unto the Island of Hispaniola” . His voyage was one of the earliest examples of English slave trading. He neither expressed moral ambivalence nor was he proud of his transaction. During the Tudor reign, England was far from being an imperial power and its contacts with the islands of the West Indies in general consisted of plundering Spanish settlements. The lucrative trade in African slaves in Spanish ports in the West Indies was obviously alluring to explorers like Hakluyt and privateers like John Hawkins. A century later, England firmly established a foothold in the Caribbean and subsequently launched an empire whose power and wealth became the envy of other nations. The English success at empire building is attributable to slavery and Atlantic commerce. The historiography of slavery and the slave trade is replete with debates regarding racism, religion, morality and politics. As seen through twenty-first century eyes, the enslavement of human beings to perform free labor is abhorrent and morally reprehensible. Nonetheless, yet it was practiced by white civilized nations, England, Spain, France, Holland, Portugal and Sweden for hundreds of years. This research paper endeavors to explain the causal relationship between the African slave trade and slavery and the development of the British empire. In addition, it will explore the nature of slavery and the slave trade as practiced by the English in order to understand better how England achieve hegemony in the lucrative slave trade by the 18th century?

At the time of Oliver Cromwell’s acquisition of Jamaica, and until the Restoration was in place, there existed ambivalence in England about retaining islands in the Western Caribbean. It meant an expense to the state, and to settle meant sending white settlers from what appeared at the time, an underpopulated realm. By the second half of the 17th century, England had colonies in North America: Nova Scotia, New York, East and West Jersey, Carolina and Pennsylvania. In the Caribbean, it possessed Jamaica, Saint Christopher (Saint Kitts) and soon after, Barbados and the Leeward Islands. An option for settlement was to transport convicts and vagrants, thereby ridding England of undesirables, and also sending indentured laborers. Opposition to possessing colonies in the Caribbean diminished with the establishment of large plantations and their reliance on free labor performed by enslaved Africans. The Crown saw financial advantage in its involvement in the lucrative triangular Atlantic trade, that is the sale of English manufactured goods transported on English ships and traded on the western coast of Africa for black slaves, followed by their transport on the same English ships to the West Indies for sale to English plantation owners. Charles II was very interested and an active participant. State sponsored enterprises like Western Design and the Royal African Company [see Appendix B] were established. During the early stages of the empire, the English practiced what the other powers like Spain did, that is, protectionism on a state level called mercantilism. It was a monopoly system which excluded participation by non-English merchants in the Atlantic trade. Goods could only be transported on English ships to African shores, then these same ships could load their human cargo and proceed to English colonies. This exclusive economic system and the demand for products of the plantations like sugar and tobacco, and more importantly, the reliance of an inexhaustible supply of African enslaved people in the colonies “transformed not only how colonials understood the empire and their place within it” , but also how the empire was understood in England.

Slavery and its historiography are not free of controversies, polemics and arguments both from religious and humanitarian sources. When Richard Hakluyt transported his enslaved Africans to Hispaniola, as the historian Michael Craton points out, they were “viewed as curiosities but not necessarily as inferior beings” ; however, a profound shift in attitude was occurring among the English. It would seem that the “economic advantages of enslaving the blacks led to a deterioration in racial attitudes” and within a short time the justification grew stronger that the dark-skinned enslaved person was inferior. Bartolomé de las Casas, a plantation owner and historian in Hispaniola, in 1550 had argued in favor of African slaves to save the Indigenous People from forced labor. In the Spanish tradition and law, the enslaved black man was simply unfree and not morally inferior as the English later considered him. Las Casas saw slavery grow and the requirements of the plantation consume quantities of African slaves. Similarly, the demands of the sugar plantations in Barbados, the Leeward Islands and Jamaica was so great, that the plantations consumed vast numbers of enslaved Africans, negating in the process the slaves’ humanity. John Atkins, a ship’s surgeon talks about the black slaves he saw as if they were animals void of emotion:

The bulk of them are country People, stupid as is their distance from the Converse of the Coast-Negroes, eat all day if Victuals is before them; or if not, let it alone without Complaint, part without Tears with their Wives, Children, and Country, and are more affected with Pain than Death;

It might be argued that the African represented “the other” in English, French, Dutch eyes. The choice to enslave Africans was made easy by the sheer number made available to the white slavers by the African captors eager to trade in exchange for European manufactured goods. Yet it has to be acknowledged that racism was playing an important role. The official English church was silent on the question of Christian morality and slavery. The Puritan preachers in the New World, especially in Plymouth, from their pulpits spoke of the Native People as the work of Satan and that Providence was busying Itself ridding the land through disease to make room for Pilgrims. Is there any question that the Puritan attitude toward non-white persons was not dehumanizing? Moreover, an Englishman’s identity rested in large part on the property he owned and slaves were bona fide chattel and property. If the black man was not at the start considered inferior or sub-human, then at each step of the process, from capture to captivity in Royal African Company forts, throughout the horrors of the middle passage, his appearance at the slave market in the New World, he was dehumanized.

What had been evolving was a British empire and it had evolved hand in hand with African slavery and the slave trade, so much so that the historian Joseph E. Inikori sees in the “Atlantic economic order … the nucleus of our contemporary world economic order” and of the central factors “slavery was the dominant factor and colonial domination was the main mechanism in the expansionary phase.” Inikori argues that “African slavery in the growth and development of Atlantic commerce between 1650 and 1800 … formed the basis of the Atlantic system”. The production of bullion, sugar, coffee, cotton, tobacco, rice, etc. was made possible through the agonizing labor of African slaves. The impact of African slavery and slave trade beyond the production commodities that found their way to Europe, was immeasurable. The travail of the enslaved in the British West Indies was the generator of great wealth, power and prestige for the British. It was arguably the sustaining force on which the British empire evolved. Inikori points to the irreparable damage was done “since it gave rise to an extremely damaging division of labor between western Africa and the rest of the Atlantic economies in which the violent production of captives for export became virtually the only function performed by western Africa in the Atlantic system.”

Inikori makes other interesting observation regarding the transportation of Africans to the Americas: The most remarkable feature in the population of the Spanish Islands in the West Indies is the small proportion of negroes. If the whole of the Islands be taken into the calculation, there were in 1789, seven whites to one negro, whilst in the British & in the French Islands there were at that period about 10 negroes to 1 white.

The social system that evolved in the British West Indies was simply one based on the color of skin. While in England property was paramount, in Jamaica race was the hierarchical structure of society. White skin was akin to freedom, power and dominion; black skin meant slavery and inferiority. Both in the colonies and in England it was recognized that the slave trade was a fundamental contributor to empire building and prosperity, consequently the state involved itself directly in the promotion of slavery in the colonies. The decision to keep Jamaica and foster lucrative trade began with Charles II’s charters establishing the Company of Royal Adventurers into Africa and two other enterprises. The impetus for profiteering and making colonies profitable came from the Stuarts. The desire to take trade away for other competing European powers, expressly Holland and France, resulted in the monopoly of British trade and commerce which was established through the prerogative of the king. English society came quickly to the understanding that African slavery and the slave trade were in the national interest and moral considerations were not given a second thought. Besides, the enslavement of Africans was viewed as essential to the smooth and successful functioning of the empire. With the Treaty of Utrecht 1713 the English gained the coveted asiento, the right to trade in goods and slaves in Spanish America. Britain by this time had attained hegemony in the Atlantic triangular trade and in the African slave trade. Yet, in the perilous reliance on slave labor in the West Indies one sees an imperial ideal in which white supremacy had evolved. Furthermore, a brutal legal and social system which supported this white supremacy developed which shaped the plantation owners’ understanding of empire.

Slavery had existed since Biblical times and it exists today in places like India where the Global Slavery Index indicates the existence approximately 9 million slaves . The African slave trade was practiced by the Dutch and Genoese beginning in the 16th century, then the French attained a leadership role in the trade. By the late 17th and 18th century the English had perfected a system unmatched by any other trading nation. The English’s expertise in the slave trade contributed immensely to the strength of the British empire. The system the English traders had developed was described in favorable terms in Parliament by James Penny in 1789. His dubious description is one of an Atlantic crossing in which the passengers, the enslaved persons, are cared for and have good ventilation and food: the Number of Slaves he usually took on Board ir.as from 500 to 600 … the Slave Ships at Liverpool are built on Purpose for this Trade, and are accommodated with Air Ports and Gratings for the Purpose of keeping the Slaves cool … on Board, they are comfortably lodged in Rooms fitted up for them which are washed and fumigated with Vinegar or Lime Juice every Day … The Men Slaves are fettered when they first come on Board, from prudential Motives, but during the Passage, if they appear reconciled to their Condition, their Fetters are gradually taken off … The Women, Youths, and Children are always at Liberty, and are kept in separate Apartments … The Whole of the Slaves are brought upon Deck every Day, when the Weather permits, about Eight of the Clock … If the Weather is sultry, and there appears … the least Perspiration upon their Skins, when they come upon Deck, there are Two Men attending with Cloths to rub them perfectly dry, and another to give them a little Cordial a warm Mess is provided for them, alternately of their own Country Food and of the Pulse carried from Europe for that Purpose, to which Stock Fish, Palm Oil, Pepper, & are added; after that, Water is handed them to drink, and the upper Decks are swept clean. They are then supplied with Pipes and Tobacco. Both Sexes sometimes will smoak … They are amused with instruments of Music peculiar to their own Country, with which he provided them; and when tired of Music and Dancing, they then go to Games of Chance

Elizabeth Donnan offers this contradictory description: On the ship itself the men and women were crowded between decks, with little air and less ventilation except such as filtered through narrow ventilators. There they were kept at least fifteen or sixteen hours a day – on good days, that is – without modern system of sanitation, and without running water, naked, and with chains about their ankles. Two men were chained together, as a rule, the right ankle of one to the left ankle of the other. And, thus crowded and bound hand and foot, they were allowed a space barely larger than a grave – five feet six inches long, sixteen inches broad, and two to three feet high, nor high enough to sit up in.

The image (Appendix A) of the cross section of a British slave ship supports this description. This is a graphic depiction of the capacity of callousness on the part of the British to willingly have a hand in profiting from this kind of human misery and suffering.

In light of the centuries of human misery perpetrated by Europeans eager for profit, prestige and power, one has to ask: What happened to the European commitment to morality which was founded on Christian values? In the 18th century Enlightenment an indignation to torture, brutality and public executions took hold, yet the plight of the black slave went largely unheeded until the end of the century. One can only imagine the little Negro village in the interior of Africa and the sudden surprise attack. Shackled, iron collars on necks, women, children and men marching hundreds of miles to the coast to an ocean never before seen. Put in stockades, what terror! Were they going to be eaten? Then the transatlantic crossing under horrible condition followed under horrible conditions. Those who survived the voyage, in neck irons, would then be taken to a West Indian port to be sold as chattel as one would sell a horse or another beast of burden.

The Rev. R. Walsh chronicles some of the horrors of the middle passage. His eyewitness account is most graphic: The height, sometimes, between decks, was only eighteen inches; so that the unfortunate human beings could not turn around, or even on their sides, the elevation being less than the breadth of their shoulders; and here they are usually chained to the decks by the neck and legs. In such a place the sense of misery and suffocation is so great, that the Negroes, like the English in the black-hole at Calcutta, are driven to frenzy … a horrid din and tumult among them [was heard] … opened the hatches and turned them up on deck … horror … manacled together, in twos and threes, many in different stages of suffocation, many of them were foaming at the mouth, and in the last agonies. Many were dead. Many destroyed one another, in the hopes of procuring room to breathe; men strangled those next to them, and women drove nails into each other’s brains.

When the weather cleared and hatches were opened: The stench below was so great that it was impossible to stand more than a few minutes near the hatchways. Our men who went below from curiosity, were forced up sick in a few minutes. I am informed that very often … the stronger will strangle the weaker; and this was probably the reason why so many died.

In the case of rebellion or mutiny, the punishment came swiftly: hanging on the mast. Disease was a common effecting both human cargo and the crew. It was generally anticipated that 20% of both would be lost on a voyage. If a shortage of water should occur, the solution was to throw some of the human cargo overboard.

The British had developed a streamlined, factory approach to the slave trade. Ships designed to maximize the number of slaves that could be transported were build on the docks of Liverpool and Bristol which were beehives of activity related to the slave trade. These English towns had grown in proportion to the success of the triangular trade and now were bustling, wealthy cities. By the last third of the 18th century, there were forty factories on the African coast belonging to the leading nations in Europe engaged in the African trade. Of these ten belonged to the English, three to the French, fifteen to the Dutch, four to the Portuguese, and four to the Danes. The slave trade was such a profitable business that long after the abolition, ships loaded with enslaved Africans arrived at ports in the New World. A slave could be sold in Cuba for thirty times what he had cost in Africa . Even if the trade was outlawed and the risks were great, the lure of profit generated an active market.

America was founded on the idea of freedom, but the institution of slavery contrasts this main american principle by prioritizing one person’s freedom over another’s based solely on skin color. Freedom in this sense could be defined as being able to make decisions for yourself and your country, which is exactly what blacks were prohibited from doing during this time. The life of a southern slave prior to the civil war was essentially dictated by their masters and the U.S. government’s laws which were clearly in favor of whites. Throughout this pre-civil war time period, there were also many attempts to liberate slaves and educate the public on the horrors of the deep south. Over time, the topic of slavery became very controversial in the U.S., eventually leading to the civil war.

One catalyst to the civil war was the differences in economies, opinions, and overall lifestyles in the north and south. The north possessed crowded, industrialized cities that relied on textile factories as a main source of income. There were some small family owned farms, but the land was not nearly as fertile as the south’s. The south’s economy was the complete opposite with almost one hundred percent of it being agriculture based at the time. There was also a huge power imbalance within the southern class system. There were six social classes in the south ranging from the most wealthy gentry class, to enslaved blacks who had nothing at all. Although the gentry class consisting of only about 1,733 families, this class held enough political power that the south could’ve been considered an oligarchy. Having almost a second government back the institution of slavery made it extremely difficult for anyone to oppose their mindset at the time. Despite many misconceptions about the way southern whites lived at the time, many didn’t own slaves. Slaves at the time were a symbol of social status, yet only one-fourth of whites owned slaves or belonged to a slave owning family. The rest either lived on family owned and operated farms, or were “mountain whites,” which were extremely isolated, independent farmers. Free blacks were slightly above enslaved blacks in the southern social class system. Back then, most southerners did not like them, as they were walking examples of what might be achieved by emancipation. Although these blacks were technically free, they were always subject to being pulled back into slavery, due to the extreme bias and conventional lack of respect towards blacks at the time. In essence, the north liked the race, but disliked the individual, while the south disliked the race, but didn’t mind the individual. Overall, slavery existed because southern whites felt they had the right to use slave labor in order to further advance the U.S. economy. Many southerners viewed slavery as a “necessary evil” containing benefits that would eventually outway any negatives. This, in turn, led to the U.S. sanctioned exploitation of millions of slaves over the course of many years.

Slaves were treated miserably before even arriving at a plantation. Generally, there were three stops before a slave would be sold off to a wealthy plantation owner. First, they would be captured by slave traders in Africa and packed on to ships like sardines. Then, these slaves would have to endure months on these crowded, filthy ships only to be sold away from their families when they reached America. Illnesses spread quickly due to how compacted the ships were, causing one third of Africans to never arrive in the new world. In the book, To Be a Slave, a slave states that “others died because they took their own lives rather than live as slaves”(Lester 24). This shows how many africans knew what was coming based on the treatment they experienced on the ship, and saw death as the preferable option over continuing to live the rest of their life as property of someone else. Those who survived the mid-Atlantic passage were then subject to what’s known as the second middle passage. This second middle passage was essentially a series of slave auctions that took place in the deep south where families would be torn apart and sold off to whoever was willing to buy them. Auctions like these caused many slaves to lose their sense of personal identity, and they also displayed how blacks were viewed as less than human in America during this time. To regain their sense of community, many slaves would sing and dance to retain some of their culture. They also found unity in their own personal religions and would sneak off the farms to attend secret church services. Incorporating their african culture into their lives as slaves inherently helped them remain strong after being overworked everyday. Staying strong was extremely important aspect of life for slaves because living conditions were anything but comfortable. Because slaves could not work for money or own property, they were entirely dependent only their masters. Their masters provided them with only the bare necessities needed to keep their “property” alive, in order to maximize profit. Southern slaves would usually live in dirt floor shacks and received old clothing that was handed out about once a year. This clothing was not fit for winter, and children would sometimes go completely unclothed until adolescence, so the master could save money. In addition to this, slaves would typically undergo daily beatings, as well as receive a detailed explanation of why the torture they had just endured was morally correct. This happened so often that some slaves genuinely believed they were born as a lower class of the human race.

This feeling of inferiority only increased when the fugitive slave act of 1850 was passed. This act made it a federal offense to assist in hiding fugitive slaves, as well as stated that any runaway slaves were legally required to be returned to their owners, even if they were in northern territory. Those caught aiding escaped slave were susceptible to six months in prison and a thousand dollar fine. Escaped slaves would face whippings, brandings, jail time, and would usually be returned to slavery or killed. This act angered many northerners and led to an increase in activity in the underground railroad. The underground railroad was a network of people and places who helped fugitive slaves runaway and obtain freedom. This network was extremely secretive and all actions were illegal. People involved in it would use code words like “conductor” and “station” to refer to people and places within the system. Secret messages would also be sewn into quilts to direct slaves during their journey, or to warn them about slave hunters. Choosing to run away using the underground railroad was risky and the entire journey was a notably dangerous choice. Many fugative slaves were caught and faced terrible punishments, but even the slight chance of gaining freedom lured many slaves to this option.

The people who orchestrated the underground railroad were called abolitionists. Abolitionists were a group of people who fought for the immediate emancipation of slaves, and the end of racial discrimination and segregation in America. These people used many methods to spread the truth about the institution of slavery to the general public, and their efforts did end up convincing many people that slavery was inhumane. One well known abolitionist, Harriet Beecher Stowe, spread the truth about slavery through her book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Her book sold over three hundred thousand copies within the first year, which helped many americans rethink their position on slavery. Her novel was later turned into a play, and shows would sell out quickly. Stowe’s book and plays are just one example of how the horrors of slavery were publicized through art. Another abolitionist, Henry Bibb, was a slave himself who gained his freedom following the death of his owner, after many failed previous runaway attempts. Bibb and his wife moved to Canada from New England after the fugitive slave act was passed to avoid being enslaved again. He published the first copy of his newspaper in 1851 called Voice of the Fugitive, which was intended to persuade blacks to move to Canada to ensure a lifetime of freedom. By the time he died, Bibb had purchased almost 2,000 acres of land for runaway blacks who were seeking asylum in Canada.

In conclusion, the way slaves lived in America prior to the civil war not only affected individuals mentally and physically, but also had an affect on the relationships slaves had between each other. During this time, many blacks were just trying to survive while being overworked, underfed, and exhausted 24/7. Many plantation owners viewed the institution of slavery as a “responsible dominion over less fortunate, less evolved people,” and therefore had no sense of what they were putting actual people through. Even today, none of us can truly understand what American slaves went through, no matter how much we read or research about it. The author of To be a Slave states: “and from the slaves point of view, the picture was even more grim” (Lester 63). I find this statement eye opening and completely accurate because what many slaves endured back then is almost incomprehensible to us now. We see their experience as a history lesson, and have almost become accustomed to hearing the word, “slavery,” as opposed to truly understanding the life of a slave. In reality, that word holds so much weight that should never be glossed over. The word “slavery” represents the basic human rights and freedom that were taken away from millions of people on the same soil we call home. The U.S. sanctioned enslavement of millions of people prior to the civil war was nothing short of appalling and barbaric.

Works Cited

1. Kennedy, David, and Lizabeth Cohen. The American Pageant A History of the American People. AP Edition, Sixteenth ed., Cengage Learning, 2016.
2. Lester, Julius. To be a Slave. New York, Scholastic, 1968.
3. Race To Freedom: The Underground Railroad. 1994. Directed by Don McBrearty, Atlantis Films Limited, 2013.
4. ‘Harriet Beecher Stowe.’ Encyclopædia Britannica, edited by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 31 Jan. 2019, www.britannica.com/biography/Harriet-Beecher-Stowe. Accessed 19 Feb. 2019.
5. Jackson, E. (2007, April 15) Alexander Crummell (1819-1898). Retrieved from https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/crummell-alexander-1819-1898/

‘Where Slavery is there Liberty cannot be; and where Liberty is there Slavery cannot be.’ (Charles Sumner) It’s curious how Americans unquestioningly accept that the words of the Constitution are so unwaveringly just and ethical. If one takes a closer look and puts themselves into the context of the late eighteenth century, the US Constitution in many places leaves itself up to interpretation. One could even conclude that the document had a hand in allowing for the propagation of slavery in our new country. This paper will examine the Constitution taking a closer look at its articles and sections to determine if it is anti-slavery or pro-slavery or somewhere in between. The Constitution, as it was drafted in 1787, was remarkably contradictory as its purpose was to provide this new nation with a means to ensure justice and liberty for its people, yet its words (or lack thereof) quietly protected slavery.

If one looks just a little deeper, past the beautiful words of Thomas Jefferson, they begin to see an exceptionally complex document that isn’t so easy to decipher. The Preamble of the Constitution begins “We the People” and speaks of promoting general welfare, establishing justice, and securing liberty for these “People”. Yet in a time where it was of the utmost importance to define who the “People” were, there is nothing in the entire document that does this. Not doing so in an age where the country was beginning to draw strong distinctions based on the color of a person’s skin made it that much easier for slavery, to at that time grow, and later to flourish.

During the Constitutional Convention, at a time when it was the most hotly debated topic in the US, slavery was not once mentioned in the Constitution. The fact that the word “slavery” was completely omitted from the Constitution has huge implications. Southerners wanted the Constitution to include a system of laws that would protect slavery, making it a nationally recognized institution. This was due to slave labor being so extremely lucrative for these wealthy southern plantation owners. The southerners figured that If slavery was going to be admitted in the US (and it was based on state laws), it made sense for them to make federal laws concerning it. The anti-slavery northerners couldn’t imagine the thought of the barbaric institution of slavery tarnishing our enlightened new nation. The people of the rest of the world, where slavery was mostly outlawed, were waiting to see how America would deal with this sensitive topic. Our founding fathers wanted to save face as the rest of the world watched. They decided the best way to make this happen was to ensure that the word” slavery” would not touch the pages of the Constitution even once. Some say that the fact that the framers didn’t specifically recognize “property in humans” was a win for abolition. The rest of this paper will show that just because the word slavery was omitted from the Constitution doesn’t mean they didn’t make legislation concerning it.

From the first Africans to arrive in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619, to the gathering of our forefathers to write the Constitution in 1787, the issue of slavery couldn’t be agreed upon. Most of the delegates at the Constitutional Convention were slaveowners, and though many were in favor of slavery, many were against it. Unfortunately, slave labor was providing the means for the US economy to flourish. The north would be hard-pressed to get southern delegates whose people depended on slave labor, to ratify the Constitution unless slavery was left alone. Concerning the issue of slavery, the men of the convention decided upon a compromise that fatefully kicked the can down the road. Article I, Section. 9 of the Constitution denied Congress the right to prohibit “The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit…prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight…” (US Constitution) These words would allow slavery to operate protected by the US government for the next twenty years.

There were several delegates who believed that Article I, Section. 9 would begin to phase out slavery over the next twenty years, eventually abolishing it in 1808. The subtle wording of the Constitution proved to let the people believe one thing, while government was implying another. Unfortunately, as time moved on and America industrialized, the goods from the south were processed by the industry of the north and the machine was making America rich. The “international” slave trade ended up being abolished in 1808, but slavery inside and throughout the United States was not. When the time came, the Section of the Constitution that could have abolished slavery, ended up doing nothing much at all.

The Constitution, in many places takes a middle of the road approach (a politician’s approach) when dealing with the question of slavery. Rather than being for or against human property, the framers decide to ambiguously word Sections of the Constitution and quietly allow the institution of slavery. In Article IV, Section. 2 of the Constitution it says, “No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.” US Constitution) In the year 1787 one might see a fairness in returning a person who is held to “Service of Labour”. If the escapee were indebted to someone and “owed” them labor (as was the case with many indentured servants of the time) they should arguably be brought back to the party to whom labor was due. This wasn’t the case though. The Clause was written explicitly to ensure the return of runaway slaves to their masters. People who their “masters” believed owed them a lifetime of service. People that were condemned to a life of slavery, simply for being born to a female slave. This is clear evidence of the framers using soft words to understate what they were doing.

To some, the Constitution must have served as a betrayal of the Declaration of Independence’s promise of liberty to “all men”. In Article I, Section. 2, just past the eloquently written Preamble, sits the Three-Fifths Clause which detailed how each state’s enslaved population would be added to its total population count as three-fifths a person for the purposes of taxation and representation. The article did little in the case of taxation as southerners were able to get around paying a head tax by setting up a tariff-based tax system. The true power gained in Article I Section. 2 comes from the additional seats southerners would gain in Congress. These extra seats would allow southern democrats to gain legislative control of the country. “The slave power”, as it was called in those days, disproportionately allowed the south to pass laws that were viewed as pro-slavery and helped get plantation masters Jefferson and Polk elected.

On December 15, 1791, just a few years after the Constitution went into effect, we see The Bill of Rights come into play. The Bill of Rights was a set of changes made to the Constitution in the form of 10 amendments. These amendments were meant to protect the people of our nation’s most important and fundamental freedoms. Though its aim was to protect freedom, the southern dominated government’s inclusion of The Tenth Amendment had horrible implications for slaves. It reads, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” (Articles of Confederation) This gives state legislatures the reins when dealing with matters not stated in the Constitution. Since our government did nothing to outline the slave trade in the Constitution, or anywhere else for that matter, this amendment would ultimately give the power to make legislation concerning slavery up to the states.

Many of the southern state legislatures in turn passed “slave codes”. These slave codes were designed to keep the slave labor force in line. They accomplished this through oppression, humiliation, and cruelty. These codes prohibited slaves from reading and writing. If a slave was killed while resisting his master, no charge could be brought to bear. Slaves could not meet and gather unless they were attending church. These codes and many more caused a great hardship for slaves. If the Constitution had only made laws surrounding slavery, some of this inhumane persecution could have been avoided.

The Constitution did little to curtail slavery. Rather, it constitutionalized slavery through the inclusion of the Three-Fifths Clause, the Fugitive Slave Clause and other articles that quietly allowed for the propagation of slavery. The sad thing is that it was all about money. As the wealth that flowed the southern United States grew, the chance for the abolition of slavery diminished. It would take time and both the courage and words of men like Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass before things would truly begin to change.

Fortunately, the Constitution was designed in a way that allows it to evolve with the times. Through differing interpretations and amendments, it has the ability to protect the freedoms of people that weren’t included in the original document. It’s a sad thing that it took the United States the many years and a bloody Civil War to right the grievous wrong of slavery, but it was finally done with the passage of the 13th Amendment on December 18, 1865. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” (13th Amendment, Section 1) Free at last. Learning from past errors, Section 2 was included in the 13th Amendment and reads, “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” (13th Amendment, Section 2) This addition marked slavery as federal matter where Congress would have power over its legislation. As it was ambiguously written in 1787, the Constitution quietly allowed slavery to gain a foothold in the United States.

The Transatlantic slave trade was one conducted through the Atlantic Ocean that transported a total of 10 to 12 million enslaved Africans. This trade was a major leg that makes up the triangular trade that also transported other goods, such as wine, firearms, and textiles. The slave trade began in the 15th century and ended in 1853 where Brazil was the last to make the exportation of slaves illegal. One of the main reasons slaves were in demand was because the colonies needed cheap labor. The slaves’ role was to work on plantations and serve as servants doing household chores. They were the preferred servants as there was more of an abundance, over poor Europeans who work as indentured servants. Most of the time, the enslaved Africans worked in the Chesapeake Bay Colony of Virginia, Georgia, and Maryland, working on tobacco, rice, and indigo plantations. Their role was one of the most important of the agricultural economy in the southern states. One of the notable people that play a role in the trade was Nwaubani Ogogo, Isaac Franklin,and John Armfield were major slave traders that took part in the slave market.

The rise of the Transatlantic Slave Trade began when the Portuguese imported slaves of West Africa. The slave market expanded when more Europeans colonized the Americas and were in need of large amounts of cheap labor to work on plantations. However, such trade was not only limited to the Americas, but also Brazil, the Caribbean, and Europe as well. In the triangular trade, European goods were exported to Africa, who then traded them for the slaves, and then shipped to the Americas, where the slaves were traded for sugar, molasses, cotton, tobacco, and indigo. To be specific, within this triangular trade, the middle passage was what the route in which slave ships traveled by, and the ships travel from the Atlantic to the West Indies.

Most of the slaves had originated in West Africa, and other regions such as Upper Guinea, the Gold Coast, Bight of Benin, Bight of Biafra, West-Central Africa, and southeastern Africa which is located in present-day areas known as Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Angola, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Gabon. Most of these people were ambushed and kidnapped directly by the British traders or the locals residing in Africa. Other times, local tribe chiefs would perform raids throughout the rival community in order to capture the enemies and sell them for profit. The slave ships were then supplied by the British people who resided in Africa who bought the slaves from local tribe chiefs. Afterwards, the slaves were cuffed, wooden yokes or tied up by a rope in a chain of coffles and sometimes had to march through varies African tribes and societies, foreign lands, and barren areas for weeks, months, or even years before they even reach the European trade ships where they would be transported. Men and boys were the most demanded, with women and children making up a third of the captured group. Of course, along the way some would die of illness, starvation, or exhaustion. This journey itself could be hundreds of miles by foot. One particular slave route within Africa was one that crossed the Sahara Desert and towards the Nile. Once they’ve boarded the ship, many died along the voyage, taken by diseases that had spread throughout the ship and some women would have been pregnant before and went into labor on the ship.

One reason the African people were susceptible to slavery was due to the extreme poverty and violence that existed there. Families would have no other choice but to sell their children or they die by starvation. Other times, it’s due the the tribal wars that raged the lands and raids occurred as a result. Enslaved Africans can also be sold to other Africans as well. For an example, in the 1700s, a slave of the West Indies can be sold for about £20.

Slave traders, both European and African exist in a mutual business relationship when trading slaves. Most of the time, African leaders supply the slaves, and the Europeans purchase and ship them overseas, but some European groups may also supply as well. Isaac Franklin and John Armfield were major tycoons in the slave trading market in the Americas. In fact, their townhouse headquarters still exists in present-day Alexandria, Virginia. The two had profited from the slave trade more than anybody in the Americas. Their combined fortune is worth billions in present-day currency and had retired as two the richest men of the country. They set their business up in a prime time when the cotton demand started to rise and as a result, the demand for enslaved labor also rose as well. On the other side, an equally influential African slave trader was a man named Nwaubani Ogogo that lived in Nigeria. After all, the exchange could not be possible if the opposite party did not provide the supply. He was such an established slave trader that he even owned a slave-trading license from the Royal Niger Company, which was an English company that governed south Nigeria in the 19th century. Most people who bought slaves were those that owned large plantations, mostly in the southern states that produced cash crops such as cotton and sugar. After the slaves were imported, they were distributed by domestic slave traders such as Isaac Franklin and John Armfield. They can be sold through auctions where families were tragically ripped apart. Sometimes, plantation owners encouraged the slaves that they owned to produce children in order to avoid purchasing more slaves, and other times, they were raped and women forced to produce children as early as possible. Slave codes were law that governed the system of slavery. This law made sure that the slave owners held total control and absolute obedience in the slaves. This law prohibited the slaves from learning to read or write. A social hierarchy also exists within the slaves as well and served to further separate them. From the top down were house servants, craftsmen, and those that worked in the plantation fields. Because of this, it discouraged slave rebellions, and very few were successful.

There were many consequences as a result of the Transatlantic slave trade. For an example, slaves from Africa had introduced new infectious pathogens to the North American continent. This was the hepatitis B virus and a bacterium very similar to syphilis, which was referred to as the “Yaws Disease”. On the voyage, unsanitary conditions made it a breeding ground for many diseases such as dysentery and scurvy. Additionally, dehydration and starvation led to those desperate to catch fish and eat them live. The horrible conditions led some to commit suicide and had to be stopped by the ship crew. As a result, they were chained to plank beds. It was estimated that these voyages usually lost about 15% to 33% of the slaves onboard. Even then, those in Africa knew about their enslaved countrymen, but few protested against the act. They often were desperate for money to survive or are too weak or low on the social ladder to start a rebellion because it was just too risky. Over time, slaves were treated harsher and stricter during the duration that slavery existed. Slave codes were created due to slave masters fearing their slaves rebelling and fought to make sure they once again reign absolute control over the slaves. Compared to when slavery was first introduced in the New World and served under the Dutch, some had the rights to speak out and even sue for better wages. When slaves became the most common, such as in the 18th century, the treatment of slaves was at its worse, with atrocious but common abuse practices such as whipping, hanging, rape, imprisonment, branding, and mutilation. Regarding ethics, most slave traders only saw slaves as another type of goods to be traded like tobacco or sugar. Ship crews saw them as just another cargo treatment they needed to complete. Some didn’t even see the superiority of black or white races, but just as a business deal that generated good income. Slave traders held great influence and respect, where Isaac Franklin and John Armfield were at the top of the social standing with noble reputations. With Nwaubani Ogogo, many wanted to be in favor of him and they offered him their daughters. The slave trading business was so successful that it produced many millionaires and drove up the economy greatly. Not only that, but because of slave labor, plantations were able to produce so much more cash crops that was very much in demand. The cash crop trade rode on the blood, sweat and tears of the slaves. The practice of slavery in America was so detrimental, that its long-term effects is still present today. This tragedy had resulted in centuries of segregation, abuse, and racism.

Primary Sources

1. “The Middle Passage.” The Life of Olaudah Equiano, by Olaudah Equiano, New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969, pp. 46–49.
2. “The Capture.” Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Humbly Submitted to the Inhabitants of Great-Britain, by Ottobah Cugoano, a Native of Africa, by Ottobah Cugoano, Printed on the Year M. DCC. LXXXVII., 1787.

Secondary Sources

1. Lewis, Thomas. “Transatlantic Slave Trade.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 6 Apr. 2020, www.britannica.com/topic/transatlantic-slave-trade.
2. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Slave Trade.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 14 May 2020, www.britannica.com/topic/slave-trade.
3. History.com Editors. “Slavery in America.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 12 Nov. 2009, www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery.
4. “Capture and Captives.” Slavery and Remembrance, slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0003.
5. Natanson, Hannah. “They Were Once America’s Cruelest, Richest Slave Traders. Why Does No One Know Their Names?” The Washington Post, WP Company, 14 Sept. 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/09/14/they-were-once-americas-cruelest-richest-slave-traders-why-does-no-one-know-their-names/.
6. Lynch, Hollis. “African Americans.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 17 Aug. 2020, www.britannica.com/topic/African-American/Slavery-in-the-United-States www.newscientist.com/article/2242363-transatlantic-slavery-introduced-infectious-diseases-to-the-americas/.
7. Kanopiadmin. “The Brutality of Slavery: Murray N. Rothbard.” Mises Institute, 21 Jan. 2013, mises.org/library/brutality-slavery.
8. “Life for Enslaved Men and Women (Article).” Khan Academy, Khan Academy, www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/civil-war-era/sectional-tension-1850s/a/life-for-enslaved-men-and-women.

Some people may not know there is this thing called slaves, slaves were in America eons ago we do not have slaves anymore we didn’t have slaves since December 18, 1865, and this is part of what happened. Condition in which one human being was owned by another, a slave was considered by law as property, or chattel and was deprived of most rights ordinarily held by a free person.

The first slave was thrown out of Haiti as far back as 1619. At the time Haiti was part of France. The Africans were kidnapped and forced to be slaves in the American Colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries. They worked as servants and produced crops like cotton and tobacco. Over these two centuries, there would become close to four million slaves. This is how it all began and continued for close to one hundred years. Both enslaved and free Africans helped establish colonies in America. Hundreds of thousands helped these colonies survive this new world. With all that happened this is something that happened in the years with having slaves. America is not proud of what we did but the past is in the past now, So we look back and see our mistakes and we try to fix them but nothing is perfect.

In 1700 the slave population was still rapidly growing, and the growth did not reach its peak until the Revolutionary War. Many of the Southern states went to being major slaveholding states, one of the states was Georgia. Georgia was still one of the ones that were deeply involved in the slave trade. During the American Revolution slavery status became an issue of national political importance. With the colonies split over the idea of slavery. This issue still will not be resolved until the passing of the Constitution that is decades later. In the northwest, territory slavery was made illegal in 1787. Congress created the U.S. Constitution states but they can not ban the slave trade until 1808. The years after the Constitution is passed. People also tried to acquire slaves before it became illegal to import them. The slave number went up substantially. These illegal imports continued for some time after the 1808 date.

The cotton gin was an invention that Eli Whitney and with this invention the slave labor greatly increased. This invention was for each slave who could process a higher volume of cotton with little work for the same cost. Cotton was one of the several major crops that grew in the South this was before the invention of Eli Whitney. With the slaveholding plantations growing across the South because the invention becomes far away the cash crop is almost more than dubbed King Cotton. The fugitive slave law is a law that the federalists enacted. This law is providing for the people that have runaway slaves and if those slaves cross the state line then they could be returned to their master. Many people in the free slave states of New England and Pennsylvania ignored the fugitive slave law. They instead were trying to settle slaves that escaped and treated them as free people. Some of the people returned to their masters. The lucky ones got to stay in the states and they still had to face policing discrimination in housing, and last employment. That all happened in 1793 and threw out the rest of the time we had slaves.

One enslaved African American blacksmith goes by the name Gabriel Prosser. Mr. Prosser organized a revolt for slaves so they could march at Richmond, Virginia. The conspiracy is still uncovered, and several of Mr. Prosser’s compatriots including him were hanged. After that, the Virginia laws against slaves were consequently tightened. With Mr. Prosser’s protest for the slaves, he set a precedent for slaves and handling future uprising events. He and his protest also caused paranoia among the southern slaveholders and this is one of the reasons that shaped the political divide between the South and the North around 1800. Some slaves purchased their freedom like Denmark Vesey. Vesey was an enslaved black carpenter, just like Mr. Prosser planned to have a slave revolt and his intentions with this revolt were to siege Charleston that is in South Carolina. Before he could do so his plan was discovered thirty-four ally’s including himself had the same outcoming as Mr. Prosser was hung. Nat Turner was an African American enslaved preacher who led one of the most rebellions with slaves in American History. His allies and followers including him launched a short rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia. The rebellion suppressed the local militia, the outcome was not the best and Nat Turner was hanged, with Virginia not wanting this to happen again they came up with stricter laws for the slaves that happened in 1831. In that very same year, the Liberator begins to be published by Willian Lloyd Garrison a paper that is weekly that is about the complete abolition of slavery. Mr. Garrison became one of the most known persons in the Abolitionist Movement in history.

In 1803 the Louisiana Purchase matched its size of the country. This is the period that was the beginning of westward expansion that is going to accelerate the slavery political divide; the port of New Orleans is one of the things that they purchased. At this time the French have recently acquired the port from the Spanish. In the future, New Orleans became a really important part of the center of South slaveholding.

By 1804 each of the northern states has begun terminating slavery or banned it all together some of them were Ohio, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Even though racism in the North will still be a huge problem for the free black people in the community, the free states also offer a really good escape for many people that are slaves. Around the city of Boston, people started to gain their ground with the abolition movement. That brings us to 1808 and in this year through 1849 happened for starters Congress banned the importation of slaves from Africa. Some uncommon would still arrive with the illegal shipment. The trade within the boundaries of the United States became bigger than ever before. The slave market price increased and the people also began to assemble an industry of it. With the slave states and the free slave states had to come to a standstill regarding Maine becoming a state breaking free from Massachusetts. The free state’s balance in the senate would have tipped due to Maine becoming a state; in Missouri, this state is divided The Missouri Compromise said that Missouri is a slave state but it also banned slavery In the north of Missouri.

In the 1860s with Abraham Lincoln not being allowed to be on the ballot in several states, he became a Republican candidate, was elected president. With Lincoln not being a part of the radical wing of the event, he also has expressed that he has no interest in the rapid dismantling of slavery. Across the south Lincoln, election prompts outraged. At this point, he also declared, ‘A house divided against itself, cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.’ With this happening the two halves of the country are at an irreconcilable break for many people. When South Carolina declared secession then the Confederacy was founded.

There are some other reasons that this happened like fear because of the federal government infringing on its legal ability to keep the slaves they have. Ten other states followed the federal government and all of them declared preservation of slavery on top of there too reason for seceding. Jefferson Davis was the leader of the government they formed by themselves. The U.S. Army troops fired at the fort after they showed up at Fort Sumter; this action was one of the first hostile action that kicked off the American Civil War. By the middle of the war, President Lincoln has made public that he thought that preserving the Union and having slavery end was the same objective.

The Emancipation Proclamation was issued by Lincoln declaring that the people that are slaves in the Confederate states are, and henceforward shall be free” although this does not free the slaves in the border states that didn’t join the Confederacy. They say that they didn’t get the states because of Lincoln’s military authorities as commanders, and that allowed the states to tenuously Confederate the rebel states. General Lee’s surrender was accepted by the Union Army at Appomattox. Then the Civil War ended, sadly Lincoln was assassinated. The 13th Amendment made slavery no more in the United States this all made a small movement with everything being equal for the former slaves. On the 19 of June slavery in the U.S. ended when 250,000 Texas slaves received news that The Civil War had ended and that was two months earlier. On this day it was named the black community holiday. This means all slaves were let go but legacy slavery would last much longer. The state would still underprice the black community but all that matters is that legal slavery is resolved.

All of this was the stuff that happened with all of the slaves. The United States is not proud of what we did but the past is in the past. Some people thought that was right and still think that but we can’t change everybody. Everyone is supposed to be treated the same. Thank you and please treat everyone the same.

Early Anglo-American colonizers were unable to imagine systems of shared land tenure and governance with Indigenous polities. They perceived Indigenous people to admit themselves to the racialization, and the justification they provided for the strategies they utilized to eliminate, displace, acculturate, and conceptually disappear American Indians. European settlers asserted an exclusive right to own the land based on their claims to be making it productive, which was in fact made so profitable by the bulk of the labor such as indentured, contracted, enslaved, or imprisoned. In the wake of the Civil War, it appeared that the racial hierarchy so closely associated with enslaved labor for it undergirded the settlers’ claims to the land, their continued expansion of that land base, their ability to control the benefits of that occupation, and their presumed prerogative to govern every aspect of American life. As a result, they employed several strategies to create, expand, control, and exclude a workforce of enslaved African American descendants from the opportunities that might facilitate their economic and political independence. This article frames that the acculturation of slaves and structures of racial subjugation not as the product of personal bias and prejudice but as the perceived needs of a settler-colonial society that has always used race to justify its occupation and appropriation of Indigenous lands and natural resources and its exploitation of the labor.

Introduction

As Indigenous people disappeared in various ways, settlers turn to strategies of replacement, for putting appropriated lands and resources to productive use. This requires the active recruitment of a critical mass of settlers; the development of a unique cultural identity; the formation of independent structures of governance and social control. Settlers also perceive a need for a readily available labor force that is not intended to share the benefits accruing to the settler class and, accordingly, develop strategies to acquire and control those workers.

The Seasoning

All procuring strategies include some form of seasoning. Seasoning inculcates dependence and indebtedness in the victim. The process used to coerce African slaves into slavery is also called “seasoning.” Seasoning is meant to break its victim’s will, reduce their ego, and separate them from their previous life. In breaking down the victims, slave traders rely only on the dependency that results from taking their acquisition so far away from home that they cannot get back without money for transportation. Harsher methods like beating, rape, drugging, and starvation were involved before turning them out on the plantations. The purpose of seasoning is to inculcate in the victim behavioral and attitudinal changes desired by the controller. Therefore, the outcome of successful seasoning is perfect obedience in the newly procured land. As a result of this process, the owner gains complete authority over the slave.

Naming Africans

The Seasoning of the poor African Blacks is a technicality denoting their acclimation in America. It also refers to their subjection, and initiation into hard treatment as plantation labor. This was a very critical time for the owners, as usually many deaths ensued. Unfortunately, the sufferings of the slaves did not terminate with their voyage and preparation for the market, it continued long after the cause that produced them ceased. The mortality therefore during the seasoning was very great. One-fifth part or twenty percent was estimated to die during that time. This was the frequent fate of the women captives. The women sustained their bodily sufferings with more silent fortitude than the men.

In some societies, incoming Africans were identified ethnically, as Ibo or Coramantee for instance; whereas, in others, Whites simply grouped them together as “Guiney Negroes,” or more vaguely as “outlandish.” The naming of this kind varied from careless to deliberate, depending on how menacing the Africans were considered to be. When whites saw them as dangerous, they ignored their ethnicity and culture. Comprising an array of the west and central African people manifested original identities by tribal names, languages, ritual scars, and habits of mind. Some showed even more emphatic attitudes about who they were previously when runaways, insurrectionists, or maroons attempted to return home or to make an Africa in the American wilderness. These choices confounded Whites, who, in attempting to police and sell the newcomers, exposed their own attitudes about Africa and Africans in the sparse and prosaic notes, in newspapers and plantation records, principally, that trace the first encounters between the two peoples.

An African’s self-definition through resistance, and the care or indifference with which it was recorded, began as soon as some were brought ashore. While aboard the slaver these new Negroes made a plan to escape at the first opportunity and to return to the point of disembarkation in order to find a way ‘back home’ to Africa: four Fame (Coramantee), for instance, were described in an 1801 Jamaican newspaper advertisement as fugitives who ‘told some of their shipmates, whom they solicited to go with them, they would proceed to the sea-side by night and remain in the bush through the night, and the first Canoe they found by the seaside they would Set sail for their Country, which they conceived was no great distance.” The Fante may have been tragically ignorant of the great distance they had been carried. However, their design to return to where they were first unloaded, among other choices they would make, and the whites’ attempts to understand these decisions, provide a straightforward way of talking about the combinations of African carryovers and local circumstances that channeled the choices and learning we label variously as acculturation, assimilation, or Creolization.

If incoming Africans were brought to such colonies as Jamaica, help was available from those who spoke their own language and had been slaves for a while. This network, subsequently, forced whites to speak more precisely about the newcomers—not as commodities but as the social beings they were—in order to make their societies more secure. Whites began to refine the generic ‘new Negro’ and instead spoke of ‘countrymen’ and ‘ship-mate’—respectively, Africans of the same language group and of the same slaver cargo—in order to recapture fugitives readily. These terms also point to the embryonic institutions that were spun off as Africans began the process of becoming African Americans. To see the process of institution-building on the ground is to put the new Negro’s first escape into action. As an idea, the Africans’ goal was the same regardless of where in plantation America they were first brought ashore. The process depended upon a combination of two conditions. The first was whether they were carried to a compact Caribbean island, or to the vast expanses of mainland North America. The other was the character of a colony’s slave trade market, because of a buyer’s objectives, relative wealth, and location.

In this difficult process, domestic or household slaves were afterward sent to the plantation. This was generally viewed and felt by the victims as a punishment, and being so it had a deleterious effect on their hearts and minds. No other system than “the peculiar institution” knows anything more about such treatments.

From the seventeenth century onwards, slaves were the focus of trade between Europe and Africa. From the fifteenth century onwards, the conquest and colonization of North and South America and the Caribbean islands by Europe created an unquenchable thirst for African workers, who were perceived to be more suited to work in the New World’s tropical conditions. The number of slaves traded throughout the Atlantic Ocean has grown gradually, from around 5,000 slaves a year in the sixteenth century to over 100,000 slaves a year.

The changing political dynamics and trading alliances in Africa resulted in a change in the historical roots of slaves in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Slaves became victims of territorial expansion by colonial African states or of assaults by hostile local militias, and different populations were captured and sold as different regional powers became prominent. Firearms, which were traded for slaves, increased in the number.

The practice of slavery existed in Africa well before the arrival of the Europeans and was prevalent throughout the time of economic contact. Private land ownership was largely absent from pre-colonial African cultures, and slaves were one of the few examples of wealth-producing property that individuals owned. In addition, rulers also maintained a corps of loyal, foreign-born slaves to ensure their political stability, and enabled political centralization by appointing slaves out of power.

However, it would be difficult to argue that transatlantic trade lacked significant impact on the development and scale of slavery in Africa. As the demand for slavery grew with European colonial expansion in the New World, increasing prices made slave trading even more lucrative. African States desperate to raise their treasuries, in some cases, plundered their own peoples by manipulating their justice systems, exposing individuals and their families to slavery.

In the end, modern slave trafficking caused a great impact on the African cultural landscape. Areas that were hit the hardest by endemic warfare and slave raid suffered population decrease. Besides, lack of men in particular areas changed the nature of many cultures by forcing women into positions previously held by their husbands and brothers.

In addition, some scholars have argued that depictions of this period of intense violence and banditry have persisted to the present day in the form of metaphysical suspicions and beliefs regarding witchcraft. In many societies of West and Central Africa, witches are believed to abduct or consume solitary people. Finally, the increased trade with Europeans and the tremendous assets it has brought have led many states to developing sophisticated artistic practices, using expenditure.