Slavery existed in the Americas from the early colonial days and its rapid rise was observed in the XVIII-XIX centuries in Brazil, the Caribbean and the British and French colonies in Northern America when the world trade was actively growing and there was a shortage of labor. The major countries in Europe were able to turn the slave trade into a very profitable business. At first the Portuguese and later the Dutch and the English began to export slaves from the West African coast to the different destinations in the New World. The Middle Passage became a vital part of the transatlantic trade and slavery was the most crucial element in it. In this paper, slavery in the Americas will be analyzed in detail and there will be two main sections - the one that is concerned with the slave trade and the Middle Passage and the one that is focused on the life of the slaves and how Bartolome de las Casas, a famous historian and missionary from Spain, approached the issue of slavery in the first half of the XVI century.
The Slave Trade
Some historians believe that the first slaves arrived in Northern America in 1619. In particular, the African slaves arrived in Jamestown, Virginia in order to work on the tobacco plantations. In the XVII and XIX centuries slaves contributed to the economic development of the colonies in Northern America. By 1861 there were 4 million slaves and when the Civil War ended and slavery was officially abolished, a lot of the former slaves continued to live in the harsh conditions (History.com, 2009).
However, colonies in Northern America were not the main destination where the European vessels transported thousands of African slaves. It was the tropical and semi-tropical areas in South America where the vessels with slaves on board were heading to. There the colonialists could produce tobacco, sugar and other products that were valuable in Europe (Eltis, 2013, p.1). The local indigenous people could not satisfy the demand for the labor force. Therefore, slavery and coerced labor were the alternatives that the majority of the people in Europe agreed with.
It is commonly believed that the first slave voyage to the Americas sailed in the Spanish Caribbean in the first half of the XVI century, because there was the need for the workers that could work in the gold mines (Eltis, 2013, p.2). In the XVI and XVII centuries, Brazil became the country that needed slaves the most. African people replaced the local Amerindian labor force that was not able to work on the sugar mills and in the mines. 30,000 slaves were transported to Brazil every year in the 1690s and in the 1790s, this figure equaled to 85,000 slaves a year (Eltis, 2013, p.5).
In the second half of the XVIII century 6 countries benefited the most from the slave trade. These countries were Great Britain, France, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark. They imported rice, indigo, sugar, alcohol, tobacco and precious metals from their colonies in the New World. Portuguese and British slave-traders were the most dominant for many decades and therefore Brazil and the British colonies in North America received up to 70% of all slaves. In turn, the French brought slaves mainly to Saint-Domingue (modern Haiti) and the Spanish needed slaves in Cuba. Later, due to the historical, political transformations the slavery trade system had to be changed. Brazil and the United States became sovereign states, and Cuba turned into a country that was almost as developed as Spain. As the result, in the XVIII century very few slaves arrived in Northern America. One more reason why there was no need in the new slaves from Africa is that the local cotton planters started to rely on the natural population growth and very active domestic slave trade (Eltis, 2013, p.5).
The Middle Passage
Approximately 11-13 million slaves had been brought within the Middle Passage to the Americas by the 1870s (Hooper, 2004, p.1). The most active phase was 1701 – 1800 when 6 million enslaved people were transported to the Americas. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people could not survive the harsh conditions on the vessels. Especially in the XVI century there was a very high percent of the people that died during their journey, because it lasted too long and many people were ill and experienced shortages of food and water. However, in the XVIII century the lethal level declined down to 5-10% (Hooper, 2004, p.2).
The Middle Passage began in West Africa, where enslaved Africans, who were mainly prisoners of war or victims of kidnapping, were at first gathered in the special slave factories and later put on the vessels that would travel to the New World. The demographic data suggest that approximately 45% of the slaves came from the west-central regions of Angola and Kongo (Lovejoy, 2006, p.4). The Middle Passage was eventually forbidden, because in the second half of the XVIII century there were very strong abolition movements in the United Kingdom, the USA, and Brazil. In addition, some superpowers, including Portugal and The Kingdom of the Netherlands started to experience enormous internal political problems and could not control their overseas colonies anymore. As the result, there was the new political and international order and slavery had to be abolished. The countries liberalized and modernized their economies switching from agriculture to manufacturing.
It is obvious what kind of economic benefits the countries in Europe and the New World gained thanks to slavery. Yet there is one more part of the Middle Passage that benefited from slavery – this is the African traders that were responsible for regular supply of slaves to the ports on the West African coast. African traders usually exchanged their slaves for three groups of products: items that were used as money, consumer goods and military wares. Imported products could not replace the African production, but they greatly supplemented the output (Lovejoy, 2006, p.8). The money was of great importance for the promotion of trade in West Africa. The need for the consumer goods increased, because the level of living was gradually increasing in the African countries. Finally, the military wares were needed to make sure that the slave trade was protected and the civil conflicts did not have any impact on the traders (Lovejoy, 2006, p.8-9).
The development of the Middle Passage went through several phases. Lovejoy (2006) divided slave exports from Africa in four periods – 1450-1600, 1601-1700, 1701-1800, and 1801-1867 (Lovejoy, 2006, p.1). 1701-1800 was the period when more than 6 million slaves were brought to the Americas. For comparison, in 1801-1867 slave exports declined and equaled 3.46 million people (Lovejoy, 2006, p.1).
Bartolome de las Casas
The public opinion about slavery correlated with the dynamics of slave exports and shifted from the total support of slavery in the XVI century to the agreement to abolish slavery in the XIX century. For instance, a historian and a social reformer Bartolomé de Las Casas that lived in the XVI century was always supporting the indigenous people that suffered from the colonialists, who arrived from Europe to Cuba and other colonies in the Caribbean, but his ideas concerning the African slaves were not human at all. His main appeal was, to be fair with the indigenous people and to stop exploiting them. In order to increase the supply of the labor force and add to the overall productivity he suggested using the black slaves from Africa (Souza, 2006, p.3). Las Casas was a very influential person in Spain and the Spanish rulers listened to him when they had to take the decisions that were concerned with the policies in the colonies.
Slavery that involved the indigenous people was finally prohibited and all hardships were put on the African people. Only in later life Las Casa rejected all kinds of slavery and advocated to end the unfair abuse of all non-Spanish people. So Bartolomé de Las Casas was an important historical figure in Spain that did a lot of the indigenous people and his many years of work resulted in the issuance of the New Laws in 1542 that protected the rights of the local indigenous people in the Spanish colonies (Souza, 2006, p.6).
The life of slaves
The impact of slavery on the countries in Africa was very negative and resulted in significant loss of the able-bodied population and marginal gains for the African elite (Lovejoy, 2006, p.5). Those people that moved to the Americas worked on the plantations, farms or mines. Some Africans also worked as domestic servants in the towns where agriculture was not the main industry. Very few Africans had skilled or semiskilled occupations and worked in the ports. In general, the majority of the slaves was concentrated in the agricultural lands. For example, in Northern America, South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, Maryland, and Louisiana were the agricultural states where two-thirds of the slaves lived (Lovejoy, 2006, p.10).
The enslaved people oftentimes lived in the very harsh conditions, because all power was concentrated in the hands of their owners. Slave owners usually wanted to get as much profit as possible and treated their slaves as chattel. Consequently, slaves had to work much harder than other laborers. Their health was worse and of course they did not receive any wages, had very poor housing and clothing. The corporal punishment, exploitation and sexual abuse were common on some plantations. Children had the same status as their mother and it did not matter who their father was. Nevertheless, the African people were able to preserve or adjust their native culture to the new environment. We can see that the African American culture became very strong after many years of slavery (Alexander, 1922).
In Brazil, where most of the slaves lived, the working conditions were easier and slaves even had enough time to work on their own in order to earn the money that was needed to buy out their freedom. Slave owners were required to free a slave if he or she could provide a sufficient amount of money. Slaves in Brazil had many more holidays because the Catholic Church had a very large influence on the colonies in South America. One more difference with the North American slaves is that the domestic slave trade in Brazil was not very extensive. Very few slaves were separated from their families. In both the USA and Brazil slaves could resist their owners. In the USA slaves could escape to the north of the country or to Canada, but in Brazil slaves did not have such a choice and could escape only in the wild areas (Alexander, 1922).
In conclusion, slavery was common in the colonies of the major European countries that included Portugal, Great Britain, Spain, France, the Netherlands, etc. After the New World was discovered, these countries realized that they could produce and import many agricultural products from there. In Europe these agricultural products, for example, sugar, were impossible to produce. Indigenous people could not satisfy the demand for the labor force in agriculture. So the countries-colonialists decided to bring the people from Africa to their colonies so that they could work on the plantations, farms and mines. The number of slaves grew slowly, but in the XVIII century there was a real slavery boom, and approximately 6 million Africans arrived in Brazil, the Caribbean and the British and French colonies in Northern America. A so-called Middle Passage was an important stage in the development of slavery. Slaves were exported from Africa to the Americas, later the agricultural products were sent from the colonies to Europe and the money, military wares and consumer goods were sent from Europe to Africa in exchange for the new slaves. Slaves faced a lot of hardships because they had very few legal rights. Nevertheless, the public opinion began to change in the XIX century and very soon in most of the countries slavery was abolished forever. There is not much specific information about the lives of slaves, but literature and the arts help to understand what kind of lives the enslaved people used to have. It took approximately 300 years for the people to realize that slavery could not be justified. One of the first people who openly spoke against slavery was Bartolomé de Las Casas from Spain, but his ideas were irrelevant in the XVI century.
References
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Atlantic. ProQuest-CSA. Retrieved from
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