Coercive Labor Systems – slavery vs. other coercive labor system
1450-1750
Early Modern Period
- Coercive Labor Systems – slavery vs. other coercive labor system
- Slavery
- Justifications for slavery
- English – partially racism of Africans
- Prisoners captured in battle
- Defeated Russians, Slavs, Germans, Poles sent to Istanbul
- Mamluks – Turkish/Mongol slave soldiers that fought for Egypt
- External Slave Trade
- Began around 1100s when Africans supplied captives to Arab merchants
- Portuguese bought for European market
- Before in East Africa, trade relatively small
- When Portuguese left in 1700s, trading cities of East Coast took over
- Swahili cities provided slaves to plantation islands off
- Africa
- Also to Arabian Peninsula
- Origins of slavery in Americas
- Spanish in sugar islands of Caribbean
- Replaced Native Americans
- 1619 Dutch ship at Jamestown dropped off slaves
- Initially treated like indentured servants, not slaves
- But…when large numbers needed for tobacco farming, policy changed
- 1640 – Africans went from indentured servants to slaves for life – “durante vita”
- Northern colonies did not keep slaves in mass numbers
- lacked farms that had large-scale labor intensive crops
- Climate/terrain unsuitable
- lacked farms that had large-scale labor intensive crops
- English institutionalized slavery
- needed cheap, abundant labor
- viewed Africans with language/culture as less than human
- Native Americans not useful
- runaways, disease, easily hide in forest
- Indentured servitude
- runways can blend in
- only have labor for specific time
- Supply seemed limitless
- W. Africa
- Natural increase - birth
- Spanish in sugar islands of Caribbean
- Largest system of slavery – came mostly from West Africa
- Plantations of the Caribbean
- Southern British Colonies
- tobacco, rice, indigo
- Brazil
- Plantation system
- Required cheap, abundant labor
- Sub-Saharan Africa filled need
- Required cheap, abundant labor
- Legal rights
- No legal rights
- slave marriages not recognized
- slaves could not own property
- little protection from cruel owner
- could be sold away from families
- illegal to teach slave to read or write
- Consequences of slavery
- Africa
- depopulated – captured youngest and healthiest
- randomness of slave raids – cross-section of society taken
- farmer, leaders, craftworker, mother,
- Arts and technology suffered – could make money from slave trade
- Sudanic empires lost importance – decline in interior empires
- Focus of power shifted to coast
- Desire for more wealth, power, guns increased cycle
- Africans seen as inferior – helped with justification
- Affected race relations to this day
- Africa
- Justifications for slavery
- Peonage
- Debtor provides service until debt is paid off
- Debt bondage basis of tenant farming and sharecropping in US after Civil War
- Slaves essentially tied to land
- Prevalent in Latin America and still exists today
- Serfdom
- Slavery
Subject:
US History [1]
Subject X2:
US History [1]