European traders captured and enslaved black Africans in order to meet the high demand for a large labor force caused by the rise of the plantation system in the Americas starting in the colonial era and lasting until the late 1800s.
Although slavery had been practiced in cultures throughout the world since ancient times, it was in America from the mid-seventeenth century to the Civil War that the institution took its most widespread and perhaps most pernicious form. The demand for slaves in the American South was driven by a form of land tenure and a corresponding economic system that relied heavily on manual labor: the plantation.
In colonies from Virginia and Maryland to South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, land grants to individuals were generally much larger than those in the North. Whereas farming in the latter region was highly seasonal and generally for local consumption, the larger estates and longer growing season in the South produced large yields of cash crops. Tobacco in Virginia and the Chesapeake, rice and indigo in the Carolina tidewater, and above all cotton—ultimately from the Atlantic coast to Texas—were the mainstays of the Southern economy and became valuable export products.
African Overseas Slave Trade 1450–1850 The slave trade that flourished in the trans-Atlantic world from fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries saw an estimated 30 million Africans captured, but with just one in three actually making it to their destinations. (Mark Stein Studios)
To a number, the plantation crops were highly labor-intensive. The elite planter class, which owned the means of production—land and tools—thus required a system that would ensure ownership of the labor force as well. The initial system of indentured servitude at first satisfied the need for labor, but the influx of servants eventually began to slow.
And so began the slave trade. By 1760, the slave population in the colonies stood at an estimated 386,000; a majority were on Southern plantations—many of which required thirty or more slaves. By 1790 the total had reached 678,000 and by 1860 just under four million.
The plantation system relied on slaves for its very survival; with the end of slavery, the system collapsed. In addition to planting, weeding, and harvesting the crops, slaves were responsible for constructing and maintaining fences, farm buildings, and their own cabins. They made tools, barrels, and their own shoes; they served their owners and fed the animals.
African slaves—like this individual being inspected by slave traders—provided a source of cheap labor for the commercial agricultural plantations of the Americas from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. (Library of Congress)
Economics and racism ensured the continuation of the transatlantic slave trade, a trade that made blacks into less than human beings. Various laws upheld this inferior status; these laws held that the owners’ property rights were superior to the natural rights of the enslaved.
Slaves were purchased or reared because they provided agricultural and manufacturing power and services. They were essentially capital equipment that could be used in a variety of ways. For this reason, the slave status was tied to the woman’s womb—that is, the child took the status of the mother. Children were often sold with little consideration for the family structure.
Although in law the enslaved were considered property, many slave owners recognized the humanity of the enslaved. The slave code of the U.S. South forbade marriages, yet the plantation owners ignored this since family life acted as a stabilizing factor for slave society. The attachment to families discouraged the enslaved from running away. The children that resulted from slave marriages also maintained the slave population.
The slave regimes of the different European colonies, though varied at times in the way they were managed and organized, were harsh. Slavery was maintained through the use of fear and violence. Legally, slaves were denied the right to marry, vote, sue, take an oath, or benefit from proceeds of their own labor. In addition, their freedom of movement was severely restricted.
Cleve McD. Scott
See also: Slavery.
Drescher, Seymour, and Stanley L. Engerman. A Historical Guide to World Slavery. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Finkelman, Paul, and Joseph C. Miller, ed. Macmillan Encyclopedia of World Slavery. Vol. 2. New York: Macmillan, 1998.
Franklin, John Hope, and Alfred A. Moss Jr. From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans. New York: Knopf, 1994.
Knight, Franklin W., ed. UNESCO General History of the Caribbean. Vol. 3, The Slave Societies of the Caribbean. London: UNESCO/Macmillan Education, 1997.