Slavery in the 17th Century « Spaghettim0nst3r’s Weblog

Slavery in the 17th Century

Edmund Morgan<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[1]<!–[endif]–> insists that slavery has been a fascinating paradox throughout American history because of how immigrants so dedicated to human liberty and dignity “at the same time developed and maintained a system of labor that denied human liberty and dignity every hour of the day.” <!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[2]<!–[endif]–> It’s true. Throughout the 17^th century slavery in the New World slowly became established as the primary source of labor. Virginia held the highest concentration of slave labor in the south throughout the 17^th century; and by the 18^th century the first census in 1790 reported it contained 40% of the total U.S. slave population.<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[3]<!–[endif]–> This change can be accounted for by looking at changes in various aspects of life in 17^th century. Slavery increased because of the increased agricultural demand for large pools of cheap labor. This demand was affected by the decline in indentured servant immigration and the rise of an independent landless class of rebellious ‘freemen’; the decrease in the price of purchasing slaves; and a decrease in mortality rates both in England and America.

Agricultural demand for large labor pools significantly increased in the years after John Rolfe, in Jamestown Virginia, discovered how to successfully grow tobacco in 1612.<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[4]<!–[endif]–> This cash crop would prove to be the most important export and source of wealth for American planters in Virginia. Indentured servants from England initially provided this labor pool. The Virginia Company basically purchased poor English peasants for a term of seven years as payment for passage to the New World. The promise of receiving “headrights” served to draw sufficient interest in immigration for a while.<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[5]<!–[endif]–> “Male Indentures were supposed to receive clothing, tools, and occasionally land upon completion of their service,” but this often didn’t happened and they would end their service with nothing. A good deal ended up with no land, no employment, no family, and no prospects.<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[6]<!–[endif]–> This was a dynamic unstable workforce of coming and going that heavily depended on immigration. Planters wanted the immigrants who kept pouring in every year. But as more and more turned free each year upon completion of their term of servitude, Virginia seemed to have inherited the problem that she was helping England solve in ridding itself of it’s large landless surplus laborers.<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[7]<!–[endif]–> This slowly created a large population of landless, wandering, young, and rebellious laborers.

The impact of this growing landless population was stifled to a slow quiet swell because of the extremely high mortality rates. Encounters with natives combined with disease were the two primary causes for the high mortality rate. Between 1625 and 1640 more than 15,000 immigrants entered the Virginia colony and resulted in only a population increase of fewer than 7,000.<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[8]<!–[endif]–> This worked in the favor of planters because immigrants would only serve a short period of time and then leave, removing the responsibility of maintaining a healthy workforce from the planters and enabling them to simply cycle through fresh indentures. At this point maintaining the health of an expensive slave was very difficult and costly, so planters preferred indentured servants and slavery was rare and highly isolated to the Caribbean.

Through a combination of knowing one stood little chance of actually gaining land upon completion of an indenture period, and knowing that threats from disease, Indians, and even Pirates increased the likelihood one wouldn’t survive long enough to enjoy headrights anyway; the flow of indentured servants declined, producing a demand for a new kind of labor in Virginia.<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[9]<!–[endif]–> The incentive to migrate would again reduce around 1670 because of a decrease in the birth rate in England, as well as improved economic conditions.<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[10]<!–[endif]–> This decrease in incentive and consequent lack of fresh laborers in Virginia would compound with other changes that made owning slaves more feasible.

The transition in economic feasibility of owning slaves occurred slowly between 1640 and 1697. Before 1640 the mortality rates for inhabitants of Virginia was too high to invest in vulnerable slaves who would likely die just as most of the immigrants from England did. After 1640 the mortality rate decreased in Virginia and the population naturally increased. This presented a problem for the landless freed indentures because now more competition would exist among them and the likelihood that one would be able to rise up and become his own planter decreased.<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[11]<!–[endif]–> Although immigration was slowing, the cost of purchasing slaves in the quantity needed to support the agriculture economy wasn’t largely available until after 1660 when the Royal African Company of England established a monopoly over slave imports and began shipping more and more to the Caribbean.<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[12]<!–[endif]–> Most of the slaves that were imported to Virginia did not arrive straight from Africa, but usually after serving a period in the Caribbean sugar farms The Caribbean.<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[13]<!–[endif]–> Eventually the Royal African Company of England would lose its monopoly in 1697 to rival traders and the price of purchasing a slave would drop significantly. Although this made owning slaves much more economically feasible, at that point the rebellious freemen and shortage of indenture immigrants had already made slave labor the most reliable kind of labor source.<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[14]<!–[endif]–>

The rebellious actions of the landless “freemen” against the elite in Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 served to promote an attitude between land owning elites alerting them of the dangers the freeman posed. The elites rationalized slavery as a good alternative to avoid conflicts like Bacon’s Rebellion because they did not have to be released after a fixed term and hence, did not threaten to become an unstable, landless class.<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[15]<!–[endif]–> Their instability would further be demonstrated in 1682 during the “tobacco-cutting riots” in which freemen went from farm to farm destroying crops in the field. This was a desperate attempt to drive the price of tobacco up by creating a shortage in supply.<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[16]<!–[endif]–>

Though the dominant notion among the majority of Englishmen was that Negroes were “intended to be ruled,” as Plato described, and as “an animate article of property,” this racism does not account for the entire motivation behind the shift from indentured servant labor to the system of slavery.<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[17]<!–[endif]–> It certainly made the transition easier for English immigrants to think of Africans as a “species in which a distinction is already marked, immediately at birth” that signified it was intended to be ruled.<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[18]<!–[endif]–> However aside from the racism a sharp distinction between a slave and an indenture wouldn’t come about until very late in the 17^th century. Even as late as 1668 in North Ampton, at least ten free Negro households certainly existed.<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[19]<!–[endif]–> So the shift from a primarily indentured servant workforce to a primarily slave based workforce is attributed largely to the fact that slaves represented a more stable and reliable labor source.

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<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[1]<!–[endif]–> Edmund Morgan is an award winning Yale University Professor of History and author of the cited article from the 1972 Journal of American History, Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox.

<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[2]<!–[endif]–> Morgan, Edmund. “Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox.” The Journal of American History, no. 59 (1972): 6.

<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[3]<!–[endif]–> Morgan. Slavery and Freedom, 6.

<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[4]<!–[endif]–> Brinkley, Alan. The Unfinished Nation. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2007), 30.

<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[5]<!–[endif]–> Morgan. Slavery and Freedom, 6.

<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[6]<!–[endif]–> Brinkley. Unfinished Nation, 62.

<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[7]<!–[endif]–> Morgan. Slavery and Freedom, 21.

<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[8]<!–[endif]–> Morgan. Slavery and Freedom, 19.

<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[9]<!–[endif]–> Brinkley. Unfinished Nation, 62.

<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[10]<!–[endif]–> Brinkley. Unfinished Nation, 62.

<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[11]<!–[endif]–> Morgan. Slavery and Freedom, 19.

<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[12]<!–[endif]–> Brinkley. Unfinished Nation, 62.

<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[13]<!–[endif]–> Brinkley. Unfinished Nation, 48.

<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[14]<!–[endif]–> Brinkley. Unfinished Nation, 67.