Learning Unit Seven Lecture

1. Learning Unit #07 Lecture
“Did Racism Cause Slavery?”

2. Part One:
Inventing Race-based Slavery

3. In world history, slavery precedes
racism. Slavery is a universal
institution practiced in virtually all
societies for thousands of years. Yet
the remarkable fact about slavery in
the ancient world is that it had
nothing to do with race. Most slaves
were the same race as their owners.
Slaves were degraded because of
their low social status not
Gladiators = their skin color. Despite
slaves. the awareness of color
differences in the ancient
world, nothing resembled
a theory of racial
superiority. Many people
in the ancient world
attributed differences of
appearance and custom to
the influence of geography
and climate.

4. In the Americas, Spanish &
Portuguese classified people
according to “blood purity.” They
regarded blackness as a visual
representation of tainted blood.
The result was a mind-boggling
array of potential racial categories.
Even though these categories made
it possible for “Negroes” to “whiten”
themselves (or in social terms, to
become more like Spaniards) over a
few generations and thus become
free & even socially equal, the
different categories of color also
reinforced negative stereotypes
associated with blackness & Africa.
Moreover, these categories created
a new visual hierarchy of race as
well as accompanying social and
cultural expectations.
Spanish Casta (Race) Painting

5. Mulatto
Slaves in Spanish/Portuguese America
had certain property rights, could
contract marriages, & keep their families
intact. Baptism put them on an almost
certain path to eventual freedom due to
Catholicism’s emphasis on the equality
of all Christians. Once free, they readily
intermarried with their former masters.

6. Racism is generally
equated with slavery today
because the two practices
evolved together in British
North America, and in this
respect the experience of
English and Africans here
is historically unique.

7. Tobacco & Slavery
Tobacco is the most
important crop in Colonial
America and is extremely
labor intensive. The English
use slave labor in their
Caribbean sugar colonies
but slavery does not legally
exist in Virginia until 1661.
Yet, the first cargo of
Africans arrives in 1619. In
the intervening years the
enslavement of black people
was gradual. At first, both
blacks and poor whites were
unfree laborers, a.k.a.
indentured servants.

8. Indentured Servants
Unlike slaves, indentured servants had
rights: Their terms of service would end
after 5-7 years; their servitude was not
heritable by their children; they were due
land, firearms, & clothes at the end of
their terms of service.
Most early
immigrants to
Virginia were
young, single males who came as
indentured servants and died
relatively soon after coming, either
from disease or being worked to death.

9. Anthony Johnson is
the best documented
black indentured
servant. He worked off
his term of service &
married a free black
woman. He owned
200 acres in MD and
had indentured
servants and even
one African slave
working for him! His
family later lost the
land (and maybe their
freedom) when slavery
became race-based by
Portrait of a Negro, by Albrecht Dürer end of the 1600s.

10. Why did slavery become race-based
by end of 1600s?
• Bacon’s Rebellion (1676) – a revolt over Indian policy in
VA by a black-white coalition of former indentures led by upper
class upstart Nathaniel Bacon. White elites feared a class
revolution from below and used race-based slavery to divide
poor blacks and poor whites from uniting in common cause.
• A decline in the number of white European indentured
servants due to rumors of mistreatment in America.
• An increase in wars among African nations; coastal
Africans sold other African prisoners-of-war to Europeans, who
fueled the demand.
• Europeans perceived Africans to be “different, disagreeable,
and dispensable,” which made it easy to rationalize the
immorality of slavery.

11. Nathaniel Bacon
had arguably the
most significant
case of chronic
diarrhea (dysentery)
in American history.
It killed him, and his
death brought an end
to the rebellion he was
leading. Until the
American Revolution
started, Bacon’s
Rebellion was the most
noteworthy challenge to
royal authority in the
colonies.

12. Part Two:
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
and the Colonial Economy of
British North America

13. African Indigenous Slavery
Slavery was widespread in Africa and had been around for thousands of years.
Slaves were the only form of private, revenue-producing property recognized
under African law; no private, personal ownership of land. African political and
economic elites sold large numbers of slaves to whomever could pay
for them.

14. All major European powers took part in the slave trade. In
England, Charles II granted his friends in the Royal African Co.
a monopoly that lasted until 1698. After that, the slave trade
expanded rapidly as individual entrepreneurs entered the business.

15. Not until the latter half
of the 1800s did
Europeans possess the
necessary technologies
(e.g., quinine to fight
yellow fever, steam
engines, repeating
rifles) that would allow
them to colonize the Portuguese (Slave)
interior part of Africa. Trading Post on
Africa’s Gold Coast.
In the 1600s & 1700s,
European slave traders
remained in fortified
coastal trading posts,
where they awaited the
arrival of war captives
to enslave.

16. King of Congo
Receiving Dutch
Ambassadors,
1642
Africans controlled the supply side of the slave
trade, and Europeans fueled the demand.

17. • 12 million people
forcibly migrated; 2/3
of all exported slaves
were male.
• Probably another 4
million died resisting
or in captivity.
• Notice that less than
5% of all slaves were
brought directly to
England’s North
American colonies. It
was much more likely
that a
slave
would
first go
to one
of the Demographic
sugar Impact in Africa
colonies
in the
West
Indies.

18. New England’s colonial
economy was diverse, with
more than one strength to
benefit the British Empire.
Farming, fishing, lumbering--
all were mainstays. New
England was also the
center of the slave trade in
the mainland colonies.
Slavery existed throughout
the colonies. In the South,
fewer people owned more
slaves per capita. In the
North, more people owned
fewer slaves per capita.
Slaves in the North were
more likely skilled laborers.
Slave Ship

19. Demographic Impact
in British North
America
• 1700 -- 25,000
slaves in British N.
America; 1/2 in
Virginia.
• 1760 -- 300,000
Africans in British
N. America; 3/4 in
the South; over
1/2 the population
of South Carolina
was enslaved.

20. The “Triangular Trade”*
• European ships usually made voyages
that consisted of three phases.
• First phase -- Carry European
manufactured goods--textiles, metals,
guns, rum--to Africa and exchange for
slaves.
• Second phase (a.k.a., the “Middle
Passage”) -- Take enslaved Africans to
Caribbean & American destinations.
• Third phase -- Exchange for sugar
(molasses, rum) or raw materials from
America & then go back to Europe.
Textbook calls it the “carrying trade.”

21. Trans-Atlantic Trading Networks (“The Triangular Trade”)
If it was Europeans’
good fortune to be close
to the Americas, proximity
proved to be a misfortune
The for Africans.
Middle
Passage
Slaves were regarded as just another commodity to be bought
& sold in the colonial economy of the British Empire in the New
World. An empire without slavery was unthinkable until 1800s.

22. Lyrics to “Molasses to Rum to Slaves” from the
musical 1776 (1976)
Molasses to rum to slaves, oh Shall we dance to the sound of the
what a beautiful waltz profitable pound
You dance with us, we dance with In molasses and rum and slaves
you
Molasses and rum and slaves Who sails the ships out of Guinea
Ladened with bibles and slaves?
Who sails the ships out of Boston 'Tis Boston can coast to the West
Ladened with bibles and rum? Indies coast
Who drinks a toast to the Ivory Jamaica, we brung what ye craves
Coast? Antigua, Barbados, we brung
Hail Africa, the slavers have come bibles and slaves!
from New England with bibles and
rum Molasses to rum to slaves
Who sail the ships back to Boston
And its off with the rum and the Ladened with gold, see it gleam
bibles Whose fortunes are made in the
Take on the slaves, clink, clink triangle trade
Hail and farewell to the smell Hail slavery, the New England
Of the African coast dream!
Mr. Adams, I give you a toast:
Hail Boston! Hail Charleston!
Molasses to rum to slaves Who stinketh the most?
'Tisn't morals, 'tis money that
saves

23. Slave
Coffle,
Central
Africa,
1866
African war captives from the interior were often marched
hundreds of miles to coastal slave-trading kingdoms--such as
Ghana and Dahomey--and then sold to Europeans.

24. Olaudah Equiano,
Children were
1745-1797
frequent targets
for kidnapping &
enslavement.
Olaudah Equiano,
an Ibo who later
authored a famous
slave narrative
about his
experience in
bondage &
eventual freedom,
was stolen & sold
when he was a
child.

25. Enslaved Africans were confined in barracoons for
weeks or even months while awaiting transport across
the Atlantic Ocean.

26. The Middle Passage
• Journey across Atlantic took 4-6 weeks.
• Sometimes room to sit but often shelved
with only 20 inches of space.
• Slave suicides; disease; filth; revolts.
• Forced feedings; sick thrown overboard.
• Language barriers.
• It is estimated that perhaps ¼ of those
enslaved in Africa did not survive the
Middle Passage.

27. Cross-section of British Slave Ship Regulated for ‘Tight-Packing,’ 1789
The horrific journey to the New World, known as the
“Middle Passage,” was truly hellish. Humans were tightly packed
together in dark, confining spaces & soon found themselves
wallowing in each other’s filth & vomit; some % were sure to die.

28. George Morland,
The Slave Trade
If families had not already been separated prior to their arrival
in the New World, chances were they would be shortly thereafter.

29. Although slave marriages were not
legally recognized, slaves
got married anyway.
Black family life on southern plantations was sustained despite
the high possibility that a family member would be sold.

30. Undated (but likely c. 1800)
Slaves lived their day-to-day existences at the
mercy of their owners’ desires and impulses.

31. Blacks’ resistance to their
enslavement took many
forms--slacking off,
vandalism, theft, poisoning,
murder, & of course, running
away. Some runaways were
able to live in ‘maroon’
communities beyond the
reach of the law. A number
of maroon communities
existed in the Caribbean &
Brazil. In N. America,
maroon communities
existed in northern Florida
among the Seminoles and in
the Great Dismal Swamp of
Virginia & North Carolina.
Black Resistance

32. George Potter & Family Served Tea by a Slave, Rhode Island, 1740.
In Colonial America, slavery existed in all thirteen
colonies (not originally in Georgia, but the ban there was
short-lived). The hub of the slave trade in the colonies
was Newport, Rhode Island.

33. The most significant slave uprising that took place in
Colonial America was the Stono Rebellion in SC, 1739.

34. How did the intl. slave trade end?
• English anti-slavery activists like
William Wilberforce are credited
with bringing pressure on the
British Govt. to end international
slave shipments in 1807; the
U.S. agrees to comply in 1808.
• It will be the 1830s, however,
before a real dent is made in
the slave trade at the source.
African rulers and merchants
will have to be paid off and
bound by treaties. Wilberforce
• Of course, slavery still exists today (in
brothels around the world, in diamond
mines, on chocolate plantations, etc.).

35. ‘Mutual Causation’ Between Racism &
Slavery in British N. America
In American history, racist attitudes toward
Africans technically precede their enslavement,
but once the economic course of plantation
agriculture is set, racism (the idea that blacks
are ‘natural’ slaves because they are biologically
and permanently inferior) becomes an
important belief system used to justify and
rationalize a system of bondage that had become
an economic necessity for whites.