2. announcements
• Please turn in paper # 1. You are not eligible to
take the midterm exam unless you have turned in
paper # 1. Deadline: Tuesday 11/8.
• Please see me after class for conflicts for Mon
11/14 midterm, 10:10 – 11:45 am.
• If you saw Amistad, you may write a 3 – 5
paragraph review as one of your 3 papers this
semester. Reviews are both objective (summary)
and subjective (analysis & evaluation).
7. Triangular trade
• Africa to New World: human cargo.
• Colonies in N America to W Europe:
agricultural & other raw materials desired in
Europe: tobacco, sugar
(molasses, rum), rice, wheat, lumber.
• W Europe to Africa: manufactured
goods, textiles, iron implements, ship wares.
12. Caribbean, aka West Indies
• Overwhelmingly young
men.
• Societies rapidly
became Black majority.
• European whites mostly
could not stand the
tropical climate.
• Sugar cultivators often
worked slaves to death.
• Also Brazil.
15. tobacco
• The major colonial export in 18th c.
• Required year-round attention & many steps in
process.
• W Africans had been agriculturalists.
• 17th c – societies with slaves; owners, servants, slaves
worked together. 1st generation slaves had previous
experience elsewhere & participated in & utilized
British culture (church, legal system, etc.)
• 18th c – slave societies – elite owned large plantations
w hundreds of slaves. Increasingly African-born,
saltwater slaves, direct from African interior.
17. Northern cities
• New York had largest proportion of slaves.
• NY, Boston, Philadelphia, Newport – port
cities, men’s work in shipping, transportation,
& ship-building; women’s work as domestics,
weavers, etc.
• 10 – 20% of population in 17th & 18th c.
• Northern merchants began to replace British
as slave traders.
19. Lower South
• Slave societies; slavery was model for whole
culture.
• Rice required large plantations to be
profitable.
• Rise of elite planter class.
• Profits put back into extension of slavery. No
diversification of economy.
20. significance of slave-created
products
• tobacco, sugar, coffee, tea – tropical,
not grown in N & W Europe
• addictive
• proletarian hunger-killers
• sped up daily work of people who consume
• sustained work force of the Industrial
Revolution & postindustrial age, including us!
21. development of slavery
• In 17th c North America, African slaves &
European indentured servants shared many
similarities. Most slaves imported from
Caribbean or W African coast; previous
knowledge of European world. Small # of slaves.
• 1660s & later, colonial legislatures passed laws
regulating Africans – no intermarriage, heritable
status, harsh penalties for disobedience, clear
division from indentured servants based on race.
22. development of slavery
• 18th c. Africans, direct from interior, became
majority of slaves.
• Southern plantation elite dominated their
colonies. Less affluent whites moved west.
• Slavery differed substantially across time, across
geography, across economies, and from urban to
rural areas.
• Freedom for whites based on slavery of Blacks is
most important contradiction in US history.
23. assignment for next week
• Primary sources about slavery, from Zinn &
Arnove, Voices of a People’s History of the US,
51 – 61.
