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Slavery

Slavery is a central component in the history of economics and race relations in the United States. Slavery is significant in this volume because it connects the expansion of the original U.S. colonies and identifies the origins of racism and racial oppression.

The enslavement of millions of Africans was legitimized for the economic growth of Europe through the development of the West Indies and the Americas. The New World was deemed most profitable, and enslaved Africans were used to harvest cash crops such as cotton, tobacco, rice, and sugar. The slave system in North America became law early in the 17th century and legalized the ownership of one person by another.

The process of legalizing slavery made the slave system in the North America unique. Because slavery was incorporated into the laws of the land, slavery was passed on to children from the mother and was a closed system. The legalization of slavery reinforced the inferior status of Blacks and institutionalized racism. This entry looks at the origin, evolution, and end of slavery in the United States.

Origins

Slavery has varied in its practice since the start of human history. People were enslaved because they were in debt, they were being punished for breaking laws, or they had been defeated in warfare. Slavery was not always a closed system nor was one's slave status always inherited. The duration of slavery was for a determined period after which many former slaves became productive members of society. By the 17th century, however, slavery changed because of the potential of massive economic growth in the Americas. European expansionism intensified and the need for a cheap labor source in the West Indies and in Central America was critical. The colonizers considered using Indigenous People but they were dying of disease and indentured servants from Europe proved inadequate. Africa solved this problem.

By the start of the 17th century, Spain authorized the exportation of Africans as slaves to the West Indies and the Americas. By 1510, the European trade of Africans became a stable mode of economic wealth and, by 1518, became the cornerstone of the Spanish economy. Soon other maritime nations—such as England and France, soon followed by the Dutch—fought to become part of the trade that, until then, had been a Spanish-Portuguese monopoly. The competition for control of the trade of Africans dominated Western commerce for centuries. For approximately 400 years, millions of enslaved Africans were forced to endure tremendous suffering while being transported from the West African coast to the New World.

The Middle Passage

The Atlantic slave trade, or the Middle Passage, describes the European slave trade from Africa. The slave trade to the Americas is called the Middle Passage because it made up the middle leg of a three-leg journey (also called the Triangular Trade). The first leg involved a ship sailing from Europe to the Guinea coast of Africa with goods such as cloth, gunpowder, and weaponry used in exchange for Africans. The second leg, the Middle Passage, involved transporting Africans to the West Indies and the Americas; the third leg involved the ship sailing back to European ports with sugar, tobacco, rice, wood, and molasses.

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