Slavery and Capitalism

I. Slavery as a means of organizing labor

A. Slavery in the ancient world

1. Slaves as the spoils of war--slaves in ancient times were often captives from war, bound into slavery for the rest of their lives (perhaps), but their children, should they have any, were not made slaves because of a parent’s condition of servitude. Slavery was not an inherited condition, unlike peasantry and later serfdom.

2. No one race or ethnic group was pigeonholed as a sole source of slaves, even though Slavic peoples (slav=slave) were at one time the preferred source of slaves, they were not the sole source.

B. Trans-Saharan slave trade--Arab knowledge of African civilizations south of the Sahara Desert was facilitated by their long participation in the trans-Saharan slave trade.

1. Muslim slavery prohibitions--Sha’ria law prohibited Muslims from enslaving co-religionists as slaves; this acted as an incentive for some sub-Saharan African peoples to convert to Islam, although many more continued to practice in the traditional manner, to traditional, local gods.

2. Christian slavery prohibitions--Christians also developed a similar prohibition against enslaving co-religionists--with the important exception of those co-religionists who converted after being enslaved. This exception was then extended to children of slaves as the Atlantic system of slavery matured (and there were children of slaves who lived to adulthood)

3. Muslim slave traders--in aggregate, because Arab and Muslim slave traders were involved in the trade for hundreds of years before the development of the Atlantic system of slavery, the number of slaves they were responsible for removing from the continent of Africa may have exceeded the estimated 11 million taken during the European involvement in the slave trade; but because they took smaller numbers of slaves over an extended period of time, even if their aggregate number is larger, it caused less social disruption than did the 250 or so years of European involvement.


C. Plantation Slavery

1. Mediterranean model--sugar cane, imported from Asia, was successfully grown on several islands in the Mediterranean Sea. Sugar cane cultivation required a great deal of labor throughout its lengthy growth period, and when the cane was harvested it had to be processed immediately. Slave labor began to be used for the tasks related to growing and harvesting sugar cane because Arab traders were able to provide a ready supply of African slaves from across the Sahara.


2. The Atlantic Islands--when the Portuguese began sailing into the Atlantic on an organized basis in the 1400s, they “discovered” a number of islands that they settled Portuguese people on, or colonized. Besides providing ship stores for the exploration process to Asia, these colonists began growing industrial agricultural crops, like grapes for wine and also sugar cane. To provide a labor force to cultivate and harvest these crops. After finding some of these islands either uninhabited (Madeira Island), or with the natives quickly dying off after being introduced to European microbes (Canary Islands), the Portuguese began using slaves from the western coast of Africa as the labor force.

a) This slave trade was still relatively small scale at this early period, however; as we will see below, it did not occur to the Portuguese to use slaves on a large scale in their largest colony, Brazil, until the Dutch had wrested control of the Atlantic slave trade from them in the early 1600s.


II. The Atlantic Slave Trade--although we will identify various European nations being responsible for transporting millions of Africans across the Atlantic and selling them into bondage, the slave trade in Africa was controlled by Africans, not Europeans. Europeans established “factories” along the Atlantic coast of Africa that existed because Africans were interested in trading with them--the Europeans were interested in obtaining gold and slaves, and the Africans were interested in obtaining guns--and this exchange assisted both sides in fulfilling those wants.

A. Labor in the New World

1. Native Americans

a) Microbes--Europeans and their microbes decimated native populations, reducing those populations by as much as 95 percent in some areas.

b) Escapees--Europeans soon learned that natives had to be transported to new areas to hope to retain their labor, because they were able to use their knowledge of the local terrain to escape slavery.

c) Ill-treatment--inadequate diet and inhuman working conditions (the same conditions that also ended the lives of many African slaves imported to the New World) often killed off those natives who managed to survive European microbes.

2. Indentured servants--mainly English, although the British colonies of North America accepted indentured servants from numerous other European countries because of the severe labor shortage there.

a) Debtors’ prison--with the enclosure of land in England, more people bound it difficult to stay out of debt, and if they could not meet their debt obligations when payment in full was due (no such thing as revolving credit), they usually went off to debtors’ prison until they (or their family) could pay the debt.



b) Spirits--many indentured servants were “recruited” in much the same way that “volunteers” were “recruited” for the navy and army--they were gotten drunk and/or drugged, put on a ship, and sold to the highest bidder upon their arrival. This process was later known as being “barbadosed,” after the island of Barbados, the largest of the British sugar islands.

c) Sold by their families--many poor families, unable to feed all members or deeply in debt, sold older children into indentured servitude, While to our modern sensibilities this seems incredibly cruel, this was merely an extension of the practice of apprenticeship (a child sent somewhere as an apprentice owed his--or her--master (mistress) an extended period of service--usually seven years--during which time they were being trained).

d) Indentured servants, in contrast to slaves, served a defined period of time (usually 7 years), after which time they were suppose to be granted a plot of land, tools, a change of clothes, and a small stipend. Most servants did not live to realize this reward, because the work regimen in the tropical climate killed off most of them.

(1) Indentured servants protested this treatment, arguing that it violated their rights as “free-born Englishmen.” The successes indentured servants had in promoting this idea made the shift to African slaves more attractive for plantation owners.


3. African slaves--slaves were not immediately introduced immediately after the European discovery of the New World, but were gradually introduced as plantation crops were found--tobacco (even the Caribbean islands initially grew tobacco) and eventually sugar cane.


(1) The Middle Passage--refers to the journey of African slaves to the New World. The slave ships that transported these people were tightly packed (as the illustration emphasizes). These ships also spent anywhere from several weeks to several months sailing down the African coast, making numerous stops along the way to buy slaves from the factories (which in turn had earlier bought slaves from sources in the interior of the country). Only after purchasing a full load of slaves would a ship set out on its trans-Atlantic journey, in order to maximize their profits.

(a) 1 in 10 Africans, on average, died on these journeys. The crews on slave ships suffered from about the same mortality rates; the ships were relatively small, people were generally packed into the ships, and diseases and microbes found a wealth of welcoming hosts. Dysentery (then known as flux or bloody flux) was among the most virulent of diseases, along with cholera and other water borne diseases caused by unsanitary conditions.

(b) Slave Markets--once delivered to ports in the New World, slaves were treated much like livestock

4. Slaves? or Indentured Servants?--initially this was a distinction without difference. For example, the first Africans sold as laborers at Jamestown were sold as indentured servants. On these early tobacco plantations there was little need to make such distinctions, because neither slaves nor indentured servants tended to live very long, so plantation owners usually favored indentured servants because of their lower upfront cost.

(a) Cross-cultural alliances--indentured servants and slaves saw little difference in their living and working conditions, and therefore has little hesitation in making cross-cultural alliances during most of the 17th century.


(b) Bacon’s Rebellion (1676)--small property owners, indentured servants, and slaves rebelled against the colonial government in Virginia, which was attempting to keep the peace between the colonials, their servants, and the Native Americans living in the colony. The uprising lasted for 8 months, until leader Nathaniel Bacon died. In the aftermath of this rebellion, real distinctions began to be made between between conditions of servitude of slaves and indentured servants

(c) Sugar Islands--the legal hassle caused by indentured servants over their conditions of work made, coupled with a drop in the price of slaves as a result of greater numbers of imports, made obtaining slaves more appealing to plantation owners.

III. Slavery and English Capitalism


A. Bank of England--many of the early directors of the bank--the men who financed the King’s government and lent the British government money for a healthy return, made their money from the labor of slaves in the Sugar Islands, which they then invested in this institution.

B. Lloyd’s of London--this famous insurance company got its start underwriting risk for owners of slave ships.