Weekly Assignment 4

 Slavery was the basis of the so-called Atlantic system. We have spent much time in class discussing the economic effects of slavery on the Americas and Europe, but there was another continent effected by the slave trade--Africa. State and provide evidence to back up your position regarding the effects of the slave trade on African states. This paper should fill at least two sides of an 8.5x11 sheet of paper, with one inch margins and a conventional 12 point font. This assignment is due at the beginning of class on Thursday, February 7.

Slavery and Racism

I. Slavery and Racism

A. The Market in Labor--the demand for labor was so great in the Americas that a variety of ways were attempted to fill it.


1. Slavery--term of servitude is for the life of the enslaved. With the creation of racism, this is changed to a condition that is inherited by the offspring of slaves--which had not been the case before.


2. Indentured servitude--term of service limited by contract (although penalties could--and did--lengthen the terms of that contract). Indentured servitude was also never an inherited condition.

3. Waged labor--the smallest portion of the labor force in the Americas. Workers at this time--even the portion who were not slaves or indentured servants--were not often paid weekly wages; the barter system, payments in kind were the usual form of payment. Cash money was often in short supply.



B. The Invention of Race

1. Indentured servants and slaves--the distinction without difference, because plantation owners made no distinctions in their treatment of the two kinds of workers.


a) Intermarriage--between slaves and indentured servants was not an unheard of phenomenon (as well as those familial relationships not sanctified by church or state)


2. Racial distinctions--Spanish, Portuguese, and French colonists tended to be largely male, and often took slave women and native women to cohabitate with; offspring from these relationships made up the largest portion of the “creole” population of the Americas. These “new Americans” were themselves often slave owners, or at least free members of society, inhabiting a place in the social hierarchy just below the Europeans.

a) Mestizo (Metis,in French)--of European and native descent.

b) Mulatto--of European and African descent.

c) Other racial distinctions were also made by ancestry (or “blood”).


3. Indentured servant/slave uprisings

a) Bacon’s Rebellion (1676)--although led by the cousin of the colonial governor, Nathaniel Bacon, most of the participants were indentured servants, slaves, and former members of both groups who had received their freedom and were now small property owners--all of whom now wanted access to the land held be the remaining native peoples in Virginia, which the colonial government had promised the natives they would be able to keep.


4. Aftermath


a) Distinctions began to be made in the treatment of servants and slaves--and the employment of indentured servants became less favored where slavery played on important role in the economy.


(1) Prohibition against any “negro or other slave” to resist any white person; i.e., to not follow their direction or to engage in any kind of physical confrontation, including self-defense (1680).

(2) In 1696 it was made lawful to kill “such negroes, mulattoes, and other slaves” who unlawfully absented themselves from the service of their master/mistress (runaways).

(3) This same law made it illegal for blacks, mulattoes, Indians, and whites to marry--a law that remained on the books in Virginia until 1967, when the US Supreme Court handed down its decision in Loving v. Virginia.



C. Justifications for racism--all of these justifications were meant to make Africans (and, by extension, people of African descent) somehow inferior, and therefore it their condition of perpetual servitude a result of this inferiority.

1. Sons of Ham--Ham was allegedly a son of Noah who observed his father in an indelicate position while Noah was sleeping off a drunk, and for this Ham and his descendents had their skin blackened and were forever fated to be servants.

2. “Scientific” justifications--in the Age of Enlightenment, scientific methods were used to “prove” the racial inferiority of Africans; eventually, slavery would “improve” the Africans merely by exposure to European culture.


a) Native Americans by contrast were the “noble savages” because they were allegedly resistant to being enslaved (their mortality rate and diminishing numbers made them less attractive as slaves as the number of imports from Africa increased).

b) Because Africans were readily replenished by slave traders, and the role of the slave was subservient to the slave master, it became easy to believe that there was a link to this subservient role because of some “racial” difference.


II. Capitalism and the Enlightenment


A. Market relations--were a reflection that society was undergoing change. Market relations promoted new ideas about society--that in the marketplace, money was the only distinction that mattered, and the distinctions based on the old ideas of dominance and deference had less meaning.

B. Whither deference?--not really, because members of the “better sort” in society were also able to command more wealth, so their status really was not undermined so much as the status of the nouveau riche (the new rich) was legitimized


III. Free Labor v. Unfree Labor

A. Creating the “Wealth of Nations”


1. Wealth in land--the long-held traditional view of the font of wealth

2. Mercantilism--the accumulation of gold and silver, either through direct acquisition (mining) or by trading for it.

3. Capitalism and the Labor Theory of Value


a) Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations--Smith wrote that “The annual labor of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with the necessities and conveniences of life. Labor is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities.” Smith argued that labor could be used in two ways: Productively, and unproductively.


(1) Productive labor--that labor used to make commodities to be consumed those engaged in other labor or as “capital” to be used in producing more goods. Labor’s output helps to produce more output.

(2) Unproductive labor--labor that was immediately consumed without helping to create a new commodity; among the unproductive labor is the labor of servants, as well as what Smith termed the “frivolous” professions--churchmen, lawyers, physicians, men of letters (like Smith?) players, buffoons, musicians, and gentlemen. As well as those who made a living collecting rent on land without making any improvements.

(3) “Just” wages--if workers’ labor created most of the wealth, why didn’t workers receive most of the wealth they created?

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; 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.

Written Assignment 3

Compare and explain the reasons for differences or similarities between the European colonies of North and South America. This assignment should fill at least two pages of 8.5x11 in. paper, machine-produced in a conventional 12-point font, and is due at the beginning of class on Thursday, January31.

The English Plantation of the New World

I)              Spain and the “Black Legend”  -- Spain’s mistreatment of native inhabitants in the New World legitimated the attempts by other European governments (Netherlands, France, and England) to attempt to undermine Spanish control, and to make their own claims in order to proselytize Christianity—and to seek riches in the territory that they could claim and hold.

a.    Cortes and Pizarro—the phenomenon success of Cortez with the Aztecs and Pizarro with the Inca people set the early model for Spanish behavior in the new world—the conquest. This model had only limited success after Cortes and Pizarro, however; outside of the centralized native societies in Mexico and South America, the Spanish found it nearly impossible to maintain their advantage and control.

                                               i.     Cabeza de Vaca—part of a conquistadores party led by Panfilo de Narvaez, who was determined to outdo rival Cortes in Florida. Plagued by hit-and-run raids from Apalachee people, planned to build barges and coast around Gulf from present-day Tampa back to Mexico; on the Texas coast five barges caught in storm and wrecked. Passed among numerous native peoples because of their “healing powers.” Ultimately made it back to Mexico, where Cabeza de Vaca became an advocate for humane treatment of natives (and to publish an account of the to-then inhumane treatment; along with Casas, these accounts led to a change in policy for Spanish—but also to the idea of the Black Legend); two others in the party came back with fantastic stories of lost cities filled with gold.

                                              ii.     Hernando de Soto—accompanied Pizzaro to Peru, which had made him a rich man, but he wanted to outdo Cortes, as well. Both Soto and Coronado, who followed him, were suppose to follow the new, gentler “pacification” policy of the Spanish government. Once in the bush, however, both leaders permitted their men to follow the old conquistadores model of rape, pillage, murder and mayhem. Along with the microbes that accompanied the Spaniards, this devasted the Mississippian peoples, forcing them to abandon their cities (the seats of their advanced culture), and move in among the hill people, who had been their subjects, and who had a less advanced culture.

                                             iii.     Francisco Vasquez de Coronado—excited by the prospects of finding “Cibola,” a city in the American southwest purported to rival the wealth of Tenochtitlan, Coronado invested most of his own wealth in financing a party to find it in 1540. As the group neared the Rio Grande, they came upon a group of Pueblo people; appropriating their food, houses, and women.

b.) Spanish forces in Florida—because of the success of privateers, Spanish officials came to see the necessity of controlling the waters between Florida and the Bahamas. To that end, they set up a military installation at St. Augustine, the first permanent settlement of Europeans in the present-day confines of the US. In order to hold this settlement, however, felt it necessary to defeat nearby settlement of French Huguenots (protestants) who the Spanish “put to the knife.” Although maintaining St. Augustine was a money loser, Spain did so in order to attempt to keep privateers from feasting on the annual convoy between Mexico and Spain.

c) Pueblo revolt of 1680 (aka Pope’s Rebellion)—explain the attempts by Dominican friars to convert Pueblo people.

II)     Native Culture in the Chesapeake

A)   Native farming methods – reliant upon growing corn, beans, squash, and gathering nuts and berries, as well as fruit (all of this work was accomplished by women and children), which was supplemented by hunting and fishing (done by the men of the group).

1)   Field rotation – trees were girdled (explain girdling—deep cuts were made in the trunk, which killed the tree and the canopy, which allowed sunshine to reach the floor; fires were also set to clear land, promote growth of berry plants).  After the fields were used for several years, the natives left the field (allowing it to lie fallow—a practice also of the Europeans), and the process was repeated at a new site.  In this way, the natives cultivated the forests, promoting the growth of plants the used for food, and allowing the trees that remained to grow to great heights (since this practice had been going on for several hundred years before the European invasion)

2)   One acre/person – it generally took slightly less than an acre per person to grow a sufficient amount of food in the native style; this style of agriculture is generally used in “underdeveloped” countries (which included most of England at this time, outside of East Anglia, were the Puritans originated).

3)   Promotion of diversity of plant life – although plant life was somewhat restricted by this practice, plant and animal life was still relatively diverse, and therefore provided the natives with a diverse diet; this probably prompted the English explorers and settlers in Roanoke to proclaim the area a paradise.

4)   Leisure time – this method of cultivation provided the natives, particularly the men, with a great deal of leisure time, which they used for other pursuits.

(a) Warfare – became a ritualized practice (if no less deadly, in certain instances), a way to demonstrate masculinity rather than a way to promote a particular political advantage (hegemony); wars were also a way to gain population if it was diminishing.

B)   Powhattan Confederacy – perhaps the single strongest political organization of native peoples on the east coast; this fact spoiled the English plan to play one group of native peoples against another (which was suggested by Richard Hakulyt, after the Spanish method as practiced in Central and South America)

1)   Political situation – Powhattan’s rule was relatively light-handed; other peoples did have to pay tribute, but it was not excessive, and the benefits of remaining within the confederacy outweighed anything the English were able to offer for a number of years.

III)   English culture

A)   Rule by the Elite – the House of Lords in 1603, the eve of the English attempt to establish a permanent settlement in Virginia, consisted of 55 nobles (expanded to 126 by 1628, as the king needed more revenue and as the merchant class expanded); the so-called House of Commons was larger, but really not much less elite—it was composed of (and elected by) the economic elite of England, who used their positions to promote their continued economic well-being (much like the Republican Party in the United States); together the two houses were elected by and represented no more than 15% of the adult male population in the country.

1)   Local rule in the English cities, towns, and countryside carried out by the nobility; local courts were run by an controlled by this economic elite, which meant that “crimes” underwent a transformation, which promoted the expropriation on the part of the economic elite of commons areas, while criminalizing commoners use of the “commons.”

B)   Sacred Law – derived from the King (who had declared himself head of the Church in England), and the King then delegated this authority to bishops, who in turn delegated a portion of this authority to priests and other clergy at the local level.  The purpose of this was to control “moral” behavior (as defined by the elite, of course), including the conduct of daily life.

C)   The Protestant Work Ethic – the rejection of the “idle” life; in part, this was related to the rejection of Catholicism and its holy days, which were often the appropriation of a variety of pagan (that is, pre-Christian) beliefs.

1)   Statute of Artificers (1563) – this was a response to the belief that the economic pie was of a fixed size, and that it had to be divide up to give work to as many people as possible; this was also an early attempt to legislate a change in the way people worked, and to criminalize the resistance of workers against this new method of organizing work.

(a) Set hours of labor – March thru September, suppose to work from 5am to 8pm, with meal time not to exceed 2 ½ hours all together (work day was to equal a total of 12 hrs.).  The winter months’ workday was shorter, since the amount of daylight precluded working a longer day.

(b) Set terms of apprenticeship – usually a seven-year period; also set what they were to be provided at the end of their apprenticeship.

(c) Forbade sons of craftsmen to learn another craft

(d) Forbade craftsmen to engage or practice another craft than the one in which they had been appointed.

2)   Life of the gentleman – defined, in part, by not performing manual labor; a gentleman also supported a retinue of servants and retainers.

IV) Clash of Cultures at Jamestown

A)   Virginia Company – group of investors, expecting a return on their investment, on the model of the West Indies Company that had financed the sugar plantations in the British Caribbean

B)   Captain John Smith – a much more complex character than Disney would lead you to believe; short, swarthy, and hairy (by contemporary accounts); Smith proposed to overcome the natives militarily and then enslave them, using the Spanish model.

1)   Jamestown settlement – reliant upon Smith’s ability to cajole and threaten to get corn from the natives; the natives soon realize this and threaten to abandon the area and allow whites to stave to death.

(a) Why did not natives follow through on this threat? Trade?

C)   “The Starving Time” (1607) – then inability of the Jamestown settlement to grow enough food for themselves, combined with the diseases they contracted which incapacitated a number of them, meant that for the first several years the people of the settlement were reliant upon food arriving for them from England.  When shipments were delayed or did not arrive, a number of settlers quietly starved to death.

1)   Smith’s leadership – ameliorated this condition somewhat, since he decreed and enforced that all settlers were to put in 4-6 hours a day in the fields (or they would not eat).

(a) Reasons – the Virginia Company had no idea what it would take to set up a productive colony in North America; they sent workers like goldsmith and jewelers, whose crafts provided a newly established settlement with no useful skills, and would not for a number of years; the people sent to Jamestown were also top-heavy with gentlemen, who did no manual labor by station, and not enough husbandmen and farmers.

2)   Completely dependent upon natives supplying them with food – but the relations with the natives were strained; battles with natives broke out in which military operations were carried out which would burn villages and destroy caches of the corn crop—which the English themselves were dependent upon.

3)   Cannibalism – Recorded instance, in which a man killed his wife, chopped her up and ate her, in an area of abundant game, fish, fruits, nuts, and berries.  Also instances of the dead being dug up so that the living could eat them.

D)   Social composition of Jamestown settlers

1)   Gentlemen – 36 of 105 settlers, which meant that nearly 1/3 of settlers, expected that they would perform no manual labor because it was beneath their station in life.

2)   Craftsmen – made up the largest portion of the population, but none expected to work outside of their area of training, or outside of their craft (due to restrictions that they had always practiced that craft under—namely, the Statute of Artificers.  Too often, their particular craft was not needed, so they sat around pursuing leisure activities (gambling, etc.) while they and their fellows starved to death.

3)   Husbandmen and farmers – made up the smallest portion of the settlers, but they were expected to produce enough food for the entire settlement.

This organization of society seems senseless to us today—after all, if one were starving, why would you just accept that fate and not try to find food for yourself?  But many English were use to an inadequate diet and hunger while they were in England, and they had no expectation that life would be substantially different for them on a new continent.

V) The Tobacco Boom (1611-1630, approximately) – the best grade of tobacco came to Europe from Turkey; Virginia tobacco was considered a grade or two below that, but tobacco was destined to provide the colony with a way to attract new investment.  At first, tobacco was seen as undesirable, an unclean habit; it increasingly gained favor, however, with a resultant rise in the value of tobacco.

A)   Price boom – by 1619, the price a tobacco farmer could get for tobacco was approximately three shillings a pound (or approximately $1,500/hogshead barrel, which equaled about 300lbs.).  This price only prevailed for about ten years, however; as the market was flooded with Chesapeake tobacco, the price declined, until in 1630 the price for a pound of tobacco had declined to about a penny a pound (or $5.00/hogshead)

B)   Labor shortage – to take advantage of this tobacco boom, tobacco growers needed to get labor to the colony to produce the crop to sell to merchants in England.

1)   Tobacco labor-intensive – the growing, harvesting, and processing of tobacco were all labor-intensive.  It takes a year and a half for the tobacco plant to mature, and the plant needs a lot of attention to flourish.

(a) One person could attend to approximately 2,000 tobacco plants, which in turn would yield about 500lbs of tobacco; therefore, the more labor one could employ (but not necessarily in the definition of pay), the greater one’s chances of making a substantial amount of money there were.

2)   Labor “surplus” in England – England during this time was undergoing a period of consolidation of land holdings on the part of the landed gentry (the enclosure of the commons), and the early beginnings of the Industrial Revolution (where peasants who where being pushed out of farming were in the process of becoming wage workers in factories in urban areas).

3)   Labor “recruitment” – from prisons and workhouses, as well as those recruits of “spirits” and “crimps” who simply kidnapped persons of the lower classes, and put them on ships to the Americas to be employed as indentured servants (a practice which was known among this population as being “barbadosed,” because Barbados was the destination of the greatest share of such people, to work on the sugar plantations)

(a) “Seasoning” – ships with new indentured servants usually arrived in Virginia at the beginning of summer. The combination of a long, arduous journey, general malnutrition, and a variety of diseases then prevalent during the summer in the Chesapeake area (like malaria, typhus, and diphtheria), combined with the pace of work killed off a horrific number of workers.

(b) Massacre of 1622 – a surprise attack by natives upon Jamestown resulted in the killing of 347 men, women, and children; this resulted in a retaliatory strike by the remaining Jamestown settlers, and a determination to wipe out natives in the area once and for all; however, its also prompted an investigation by Parliament which uncovered the fact that despite the immigration of 3,570 people in the three years proceeding the native attack, only 1,240 English subjects were alive at the time of the attack.  The population of Jamestown before this period of intensive immigration was 700—which meant that 3,030 people had died in the preceding three year time period.  On top of this, the Virginia Company was nearly bankrupt; in 1624 the crown took over responsibility for the settlements in Virginia.  The population losses decrease after this, but remained relatively high throughout the 1620s and 1630s.

C)   Population increase from 1640 – due to the drop in demand for tobacco (the market was glutted at this time period), other crops were grown which were then sold to plantations in the Caribbean

1)   Propagation of apple trees – used largely to make cider, which meant that less contaminated water was consumed, which decreased the prevalence of diseases like dysentery and typhus)

2)   New arrivals in fall – rather than new workers arriving in the beginning of summer, they arrived at the beginning of fall, which gave them a longer time to acclimate themselves.

D)   New Problems

1)   Increased demand for land – as more servants survived their period of indenture, there was a corresponding increase in the demand for more land.

(a) Head rights – the term used to explain the right to land that one claimed when it could be proven that one making such a claim had paid for the passage of another to the colony (this helped provide a larger number of planters to employ indentured servants, who themselves were usually promised a substantial amount of land and the tools to work it in return for their labor); because unimproved land was more valuable than improved land (tobacco could only be grown for a three or four year period before exhausting the land), those who could afford to employ indentured servants benefited.

2)   Increased costs of labor – as more indentured servants survived their period of service, they made greater demands for land.  When indentured servants did not survive the seven years of their service, it was more economically viable for large planters to employ indentured servants; as these indentured servants began to live longer, however, the employment of slaves became more attractive.

(a) Higher initial cost of slavery – the employment of slaves had a higher start-up cost; however, since one could amortize this cost over the productive life of the slave, the cost ended up being less than that for indentured servants.

The fact that life expectancy improved for both white indentured servants