An Economy of Slaves - Sugar and Slaves—The Caribbean
The immensity of land necessitated the need for
cheap labor in the English Colonies.
Prompt: How did economic, geographic, and social factors encourage the growth of slavery as an important part of the economy of the southern colonies between 1607 and 1775?
Economic
Plantation system, triangular trade, mercantilism, slave trade, Middle Passage $ indentured servants, Cash crops (indigo, rice, tobacco ) Rich man vs Poor man’s crops. Tobacco (John Rolfe Jamestown infant industrial revolution 1612)
“King Nicotine” Virginia’s prosperity was finally built on tobacco smoke. This “bewitching weed” played a vital role in putting the colony on firm economic foundations. Page #32
Fatefully, tobacco also promoted the broad-acred plantation system and with it a brisk demand for fresh labor. Page #33
Geographic “Labor intensive crops”
Topography
“Soil butchery”
Climate dictated crops
African resistance to disease malaria/smallpox
Social
Headright system = indentured servants (Social Stratification)
Indentured Servitude| mortality rates
After Bacon’s Rebellion (1676), Slavery becomes race based, because racial coloring offered an easy basis for marking the enslaved apart from the English and Indians
Miscegenation is the mixing of different racial groups through marriage, cohabitation, sexual relations, or procreation. Because of the term's historical use in contexts that typically implied disapproval, more unambiguously neutral terms such as interracial, interethnic, or cross-cultural are more common in contemporary usage.
Barbados Slave codes
Stono Rebellion (1739)
How did economic, geographic, and social factors encourage the growth of slavery as an important part of the economy of the southern coloniesbetween 1607 and 1775? See students thesis submissions to SLAVERY PROMPT
Climate of the southern colonies, plantations thrived, but required massive amounts of manpower in order to function. African slaves were well adapted to the heat of the south and therefore made for a considerably more successful workforce than that made up of indentured servants. With these contributing factors, the economy of the southern colonies became heavily reliant upon cash crops and a slave-based workforce.
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