SLAVERY, FREEDOM, AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EMPIRE:
• This was a period of sustained development for British North America.
• The Atlantic was more a bridge between the Old and New Worlds.
• Slaves made up around 280,000 of the 585,000 people who arrived in
Britain’s mainland colonies between 1700 and 1775.
• Slavery existed in every colony of British North America.
SLAVERY AND EMPIRE:
• More than half of slaves arrived between 1700 and 1800.
• The Atlantic slave trade would be condemned by statesmen and
general opinion as a crime against humanity. But in the 18th century, it
was a regularized business.
• The slave trade was a vital part of world commerce.
• The asiento– an agreement whereby Spain subcontracted to a foreign
power the right to provide slaves to Spanish America.
• Dutch in the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713.
• The rising demand for sugar, rice, coffee and tobacco fueled the rapid
growth of the Atlantic Slave Trade.
ATLANTIC TRADE:
• The slave economies of the West Indies were the largest market for
fish, grain, livestock and lumber exported from New England and the
Middle colonies.
• In the 18th century, Atlantic commerce consisted primarily of slaves,
crops produced by slaves, and goods destined for slave societies.
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AFRICA AND THE SLAVE TRADE:
• Most African rulers took part in slave trade and played the Europeans
off on one another, collected taxes from foreign merchants and
keeping the capture and sale of slaves under control.
• Traders purchased slaves brought to them by African rulers and
dealers.
• The transatlantic slave trade made Africa a major market for European
goods, especially textiles and guns.
• Cheap imported textiles undermined traditional craft production,
while guns encouraged the further growth of slavery since the only
way to obtain European weapons was to supply slaves.
• Slavery grew to become more and more central to West African
societies, a source of wealth for African merchants and of power for
newly emerging African kingdoms.
THE MIDDLE PASSAGE:
• The voyage across the Atlantic, known as the Middle Passage because
it was the second, or middle, leg in the triangular trading routes linking
Europe, Africa and America.
• A slave in America could be sold for twenty to thirty times the price in
Africa.
• Measles and smallpox spread rapidly, and about one in five perished
before reaching the New World.
• Less then 5% percent of slaves carried to the New World were
destined for mainland North America.
• As late as 1700, only about 20,000 Africans had been landed in
Britain’s colonies in North America.
• By 1770, around one-fifth of the estimated 2.3 million people living in
the English colonies of North America were Africans.
CHESAPEAKE SLAVERY:
• Tobacco-based plantation slavery in the Chesapeake, rice-based
plantation slavery in South Carolina and Georgia, and nonplantation
slavery in New England and the Middle Colonies.
• More than 270,000 slaves resided in 1770.
• The growing world demand for tobacco encouraged continued slave
imports.
• Eve of the American Revolution, the center of gravity of slavery in the
colony had shifted from the Tidewater to the piedmont farther inland.
• Nearly half of Virginia’s white families owned at least one slave in
1770.
FREEDOM AND SLAVERY IN THE CHESAPEAKE:
