Staples, Slavery, and a Subprime Aristocracy

The Black Legend

Christian Love in New Spain

• Laws of the Indies (1512, 1542, etc.)• 1537 – Pope Paul III condemns mistreatment of Indians• Ban on Indian slavery, but labor still forced

Indians in New Spain inconveniently died out from disease and overwork

What to do?

Here Come the English

English view of Irish, 1580

Plymouth and London Companies• “Virginia”=whole

east coast• Popham colony

(Aug. 13, 1607)• Jamestown (May

14, 1607)

English settlement in the Chesapeake, ca. 1650

The Chesapeake

• An economic proposition• For-profit agriculture• The labor problem

Colony was almost a total disaster until tobacco was successfully cultivated

John Rolfe and Pocahontas, daughter of the chief of the Powhatan Confederacy

The only portrait of Pocahontas

Powhatan, the most prominent Indian leader in theoriginal area of English settlement in Virginia

Life in the Chesapeake

• Mostly men• Mostly indentured servants, at least at first• One of the long term results of enclosure

movement in England

William Hogarth’s well-known engraving Gin Lane

A pamphlet published in 1609 promotingemigration to Virginia.

“Freedom” in the Chesapeake

• From free to unfree• Serfs vs. servants vs. slaves• “Liberties”• Short life expectancy

• 1607 and 1670• 15,000 Indians in the Chesapeake area reduced to

2,000

The Elusive Promise

• Bacon’s Rebellion (1676)• Rage over lack of land, corruption• Gov. William Berkeley

The Looming Danger

• Perennial threat of border warfare• Longer life expectancies• Stimulus for slavery

Slavery in the Chesapeake and Carolinas

• Problem of Indian slavery• Benefits of exploiting Africans• Tobacco in Virginia

• Rice and indigo in Carolina• Tobacco, timber, and tar in NC• Yamassee War (1715-1717)

The Big Number

• 300,000 slaves to North America in 1700s

• More than ½ of all “migration” to English colonies 1700-1775

• Up to 20 million Africans brought to New World• Many died in Africa, before departure

The Middle Passage

• Estimates of up to 4 millions deaths, between 1500-1900• 15% of slaves died in transit

• Triangular trade• “Atlantic World”

The variety of slave experience

• Large plantations in Chesapeake– Exposure to English language, religion

The variety of slave experience

• Huge plantations in SC low-country– Disease– Greater persistence of African culture– Gullah

The variety of slave experience

• Elsewhere:– Small farms, isolation– Esp. in New England

The variety of slave experience

• Urban slavery– New York– Work in trades– Greater autonomy– “Mulatto” class emerges in Charleston, Savannah,

New Orleans

An advertisement for tobacco includes images of slaves with agricultural implements.

Processing tobacco was labor-intensive

Life Goes On in the 18th Century

• “Anglicization”• Consumer Revolution• Diversity vs. homogenization

• Anglican Church dominant in South, Congregationalists in New England

• French and Indian War (1763)• Enduring hostility between coast and frontier

Avarice & Exploitation: What Could Go Wrong?

• Planters in the South aspired to be aristocrats• Instability of cash crop production• Risk of debt in commercial agriculture• Classic boom/bust in 1760s• Bitterness of indebted planters fuels

radicalism?