Page 99 - American Stories, A History of the United States

NORTH
3.1 AMERICA EUROPE
BRITISH 2%
NORTH AMERICA ATLANTIC OCEAN
4%
3.2 2%
MEXICO
AND 42%
CENTRAL WEST INDIES AFRICA
AMERICA WEST AFRICA
3.3 6%
SPANISH
SOUTH 6% CENTRAL
AMERICA GUIANAS AFRICA
Equator
PACIFIC SOUTH 38%
3.4 OCEAN AMERICA BRAZIL SOUTHEAST
AFRICA
ATLANTIC OCEAN
ST. DOMINGUE
3.5 Main source of slaves
JAMAICA Percentage of slaves
Caribbean Sea % brought to various
BARBADOS transatlantic destinations

MaP 3.1 origins and desTinaTions of afriCan slaves, 1619–1760 Although many African
slaves were carried to britain’s North American colonies, far more slaves were sold in the caribbean sugar colonies
and brazil where, because of horrific health conditions, the death rate far exceeded that of the british mainland
colonies.

slaves. The problem was supply. During this period, slave traders sold their cargoes on
Barbados or the other sugar islands of the West Indies, where they fetched higher prices
than Virginians could afford to pay. In fact, before 1680, most blacks who reached
England’s colonies on the North American mainland came from Barbados or through
New Netherland rather than directly from Africa (see Map 3.1).
By the end of the seventeenth century, the legal status of Virginia’s black people was
no longer in doubt. They were slaves for life, and so were their children after them. This
transformation reflected changes in the supply of Africans to British North America. After
royal african Company slave- 1672, the Royal African Company was chartered to meet the colonial planters’ demands
trading company created to meet for black laborers. Historian K. G. Davies termed this organization “the strongest and most
colonial planters’ demands for effective of all European companies formed exclusively for the African trade.” Between
black laborers.
1695 and 1709, more than 11,000 Africans were sold in Virginia alone; many others went
to Maryland and the Carolinas. Although American merchants—most of them based in
Rhode Island—entered the trade during the eighteenth century, the British supplied the
bulk of the slaves to the mainland market for the entire colonial period.
The expanding black population apparently frightened white colonists, for as the
number of Africans increased, lawmakers drew up ever stricter slave codes. During
this period, racism, always latent in New World societies, was fully revealed. By 1700,
slavery was unequivocally based on the color of a person’s skin. Blacks fell into this
status simply because they were black. A vicious pattern of discrimination had been set
in motion. Even conversion to Christianity did not free the African from bondage. The
white planter could deal with his black property as he alone saw fit, and one revolting
Virginia statute excused masters who killed slaves, on the grounds that no rational
Quick Check person would purposely “destroy his own estate.” Black women constantly had to fear
Why did the slave population sexual violation by a master or his sons. Children born to a slave woman became slaves
in British North America remain regardless of the father’s race. Unlike the Spanish and French colonies, where persons
relatively small for most of the of lighter color enjoyed greater privileges in society, the English colonies tolerated no
seventeenth century?
mixing of the races. Mulattoes and pure Africans received the same treatment.

constructing African American identities
The slave experience varied from colony to colony. The daily life of a black person
in South Carolina, for example, was different from that of an African American
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