5

The Atlantic slave trade flourished in the 1700s. In this century alone more than half of the estimated 7.7 million Africans transported to the New World between 1492 and 1820 arrived. The immensely profitable slave trade was a vital part of world commerce. In the eighteenth-century British empire, slavery, not wage labor, was the norm. Slave plantations contributed greatly to British economic development, and the first mass consumer goods in international trade, namely, sugar, rice, coffee, and tobacco, were produced by slaves and stimulated the growth of the slave trade.

Though the Caribbean continued to be the British empire’s commercial center and the crown’s major revenue producer, slave-grown products from the mainland increased as a share of Atlantic trade. The Atlantic Ocean’s triangular trading routes carried British manufactured goods to Africa and the colonies, brought colonial products including tobacco, indigo, sugar, and rice to Europe, and shipped slaves from Africa to the Americas. Most colonial vessels went back and forth from the mainland to the West Indies, however, shipping agricultural and other goods that the islands couldn’t produce in exchange for plantation crops and slaves. Even merchants from New York, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island participated in, and profited from, the slave trade. In Britain, the slave trade also stimulated the rise of port cities such as Liverpool and Bristol, fostered the growth of banking, shipbuilding, and insurance, and helped finance the early industrial revolution. As slavery became more and more entrenched, so too, as the Quaker abolitionist John Woolman commented in 1762, did “the idea of slavery being connected with the black color, and liberty with the white.”

In the eighteenth century, slavery in West African societies shifted from being a minor institution to a central one. Most African rulers participated in the slave trade, often in ways most beneficial to them. The slave trade made Africa a major market for European goods, especially textiles and guns. This disrupted relations within and among African societies in ways that encouraged the growth of the slave trade and exacerbated conflict among African societies competing for power, goods, and access to slaves. Of course, the loss of tens of thousands of men and women to the slave trade weakened and distorted West Africa’s economy and society.

The voyage across the Atlantic, known as “the Middle Passage,” was a harrowing experience for slaves. Since slaves could be sold in America for twenty or thirty times their price in Africa, slave traders crammed them on the ships as tightly as possible. Given such conditions, including the spread of disease, about one in five slaves died before the ships reached the Americas. Of those who survived, only a small percentage were sold and stayed in the North American colonies, which had a lower death rate than colonies in the West Indies and Brazil, where slave plantation conditions and work were more brutal. The British colonies of North America imported between 400,000 and 600,000 slaves, and by 1770, due to slaves’ natural reproduction, one-fifth of the 2.3 million people in the English colonies (not including Indians) were Africans and their descendants.

Discussion Question:

What was the role of the slave trade in the Atlantic economy?

We often consider the impact of the slave trade only on the United States, but its impact extended much further. How did it affect West African nations and society, other regions of the New World, and the nations of Europe?

Atlantic Trading Routes

Atlantic World Slave Trade

7

The Atlantic slave trade expanded rapidly in the eighteenth century. The mainland colonies received only a tiny proportion of the Africans brought to the New World, most of whom were transported to Brazil and the West Indies.

Slave Trading Vessel

The cargo carried in barrels, generally guns, cloth, and metal goods, were to be traded for slaves. The third image from the left depicts the conditions under which slaves endured the Middle Passage across the Atlantic. The ship carried over 300 slaves. The broadside also included a calculation of the profit of the voyage.

8

Slave Systems in British North America

Chesapeake Slavery

Tobacco plantation system

The Rice Kingdom, Carolina and Georgia

Ironically, Africans taught English settlers how to cultivate rice

“Task” system

Assigned daily jobs

If completed, allowed time for leisure or to cultivate their own crops

9

By the mid-eighteenth century, there were three distinct slave systems in British North America: tobacco-based plantation slavery in the Chesapeake, rice-based plantation slavery in South Carolina and Georgia, and non-plantation slavery in New England and the Middle Colonies.

The tobacco plantations of the Chesapeake, where nearly half the region’s population in 1770 consisted of slaves, was the largest and oldest of the three systems. Extending deep inland, slavery in Virginia existed on large plantations and many small farms. Slavery had created the Chesapeake elite, a landed gentry who dominated the region’s society and politics in conjunction with merchants in the tobacco trade and lawyers defending the interests of slaveholders. Slavery transformed Chesapeake society into an elaborate hierarchy of degrees of freedom: large planters at the top, lesser planters and landowning yeomen below them, and a large population of indentured servants, tenant farmers, convicts, and slaves at the bottom.

Though planters made more laws enhancing the power of masters over their slave property, violence, such as whipping, was at the center of the institution and its perpetuation. As slavery became entrenched, race became a more significant line of social division. Whites increasingly saw free blacks as dangerous and unwanted and restricted the rights that had been given earlier, such as gun ownership for blacks and the vote for free landowning blacks. Because by law, Virginia required freed slaves to leave the colony, free blacks remained a very small part of the population. The concepts of “free” and “white” had become virtually identical.

Rice cultivation in the low country of South Carolina prompted the importation of African slaves there and led to a growing racial divide between whites and blacks. South Carolina was the first colony to have a black majority. By the 1730s, when North Carolina became its own colony, two-thirds of its population was black. Indigo, used for blue dye, also became a staple crop there in the 1740s and was cultivated on slave plantations. Africans were familiar with the crop at home and actually taught the colonists how to grow rice. As opposed to the Chesapeake, where slaves worked constantly in gangs, slaves on the rice plantations worked according to the “task” system, under which they were assigned daily jobs. Once the jobs were completed, they had time for leisure or for growing crops of their own.

Discussion Question:

How did slavery transform the law and society of the Chesapeake?

How did the difference between rice and tobacco cultivation lead to differing plantation systems?

Slavery in the North

Less central to the economy, but not marginal to northern colonial life

lower numbers of slaves made them less of a threat in the eyes of whites

Skilled labor and domestic workers

10

Rice cultivation also developed in Georgia, having been commenced in 1733 by philanthropists led by James Oglethorpe, a wealthy reformer who favored the abolition of slavery. Oglethorpe wanted to create a colony in which the “worthy poor” of England could find economic opportunity; the British government wanted the colony as a defensive barrier against the Spanish and their Indian allies in Florida. Although the colony initially banned liquor and slaves, many of its settlers wanted both, and by the 1740s, colonists were appealing for the English liberty of self-government in order to have slaves. In 1751, Georgia’s proprietors surrendered the colony to the crown, which repealed the ban on slavery and liquor. Georgia quickly came to resemble South Carolina, with large rice plantations supporting a wealthy planter class that dominated the colony.

Compared to the plantation areas, New England and the Middle Colonies were mostly areas of small farms where slavery was not central. Slaves were only a small percentage of the population, and even wealthy families rarely owned more than one slave. Slaves worked as farm labor, in artisan shops, on the docks, and as personal servants. Slaves in the North sometimes had more legal rights than their southern counterparts; in New England, slaves could not be severely physically punished, slaves could bring suits in court, and slave marriages were recognized. A significant number of slaves were present in New York and Philadelphia, although many employers of slave labor turned to wage labor in the years before the American Revolution.

Discussion Question:

What role did slavery play in northern society?

Colonial Slave Population, 1770

11

This table shows the slave population as percentage of the total population of the original thirteen colonies.

Ayuba Diallo

a Muslim merchant in Senegal who became a victim of the slave trade in 1731 and was transported to Maryland. He escaped in 1733 and with the help of wealthy patrons regained his freedom. Because of Diallo’s unusual talents—he knew both English and Arabic—he became a celebrity in England, which he visited in 1733. He sat for two portraits by the noted artist William Hoare. This is the earliest known painting of an African who experienced slavery in Britain’s North American colonies. Diallo returned to his homeland in 1734

12

Slave Cultures and Slave Resistance

Focus Question:

What factors led to distinct African-American cultures in the eighteenth century?

13

 

Slave Cultures

Becoming African-American

Slavery became the bonding experience among different Africans

New identity forged from a mix of African traditions, European elements, and new conditions in America

African-American Cultures

Family – Religion – Gullah

14

Africans brought to the mainland colonies in the eighteenth century were very diverse, coming from different African cultures with different languages and religions. For most of the eighteenth century, the majority of American slaves were born in Africa, and a truly “African-American” people with a cohesive culture shaped by African, European, and American influences emerged only very gradually, through the common experience of slavery.

One of the most difficult transitions for enslaved Africans was the forced change from traditional religions to that of Christianity—the dominant religion of their colonial captors. While many of the forced migrants believed in a universal creator, the similarities between the various African religious practices seemed to resemble certain Native American communities more than Christianity. While some enslaved individuals were familiar with Christianity and/or Islam, most who ended up in British North America came from the more isolated forest regions of West Africa. Even in the eighteenth century many continued to practice traditional African religious or melded them with Protestant forms of Christianity or with Roman Catholicism—depending on the dominant religion in the region of the Americas.

The three different slave systems in British North America produced distinct African-American cultures. In the Chesapeake, a healthy climate led to the natural reproduction of the slave population, allowing for a balanced sex ratio that created family-centered slave communities. Slaves were continuously exposed to white culture, so they learned English and were influenced by religious revivalism. In South Carolina and Georgia, however, the harsh rice plantations created a very different culture. Their low birthrate led to continuous slave imports, and since slaves seldom encountered whites and had more autonomy than those on other kinds of plantations, they were able to create a more African culture. In the northern colonies, where slaves were a small part of the population and dispersed as individuals or small groups throughout the white population, a distinctive African-American culture developed slowly.

Discussion Question:

Three distinct slave systems were well entrenched in Britain’s mainland colonies. Describe the main characteristics of each system.

The Old Plantation

slaves dancing in a plantation’s slave quarters, perhaps at a wedding. The musical instruments and pottery are African in origin while much of the clothing is of European manufacture, indicating the mixing of African and white cultures among the era’s slaves.

15

Slave Resistance

Resistance to Slavery

Desire for freedom

Runaway slaves

Slave uprisings

New York City, 1712

Louisiana, 1731

Stono Rebellion

16

Despite differences between African-American cultures, all were linked by the experience of slavery and hopes for freedom. The most common form of slave resistance was to run away, and in some colonies, fugitive slaves found it easy to assume the identity of free black individuals. Much less common were slave uprisings. The first occurred in New York in 1712, in which a group of slaves burned buildings, killed whites who arrived, and were later executed, with some being tortured and burned alive as a warning to the city’s slave population. Imperial wars in the 1730s and 1740s opened the door for slave resistance in Louisiana and the West Indies.

In 1739, the War of Jenkins’ Ear, between England and Spain, prompted a group of South Carolina slaves to seize arms at Stono. They marched toward the safety of Spanish Florida, which offered security to escaped British slaves, killing whites and shouting “Liberty!” as they went. The Stono Rebellion was crushed by colonial militia and led to the tightening of South Carolina’s slave laws.

In 1741, in New York City, a panic induced by a series of fires led to rumors that slaves were planning to mount a rebellion with white allies and turn the city over to the Spanish. More than 150 blacks and a few whites were arrested, and thirty-four people, including four whites, were executed.

Discussion Question:

How was an African-American collective identity created in these years, and what role did slave rebellions play in that process?

Runaway Slaves

An advertisement seeking the return of four runaway slaves from New York City. Note the careful description of the fugitives’ clothing. The reward offered is a substantial amount of money in the colonial era.

17

An Empire of Freedom

Focus Question:

What were the meanings of British liberty in the eighteenth century?

18

The Evolving British Empire

British Patriotism

The British Constitution

Liberty central to British identity

Rule of the common law

Representation in government

Rights, including trial by jury

Restraints on political authority

19

Although slavery was vital to the British empire, the British people in the eighteenth century believed theirs was the most free and advanced nation in the world. Great Britain was the world’s greatest commercial and naval power and had a complex government with a powerful Parliament representing the interests of a landed aristocracy and merchant class. London, the political, cultural, and economic capital of the empire, was the largest city in Europe, with nearly 1 million residents. The empire enjoyed a common law, common language, and, despite small numbers of Catholics, Jews, and Africans, a common devotion to Protestantism. Britain often found itself at war with France, which replaced Spain as its European Catholic rival. This stimulated a large military establishment, high taxes, and a Bank of England to help finance its wars in Europe and the empire. These wars helped develop a sense of national identity forged against common foes. Britain was celebrated by its people as a nation with a rapidly expanding economy that united both Britons and colonists. Especially in contrast to France, individual liberty, the rule of law, and the Protestant faith were all points of British pride.

Liberty, especially as it was embodied in what came to be called the British Constitution, was central to this emerging British identity. Britons believed that the legacy of the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution had bestowed upon them a unique and ideal political order of institutions that guaranteed their freedoms: the rule of law, legislation consented to by representatives, restraints on arbitrary authority, and individual rights such as trial by jury, enshrined in the common law. Writers in mainland Europe looked to England as a model government, and thinkers such as French political philosopher Baron Montesquieu praised Britain for its “balanced constitution,” in which the House of Commons, the House of Lords, and the king checked one another’s power. In Great Britain, no man, not even the king, was above the law, and Britons believed their political system prevented the tyranny, “popery,” and barbarism that they believed “enslaved” others elsewhere in Europe and the world.

On both sides of the Atlantic, every political cause, it seemed, wrapped itself in the language of liberty and claimed to be defending the “rights of Englishmen.” With the presence of slavery in the empire and large portions of the population disenfranchised, liberty was hardly universal within the British realm. But British notions of liberty were practiced through various forms of participation beyond the directly political, whereby even those who could not vote influenced public life. Ideas of British liberty expanded beyond the “political nation”—those who voted, held office, and engaged in structured political debate—to all members of British society, including laborers, sailors, artisans, and even slaves. Liberty came to mean more than just privileges derived from membership in a distinct social class. It became defined as a general right to resist arbitrary government, and ordinary people invoked liberty and critiqued tyranny in collective actions, sometimes against merchants charging above a “just price,” or officers of the Royal Navy engaged in “impressment”: kidnapping poor men in public for service on the navy’s ships.

Discussion Question:

How did the notion of liberty affect British relations with each other and other Europeans in the eighteenth century?

British Patriotism and Liberty, 1770

Paul Revere illustrates the association of British patriotism and liberty. Britannia sits with a liberty cap and her national shield, and releases a bird from a cage

20

Liberty and Freedom

Republicanism

participation in public life as essence of liberty

virtue

Strong association btw. property rights and liberty

Economic independence key to freedom

Liberalism

Individual and private

21

Liberty was central to two sets of political ideas in the Anglo-American world. Today, they are called “republicanism” and “liberalism” by scholars, but these terms were not used in this way at the time. Republicanism celebrated participation in public life by economically independent citizens as the basis of liberty. Republicans believed that only citizens who owned property had “virtue,” defined as the willingness to subordinate self-interest to a common public good. In eighteenth-century Britain, this body of thought about freedom was most closely associated with a group of critics of the established political order known as the “Country Party” because much of their support arose from the landed gentry. “Country Party publicists John Trenchard, Thomas Gordon, and others had little impact in Britain, but their ideas were heavily favored by the elites of the American colonies who associated land ownership with liberty and political power as a danger to that liberty.

Liberalism in the eighteenth-century British empire meant something quite different from “liberalism” as it is defined today. While republicanism had a public and social quality, liberalism was individual and private. John Locke was liberalism’s leading philosopher, and his Two Treatises of Government, written in 1680, were very influential in the 1700s. Locke argued that governments were constituted through a “social contract” mutually agreed to by equals (here, male heads of households), in which these individuals surrendered part of their right to govern themselves in order to enjoy benefits of the rule of law: security of life, liberty, and property. Protecting these spheres required limiting the interference of the state in religious, family, and economic life. Lockean ideas of individual rights, the consent of the governed, and the right to rebel against unjust or oppressive government became familiar in Britain and its colonies. Nevertheless, Locke’s idea of liberty as a universal right seemed to exclude many from its benefits, as its imagined free individual was, in both theory and practice, the propertied white man.

Republicanism and liberalism, while distinct bodies of thought, overlapped and reinforced each other, and both came to influence and inspire Americans, who came to resist the rule of the British empire.

Discussion Question:

How did the ideas of republicanism and liberalism differ in eighteenth-century British North America?

Two Treatises of Government

John Locke’s influential book that introduced the ideas of a

“social contract”

Individual rights,

consent of the governed,

right of rebellion against oppressive government

Notion of natural rights opened the door to marginalized people although that was not Locke’s intention

22

The Public Sphere

Focus Question:

What concepts and institutions dominated colonial politics in the eighteenth century?

23

Eighteenth-Century Colonial America

The Right to Vote

Property qualification

Larger percentage of men in colonial America voted than in Britain

Political Cultures

24

In some ways, politics in eighteenth-century colonial America seemed more democratic than in Britain. As in Britain, property ownership was the qualification for voting, ensuring that men with an economic stake in society and the independence of judgment that came with property determined government policies. Dependents, who lacked their own will—such as slaves, servants, adult sons living in their parents’ homes, the poor, and women—were all ineligible to vote. But the wide distribution of landownership in America meant that a far higher percentage of the population had the right to vote than to Europe: an estimated 50 to 80 percent of adult white men in colonial America could vote, as opposed to fewer than 5 percent in Britain. In some colonies, free blacks with property could vote. Some colonies also denied the vote to religious minorities such as Jews, Catholics, and dissenting Protestants, while Indians everywhere were generally prohibited from voting.

However, in colonial America, “the people” existed only on Election Day. Competitive elections were rare, and those who voted usually deferred to their social betters in their community, who expected voters to support them because of their patronage, reputation, or social status. Real power resided in officials who were appointed, not elected. Governors and councils were appointed by the crown or proprietors everywhere except Rhode Island and Connecticut, where they were elected. In some colonies, such as South Carolina, the property qualification for holding office was far higher than that for the franchise, ensuring that only the wealthy could be elected. Few ordinary Americans pursued elective office or were active in public affairs. An ingrained tradition of “deference”—the assumption among ordinary people that wealth, education, and social prominence carried a right to public office—limited choices in elections, and often meant leadership roles went to the wealthiest landowners frequently in a generational cycle within the same families.

Discussion Question:

Explain the purpose behind the property qualification requirement and why it differed for voting and officeholding.

Colonial Government

The Rise of the Assemblies

Politics in Public

Expansion of the “public sphere”

Clubs provide public discussion of public affairs

The Colonial Press

Widespread literacy

Political broadsides, pamphlets, newspapers

Libraries

25

Concerned with events in Europe and imperial rivalries, British governments in the first half of the eighteenth century followed a policy of “salutary neglect,” allowing the American colonies to mostly govern themselves. This, in effect, gave large landowners, merchants, and lawyers more power to control local colonial politics, while elected representatives in colonial assemblies believed they represented the popular will, and used their power over colonial finance and taxes to influence policy and appointed officials.

In the eighteenth century, as economic development increased the power of American elites, colonial assemblies became more assertive and insisted that they controlled local affairs in the colonies as much as the House of Commons did in Britain. The most successful governors accommodated the ascendant assemblies and used patronage, such as land grants, to win support. Eliminating the governor’s council, Pennsylvania’s legislature was most powerful, but New York, Virginia, South Carolina, and especially Massachusetts also had powerful assemblies. Colonial representatives invoked liberal and republican notions of liberty in making their claims on colonial and imperial officials.

This language gradually reached beyond the “political nation,” which was dominated by a wealthy and educated American gentry. Particularly in colonial towns and cities, the “public sphere” expanded. This was the space in which political organization and debate independent of

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