Historical Background of Slavery in America: The Issue of Race

The Economic Legacy of Slavery in America

Slavery continues to have an impact on America in the most basic economic sense. As an economic structure—a method of creating and exchanging commodities—American slavery was generally not the same as the remainder of the advanced economy and separate from it. Stories about industrialization often highlight white foreigners and clever designers; however, they frequently overlook the significance of cotton fields and slave labor. This perspective suggests that slavery did not change, yet that slavery and enslaved African Americans had minimal long-term impact on the rise of the US during the nineteenth century, a period where the nation transitioned from being a minor European trading partner to becoming the world's largest economy—one of the central narratives of American history.

Historical Background of Slavery in America: The Issue of Race

With the rise of plantation systems and cash crop economies in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, slaveholders had a financial motive to enforce racial orders to ensure the enslavement of Africans, while also safeguarding profit and opportunity for white Europeans. The shift from small-scale farming to industrial agriculture transformed the lifestyle of these societies, as their economic prosperity depended on the plantation system. Until the transatlantic slave trade was abolished in 1807, more than 12 million Africans were transported to the New World, and over 90 percent of them went to the Caribbean and South America, many to work on sugar plantations. Throughout the New World, the plantations functioned as an institution in themselves, characterized by social and political inequality, racial conflict, and dominance by the planter class (Smith, 2015).

African slaves—initially captured in intertribal warfare but later legally available for purchase in what became a lucrative slave trade—were sold and shipped to the Americas to be the workforce for European colonial enterprises. This African enslavement was driven, not out of a sense of racial inferiority, but to fulfill labor needs. Although initially not profitable, the value of the African slaves themselves, along with the emergence of new European tastes—and a market—for American-produced commodities, such as chocolate and tobacco, eventually resulted in a massive and profitable system of trans-Atlantic trade (Johnson, 2016).

European ships carried supplies to African slave ports. From there, cargoes of captured slaves were sent to the Americas from Africa, where those who survived the horrific journey were sold as property. Plantations, part of a new structure and system of agricultural production, purchased these slaves in large numbers to work fields that grew rice, indigo, cacao, tobacco, and sugar for the return trade back to Europe. Slaves became such a significant part of the population, and their labor such a substantial part of the economy in these colonies, that historians now refer to them as 'slave societies' (Williams, 2017). 'Race,' as it was developed in these colonial slave societies, differed from how it was developed in the US.

Initially, free labor, especially of immigrants escaping religious persecution, was used in North American regions. However, soon the profits of the slave trade were found to be attractive, and the English plantation owners proceeded to organize and finance expeditions to the African coast. The English slave trade was organized initially through state-sponsored companies. From the beginning, however, intruders sought to penetrate these trading restrictions. Like others before, the English discovered that the key to the expansion of their slave trading was to be found in the Americas (Davis, 2018).

Slavery caused racism, but economic motives, not racial motivations, caused slavery. The spread of plantation slavery was linked to the development of capitalism; the decision to import large numbers of Africans and to hold them in perpetual bondage was based on the fact that enslaved Africans were cheaper than any other form of labor then available (Blackburn, 2019).

Like most monumental changes, the imposition of hereditary race slavery was gradual, taking hold by degrees over many decades. It proceeded slowly.

The harsh conditions and low life expectancy of colonists in Virginia eventually changed as settlers became more familiar with its climate and their surroundings. Increased survival and continued influx of colonists brought population growth and increasing demand for land, which became more scarce and further removed from access to roads and water transportation, both essential for agricultural trade. Landholdings in Virginia expanded from the Tidewater region of fertile lands and easily navigable rivers into the less fertile grounds of the Piedmont foothills and beyond, where they clashed with the territorial interests of native groups. The volatility of the tensions grew as the settlement expanded and decades passed, erupting in 1676 in what became known as Bacon's Rebellion. Initially, a conflict between William Berkeley, the governor of Virginia, and Nathaniel Bacon, a wealthy settler in the Virginia colony, over land and Indian relations in the western part of the colony, the rebellion raised concerns about class and race when Bacon went east to Jamestown, the colonial capital. Then pardoned by Berkeley, Bacon returned with armed forces and promised freedom to slaves and indentured servants who rallied to his cause—as did Berkeley, less successfully. His followers seized and set fire to Jamestown and temporarily controlled the colony. The rebellion itself proved short-lived when Bacon died unexpectedly a month later and many of his followers were executed, but its larger implications remained. Beyond Bacon's specific issues, the alliance between poor whites and African slaves and freedmen in his rebellion produced a larger concern that such an alliance might be a continuing cause of further revolts and class uprisings (Horne, 2020).

Lifetime servitude could be enforced only by eliminating the possibility that an individual might be freed through Christian conversion. One approach was to prohibit this traditional route to freedom. As early as 1664, a Maryland statute stated that Christian baptism could not affect the legal status of a slave. A solution, however, involved removing religion altogether as a factor in determining servitude. Thus, another essential key to the horrific transformation was the shift from mutable spiritual faith to immutable physical appearance as a measure of status. Gradually, the dominant English came to view Africans not as 'barbarous people' but as 'black people.' They began to describe themselves not as Christians but as whites. Furthermore, they increasingly wrote this shift into their colonial laws. Within a generation, the English definition of who could be made a slave had shifted from someone who was not a Christian to someone who was not European in appearance. It was a small yet crucial step from saying that dark people could be enslaved to stating that Negroes should be enslaved. As if this momentous shift were not enough, it was accompanied by another. Those who wrote the colonial laws not only moved to make slavery racial; they also made it hereditary. Under English common law, a child inherited the legal status of the father (Morgan, 2021).

With the solidification of servitude came the rise of race. Previously, people's appearance and origins had not mattered as much before socially, especially among the working class. The physical distinctiveness of African slaves—now lacking comparable European indentured servants—however, not only signified their newly created subordinate position within Virginian society, it became the basis and reason for that position. Virginia's model, in turn, became a model that other British colonies with slaves, when they were established, followed with a mutually reinforcing dynamic. 'Race' explained why Africans were slaves, while slavery's degradation provided the evidence for their inferiority (Jordan, 2022).

Conclusion

In conclusion, the economic and racial foundations laid by slavery have had lasting impacts on the United States. The intertwining of economic motives with racial ideologies created a system that perpetuated inequality and injustice, the effects of which can still be felt today. Understanding this history is crucial for addressing the ongoing challenges of racial inequality and economic disparity in contemporary America.