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Vocabulary
Middle Passage – the voyage between West Africa and the New World slave colonies

Pueblo Revolt – rebellion in 1680 of Pueblo Indians in New Mexico against their Spanish
overlords

slave codes – a series of laws passed mainly in the southern colonies in the late seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries to defend the status of slaves and codify the denial of basic civil rights
to them

Great Awakening – a tremendous North American religious revival in mid-eighteenth-century

colonial America, striking first in the Middle Colonies and New England in 1740s and then
spreading to the southern colonies

Stono Rebellion – one of the largest and most violent slave uprisings during the colonial period
that occurred in Stono, South Carolina

Mercantilism – economic system whereby the government intervenes in the economy for the
purpose of increasing national wealth

Queen Anne's War – American phase (1702 – 1713) of Europe’s War of the Spanish Succession

King George's War – The Third Anglo-French war in North America (1744-1748), part of the
European conflict known as the War of the Austrian Succession

enumerated goods – items produced in the colonies and enumerated in acts of Parliament that
could be legally shipped from the colony of origin only to specified locations

Black Spirituals – folk songs from enslaved African Americans that told spiritual stories

Malaria – infectious disease spread mainly through mosquitos that came from the old world to
the new world
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slave castles – used to hold slaves before they were loaded onto ships and sold in the Americas
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Chapter 4 Notes
 In 1739, there was a slave rebellion in South Carolina. Many more would follow in the
years to come, which showed their desperation and sense of community. Many slaves run
and some rebel. Most slaves remained enslaved, but built up families and communities,
mixing African traditions with their new homeland.
4.1 The Beginnings of African Slavery
 Portuguese expansion in West Africa was motivated by access to gold, wrought iron,
ivory, tortoiseshells, textiles, and slaves. Many slaves were sent to work on sugar
plantations on the Portuguese island colony of Madeira.
 Slaves were imported to work sugar plantations in Hispaniola and Brazil, among other
islands. The Dutch (being skilled at finance and commerce) expanded the European sugar
market, leading France and England to start island sugar colonies as well.
 West African societies were based on ancient, sophisticated farming systems. Kingdoms
on the coast were the ones who first traded with the Portuguese. Slavery in African
society was much freer; slaves were treated as family members rather than possessions,
were allowed to marry, and had freeborn children.
4.2 The African Slave Trade
 The movement of Africans to the Americas was the largest forced migration in the world
(12.5 million people). The Atlantic slave trade began with the Portuguese in the 15th
century and did not end in the United States until 1808 (elsewhere in the Americas, it was
1867).
 Among the Africans taken to the Americas, the men outnumbered women two to one.
Many were young, and almost every ethnic group in West Africa was represented. The
Portuguese were the most prominent in the slave trade until all western European nations
began to participate in the slave trade, shipping slaves from coastal outposts and, later,
through independent American and European traders. Slave raiding was done by the
Africans themselves (other groups of people).
 Many slaves resented African involvement in the slave trade. Most Africans were
enslaved through warfare. As the demand for slaves increased, slave raids pressed deeper
into the continent. Captives would wait in dungeons or pens called “barracoons”,
separated from family and people of the same ethnic group to discourage rebellion,
before being branded with the mark of their buyer.
 The “Middle Passage” referred to the middle part of the trade triangle from England to
Africa to America back to England. Historians estimate that 1 in 6 slaves died from the
unsanitary conditions, extreme crowding, and diseases. Many committed suicide as an act
of rebellion on the slave ships. Captains resorted to putting netting over the side of their
ships. The people who did survive became emaciated versions of themselves. When the
slaves arrived, their captors would parade them around to impress buyers. Sometimes a
merchant would sell them, and sometimes it would be the captain himself. Slaves would
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be sold at auctions or during a “scramble”, where prices were pre-set and the buyers
would rush the slaves in a corral and take their pick.
 The African slave trade eventually weakened Africa as a whole. The slave raiding was
depopulating Africa as many died during the raids and the rest were sent off to be sold.
There was also a gun-slave cycles that allowed the Europeans to use African states as
tools. The arrival of European goods stifled local manufacturing. The slave trade allowed
for the political, economic, and military conquest of Africa.
4.3 The Development of North American Slave Societies
 Slavery became an important system of labor in North America after two centuries in the
New World. Africans and African Americans made up more than 20 percent of the
population in British North America by 1770.
 The first slaves arrived in Virginia in 1619. Slaves cost twice as much as indentured
servants, but had about the same life span because of diseases. Because of that, most
planters employed more indentured servants than slaves. This was termed society with
slaves, where slavery was just one form of labor. In this type of society, the status of
black Virginians was ambiguous; many owned slaves and land themselves, even with the
lack of religious distinction among them. In slave society, slavery is the dominant form of
labor. As indentured servants became scarce as less English immigrated, their labor was
replaced with slavery. Masters could administer life-threatening violence.
 The growth of tobacco required the growth of the slave trade. The shipment of “saltwater
slaves” allowed for the exploding market for tobacco. The natural growth of the slaver
population served to increase the profits of their owners, and so was encouraged.
 Settlement in the south was a slave society from the beginning, using native slaves.
However, this soon shifted to African slaves as the South began producing more rice.
Under Oglethorpe’s influence, Parliament agreed to prohibit slavery in Georgia, but this
did not work.
 Spanish settlements employed slaves, the most benign form being the kind in Florida,
which resembled the system in use in Mediterranean and African society. Spain declared
Florida a haven for fugitives to weaken southern English colonies. In New Mexico,
however, Spain used native slaves, though in a more restrained way to prevent another
Pueblo Uprising. Spain captured "infidel Indians" such as the Apaches or nomads from
the Great Plains and enslaved them, using them as house servants or fieldworkers.
 Slaves were heavily used in Louisiana agriculture until the Natchez Rebellion, with
slaves making up no more than a third of the population. Only when the 18th century
ended did slavery make a return, in force.
 Slavery was universally accepted in the colonies. Among the rich, ownership of slaves
was almost universal as well. The Quakers were the first to oppose slavery, but they
would not gain traction until the Revolution.
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4.4 African to African American

 Slaves were provided with very little clothing. In the South, many slaves were needed,
and that created communities, despite the harsh working conditions of plantations.
 Families were the most important unit in African American culture, but the slave codes
did not allow for legal slave marriage. Families were often broken up by sale. Naming
practices reinforced family ties to overcome forced separations. Emotional, and
especially kinship ties, formed the basis of African American society.
 Most slaves were not Christian until the Great Awakening, due to the reluctance of their
masters. One significant practice occurred in their burial rituals. African Americans
created dialects by mixing English with native African languages.
 Southerners were influenced by African American culture, changing their diet, their art,
language, music, and dance.
 Slavery came with the threat of violence to slaves. Many slaves resisted through refusing
to cooperate, destroying property, and by running away. Runaways would create
communities called “maroons”, from the Spanish “cimmaron” (wild, untamed). Revolts
occurred in the colonies, but not on the scale of Jamaica, Guiana, or Brazil; the family
and community ties slaves established made them less likely to revolt.
4.5 Slavery and The Economics of Empire
 Slavery helped the British economy in three ways. Slavery created capital, which funded
economic expansion. It created the raw materials necessary for the Industrial Revolution.
It also created large colonial markets for goods made in Britain.
 Mercantilism, an economic system where the government intervenes to increase the
national wealth, was the used heavily in Europe. Mercantilists viewed commerce as a
concept with clear winners and losers trying to acquire a fixed amount of trade and
wealth.
 Mercantilists used state-run monopolies to manage commerce. The British used colonial
regulations to make their American colonies markets for British manufacturing goods and
exporters of commodities that the British would resell at profit. Most did not complain
about the British economic policies until the 1760s.
 European wars spilled over into conflicts for colonial supremacy. In Queen Anne’s War,
Great Britain won the war against France and Spain, gaining exclusive rights to supply
slaves to its American colonies.
 Mercantilism served to enrich the white colonists by giving them a protected market to
sell and market their goods (sometimes by violating their own regulations). Slavery
provided the capital to expand Northern port cities.
4.6 Slavery, Prosperity, and Freedom
 Slavery provided the conditions necessary to improve the life of the white settlers.
Colonies were ruled by the self-perpetuating planter elite, which owned 60% of the
wealth and half the land. The Southern landowners supported them. Under them were the
landless colonists.
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 White colonists gained a special status through the exploitation of race. Blacks were
subject to harsh penalties that did not apply to whites, including a ban on interracial
marriage and sexual relations. Even freedmen did not share equal rights. This set up
barriers among the working class, including slaves and the landless colonists, who
otherwise may have united against the richer classes if racial prejudice did not exist.