Slavery, Atlantic History And British Imperialism

Slavery, Atlantic History And British Imperialism Presented by: Mr. Burnard Date: 21 February 2021 Plan Of Lecture - Origins and Growth of Slavery - The impact of the slave trade on the British Atlantic, Africa and Europe - Demographic and social features of slavery in British Atlantic World before 1807 Racism Or Slavery? The Perpetual Chicken And Egg Question - Eric Williams in Capitalism and Slavery claimed that it was only after the introduction of slavery into the British West Indies that we see racism developing. - Is that right? Little firm evidence either way. - Some assumptions: • Europeans' knowledge of Africans very vague pre 1600 and based on ancient myths such as Prester John • Knowledge of Africans developed ca. 1600 and based on first traveler's tales of West and East Africa with concentration on how Africans practiced slavery • Some positive but mainly negative views of Africans • English people had the example of Iberian chattel slavery to guide them • Most Africans in British America pre 1660 probably enslaved • Barbados and the creation of the Royal African Company crucial to growth of slavery in British America • Imposition of slavery made racism towards people of African descent appreciably worse and got worse over time, though treatment and punishment possibly became easier, at least in the American South though not Caribbean The Unfree World To 1750 - First large shipment West African slaves came to Lagos in the Algarve in Portugal in 1444 - Chronicler Gomes Eanes de Zurara Zurara's Account Of West African Slaves Lagos, Portugal 1444 - "On the next day those captives, placed together in that field were a marvelous thing to behold, because among them were some who were reasonably white, handsome and genteel; others, not so white, who were like mulattoes; others as black as Ethiopians, so deformed of face and body that it seemed to those who guarded them that they were gazing upon images of the lowest hemisphere." Why No European Slavery? - Nathan Huggins: why did Africans enslave other Africans? They did not see them as Africans - David Eltis: the obvious choice for Europeans seeking labor for the Americas was to take poor people from Europe rather than to buy slaves from Africa - Seymour Drescher: the enforcement costs of seizing poor whites would have made European slavery impossible Were Europeans Racist CA. 1500? - Certainly ethnocentric but unclear whether they thought Africans biologically inferior - Some biblical foundations: e.g. Curse of Ham - "Cursed be Canaan and a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren" - Iberians tended towards racist views and other Europeans followed in the wake of Iberians - Knowledge about Africa 17th century and slavery in that continent Were Europeans Racist? - Said al-Andalusi (Toledo Islamic historian) - "Because of the heat of the lands in which they live, their temperaments become hot and their humors fiery, their color black and their hair wooly. Thus, they lack selfcontrol and steadiness of mind and are overcome by fickleness, foolishness, and ignorance." English Racism - Little knowledge of Africans until 17th century - But in Elizabethan literature, blackness was the negative antithesis to desirable whiteness - Descriptions focused on Africans' bodies and beliefs - Thought African character grossly uncivil, treacherous and thieving - Shakespeare: some positive but mostly negative views of Africans Barbados In The Seventeenth Century - Small island 166 square miles eastern Caribbean - English arrived in 1625 and settled in 1627 - Completely covered in dense forest The Sugar Revolution - "The sweet negotiation of sugar" (Richard Ligon, 1647) - Evolutionary, not revolutionary - Sugar monoculture drove out diversified farming - Blacks from Africa eventually replaced white English and Irish indentured servants Benefits Of Sugar Revolution - Demand from Europe very high - Sugar moved from being luxury product to an ordinary commodity - Barbados created a new model of sugar production - the large integrated plantation with large slave gangs (100+ enslaved people), a single place of operations and harsh discipline - Major labor innovation - gangs of enslaved people using lockstep discipline - Planters used means of force to make slaves work Contestation - Slaves hated gang labor and contested its imposition - "The Devel was in the English-man, that he makes everything work, he makes the Negro work, the horse work, the wood work, the water work and the winder work" - Slaves plots in 1686 and 1692 - put down with maximum ferocity - Repression worked The Middle Passage - Olaudah Equaino, An Interesting narrative - Claimed he was an African boy from Ibo region of Nigeria, carried to America as a nine year old boy. May have been from South Carolina. - "The first object which saluted my eyes was the sea, and a slave ship, which was then riding at anchor... These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted to terror, when I was carried on board." Two Demographic Regimes - Slavery brought millions of Africans to British America, the overwhelming majority arriving before 1807 - Most migrants to British America before the American Revolution were enslaved: 71% 1607-1776; 84% 1700-1775 - By 1780 over I million enslaved persons in British America, roughly divided between the British West Indies and British North America - Growth rates very high - between 22% per decade and 35% with the greatest growth rate in the decade before the American Revolution - But two very divergent slave regimes: brutal West Indian regime with natural population decrease and reliance on the slave trade and a less brutal but still coercive and debilitating North American regime wit a naturally increasing population