The years 1620-1760 caused immense changes to the North American continent. The Native Americans first encountered European pilgrims, and in the blink of the eye, saw their world change by European pioneers. Not only did the Europeans venture to the Americas, but they also traveled to Africa. There they established a transatlantic slave exchange. This slave exchange would begin a different cultural and financial system; where the pigment of skin determines whether that person might live as a free man or be a slave for the rest of their life.
The development of Western seaborne slave exchange to Africa dates back 50 years to Columbus's first journey to the Americas. This originated with the Portuguese, who traveled to West Africa in pursuit of gold. Prince Henry, a wealthy Portuguese founder, wished to introduce prosperity in Portugal, supported its first Europeans to exchange onto the West Coast of Africa. Portuguese sailors first received gold dust from merchants on the west coast of Africa in 1441. Portuguese traders arrived from Africa the next year with further gold dust and yet another cargo: ten Africans (Clark et al.).
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Forty years after that first human shipment sailed to Portugal, Portuguese sailors were authorized by a prominent African chief to establish a trade station on the coast of Guinea. It was near an area that had been exploited for gold for many years and was named Elmina. While initially constructed to exchange in gold and ivy and other commodities, Elmina was one of many trading routes established by Europeans along the west coast of Africa that would also result in Africans being imported (Clark et al.).
Approximately 200,000 Africans were already exported to Europe and the Pacific islands by the end of the 16th century. However, after Columbus ' journeys, slave traders discovered a different slave market: New World plantation. Colonists have switched to the swift and lucrative production of sugar in the Spanish Caribbean islands and Brazil by the mid-1500s, a plant that required extensive focus and hard work. They tried to persuade native Americans, but many died as a result of European-led diseases. Thus, the remaining Indians did not want any part of the work, returning to the land they came to know. Through recruiting slave laborers from Africa, European settlers sought a solution to their increasing labor shortages.
Some think the first Africans in Virginia were indentured servants, similar to the white indentured servants. Despite the word ‘servant’ on paper, Africans will always look as unconventional and treated negatively. In any case, bondage evolved rapidly toward the standard work relations between black and white in the New World. All of them were indentured. They had been fed and housed during their tenure as servants. They would then be granted 'freedom dues,' which typically included a piece of land and provisions. No matter the pigment of skin, the people become independent. The indentured servants started to pose a threat to the property-owning aristocracy, mainly after they were released. The colonial government had imposed restrictions on the fields accessible, causing discontent amongst recently released indentured servants.
Massachusetts became the first state to acknowledge slavery officially in 1641. Many jurisdictions also followed, like Virginia. Virginia agreed in 1662 that all children who are born to slave parents would also become slaves. Slavery was not simply a condition that lasted till death; it could now be passed from generation after generation.
Virginians required work to develop corn and to develop tobacco for trade. Unlike Columbus, the Virginians could not compel the Native Americans to work for them. Despite being able to massacre the Indians, the Indians outnumbered the Englishmen and will suffer carnage. It was impossible to capture and enslave the Indians because “the Chesapeake tribes were too well armed, too numerous, and too familiar with the countryside to be easily enslaved” (Clark et al.) as the Englishmen were not.
Therefore, African slaves transpired the solution. The Africans powerlessness made oppression simpler. Native Americans had property. The Englishmen were associated with their European culture, so they were not going to enslave themselves. The Africans were ripped from their territories and civilization, constrained into a circumstance where their way of communication and customs was destroyed.
The circumstances of the Africans once captured were horrifying. The captives were stored in pens naked till all were selected and sold on land. They were pressed on board the slave ships, fastened collectively in obscurity, and sat in the smell of their fecal matter (Clark et al.).
On one event, hearing an extraordinary commotion from under the deck, where Africans were affixed collectively, the crew ship found the slaves in various phases of asphyxiation and some lifeless. Slaves frequently hopped overboard to drown instead of proceeding with their misery. One observed that the deck was “so covered with blood and mucus that it resembled a slaughterhouse” (Clark et al.).
A statute established in 1639 declared “all persons except Negroes” were to bear firearms and ammo. Three servants strived to flee in 1640; the two whites received extended sentencing to their labor and be that as it may, “the third being a negro named John Punch shall serve his master for the rest of his life” (Professor Hayes).
In the seventeenth century, there is proof that English servants and Africans discovered they had the same issues, labor, a shared adversary in their masters, they carried on toward each other as equals. Black and white cooperated, associated together. The fact that laws must be passed to preclude such relations shows the quality of that inclination. A statute was established in Virginia “in case any English servant shall run away in the company of any Negroes” (Clark et al.), the person would need to give additional work more years to the commander of the delinquent negro. Accommodated this expulsion of any Virginia states, “white man or woman being free who shall intermarry with a negro, mulatoo, or Indian man or woman bond or free” (Clark et al.).
A significant contrast amidst a sentiment of ethnic abnormality and the large subjugation of many dark individuals that occurred in America. Subjection developed as some plantation framework developed. In Virginia, by 1763, there were about 170,00, who make about a large portion of the populace.
The framework was mental and physical simultaneously. Slaves were shown discipline, intrigued over with the possibility of their mediocrity to ‘know where you belong’, and acknowledge obscurity to remain an indication of subjection. In order to achieve this, there was the development of intoxicating labor, the detachment of the bondsman family, the construction of diversion between slaves by isolating them into farmland and particularly house slaves, lastly, the intensity of law and the prompt intensity of the owner to order beating and demise.
There is a complicated network of verifiable series to entrap Africans for subjugation: the franticness of hungry pilgrims, defenselessness concerning those uprooted Africans, enticement of official status to poor whites, and the intricate controls against getaway and defiance.
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