The United States holds one of the most diverse societies in the world. For thousands of years, people have traveled to America for new opportunities. Settlers in the British colonies had the same aspirations, yet they accomplished their goals unethically by capturing slaves. The barrier between social classes was a result of racial prejudice. Race was a fundamental division of humanity in the British Colonies.
Indentured servants were some of the first laborers in the colonies. The concept of indentured servitude was created due to a requirement for intensive labor (Ballagh 2001). The first colonists did not want to perform the labor necessary to keep their plantations running (Abramitzky 2006). The Virginia Company romanticized the idea of indentured servitude to draw in laborers (Ballagh 2001). The Virginia Company was two joint stock companies contracted under King James I (Abramitzky 2006). They had the objective of building settlements on the shore of North America (Morgan 1975). Within the colonies, the Virginia Company had the ability to designate a Council of Leaders, a Governor, and different authorities (Brown 1996). It also equipped colonists with supplies and ships for their voyages (Brown 1996). Indentured servants wound up being crucial to the economy of the colonies (Brown 1996). The Thirty Years’ War had left Europe's economy in ruins, and numerous people were left unemployed (Abramitzky 2006). The Thirty Years' War was a seventeenth-century war that began in central Europe (Nagl 2017). The war lasted from 1618 to 1648 (Morgan 1975). The war commenced due to the fight between the Catholic and Protestant states that shaped the Holy Roman Empire (Tomlins 2008). The Thirty Years’ War allowed greater economic opportunities in the New World which explains why 55% of immigrants who went to the British colonies arrived as indentured servants (Nagl 2017). In return for a passage to America, indentured servants normally worked for four to seven years (Brown 1996). An indentured servant’s contract could be extended as a result of breaking a law, like fleeing (Nagl 2017). The relationship between indentured servants and their masters was different from that of slaves (Tomlins 2008). There were laws that ensured some of the servants’ fundamental rights to protect their well-being (Nagl 2017). Indentured servants were treated more humanely due to the color of their skin.
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For the first generation of colonists, indentured servitude was successful. It created a workforce free of cost which assisted many business owners in the colonies (Nagl 2017). It helped reduce their costs which allowed them to maximize their profit in their business venture (Nagl 2017). However, over time indentured servants became weak (O’Reilly 2015) Their level of production lowered due to illnesses and fatigue. (O’Reilly 2015) This decline of indentured servitude led the way for the rise of slavery. Slavery began gradually as the English colonies developed. African slaves’ role in the slave trade advanced and slaves became accessible throughout the British colonies.
Historically, slavery has transpired over the whole world. Its roots can be traced back to the sub-Saharan African Iron Age kingdoms. These African kingdoms were situated in a period in African history between the second century AD and 1000 AD, where iron refining was practiced (Evans 2019). Iron refining was an integral source of money in these kingdoms. Slaves were needed to bolster the production of iron and without them, the benefit of trading iron would not be the same (Evans 2019). Chattel slavery, traditional slavery where one human is another human's property, was used under the African kingdoms, the Muslim imperial empire, and Christian Europeans (Foner 2012). Powerful empires use slaves to expand their territory. Throughout the 1400s to 1900s, nearly 20 million people were taken from the mainland of Africa during four sizable and similar slave trading operations: the Red Sea, Trans-Saharan, Trans-Atlantic, and Indian Ocean (Herschthal 2019). While some slave trading expeditions did utilize white slaves or indentured servants, the overlying similarity between these various slave trading expeditions highlights the division of race between people of European descent and Africans in society.
When the Atlantic slave trade began, a significant number of local slave frameworks started providing prisoner slaves for slave markets outside Africa. The Middle Passage was part of the Atlantic slave trade where nearly 12.5 million enslaved Africans were forcibly moved to the New World (Wolfe 2017). The need for menial labor increased as businesses in the colonies needed human labor, yet lacked the workforce necessary (Wolfe 2017). This forced the Europeans to look for other options and thus chose slaves as their workforce in the colonies (Klein 1999). The Europeans often traded guns for slaves (Klein 1999). Trading between the African people and the Europeans granted African slave owners bargaining power with the Europeans (Eltis 2002). The coastal slave market leaders had access to advanced methods of protection compared to neighboring inland tribes, who still possessed primitive weaponry (Thorton 1998). The coastal slave owners acted as middlemen between the Europeans and inland African nations (Wolfe 2017). Europeans were not able to enter Africa and capture slaves due to their lack of immunity against African diseases (Wolfe 2017). European ships carrying goods ventured to Africa once the Africans were captured (Thorton 1998). The goods were exchanged, such as sugar, rice, tobacco, indigo, rum, and many other materials, for the African people (Wolfe 2017). The Middle Passage served an important role in the roots of British-American slavery. Without the Middle Passage, the economical growth of the British colonies would have been significantly lower (Anne 2005). The Middle Passage created a medium that allowed Europeans to easily transfer slaves from Africa to the British-American colonies. The Middle Passage led to a division of race and social class in the British-American colonies that did not exist prior to the introduction of slaves.
Between all the colonies, race was a major factor that caused a serious division of humanity and culture. It provided the foundation for the colonization of the New World, the enslavement of Africans, and a common identity among ethnically and religiously diverse Europeans. The idea of race merged with aims to control land and labor, which created a unified prejudice towards Africans.
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