4-2.5

It Is Essential For Students to Know:

• Students need to know why and how slavery was introduced and established in the English colonies in North America.
• As large farms and plantations were established in Virginia, the planters needed a large labor force to plant and harvest their cash crop, tobacco.
• At first the English attempted to enslave some Native Americans. However, this created tensions with the neighboring tribes and because Native Americans knew the landscape they were able to escape into the forest without a trace. Also, the declining number of Native Americans were not available for work because of the impact of diseases.
• Indentured servants were brought from England, but their numbers decreased and tobacco required more and more workers.
• Slaves were brought from Africa to do the fieldwork. In addition, Africans were somewhat immune to the diseases that made working in the South difficult.
• Planters came to rely more and more on the African’s knowledge of herding and farming to make their farms and plantations profitable.
• After the establishment of the colony of South Carolina, settlers who migrated to Carolina from the British West Indies brought their harsher form of slavery developed on the sugar plantations to the North American colonies (3-2.7).
• Africans contributed their knowledge of cultivating rice to the colonies and made the rice plantations of South Carolina profitable and so the demand for slaves increased.
• Slaves were a source of unpaid labor for the colonists and became a status symbol for the plantation owners.
• Colonial trade, including the slave trade, was a source of great wealth for the ship owners and merchants, many of whom were from New England.
• Colonial trade took several routes between the North American colonies, Europe and Africa. On one route, sugar was purchased in the West Indies and transported to New England to be made into rum. The rum was then shipped to Africa to be exchanged for slaves. The slaves were then taken to the West Indies and sold or exchanged for sugar cane. The sugar was taken back to New England to produce more rum and thus the cycle continued. Sometimes these trade routes are called the triangular trade however, that is an oversimplification. Trade routes followed many patterns depending upon what was traded and where it was in demand. Goods such as rice, indigo, and tobacco were sold in Europe in exchange for manufactured goods that could not be produced in the colonies.
• The part of the slave’s journey aboard ship between Africa and the American colonies is known as the Middle Passage. Slaves were transported first from the interior of Africa to the slave ships, then across the Atlantic Ocean, and finally to the plantations where they work. So, the time on the ship was the middle part of the passage.
• However, the term Middle Passage means much more than just one part of a journey. It means the inhumane conditions aboard the ships. Since the slave trade was conducted for profit, the captains of the slave ships tried to deliver slaves for minimum cost.
• Africans were imprisoned as cargo in a stifling space below decks. Slaves were chained in place on wooden berths that were stacked several rows high. These conditions often forced them to lie in human waste. They received very little food or exercise while aboard the slave ships. Many slaves did not survive the Middle Passage.

It Is Not Essential For Students To Know:

• Students do not need to know how to make rum.
• Students do not need to know how sugar, rice and indigo were grown and used.
• Students do not need to know other goods that were traded on the trans-Atlantic trade route.