Wood English regarded outsiders as infidels who had

Wood explains the English slavery fromtwo perspectives: that of racial ideology, and that of economic demographics.

The sole reason why the slavery took place first was economic considerations. These prompted the English to disregard the common law, going on to enslave the WestAfricans in different slavery systems. The first was a complex interaction ofpractical and ideology concerns the second one, and the most emphasized here isthe pressing need for labor (Wood21).English planters lacked the personnel to offer labor in the Caribbean.

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Theirmotif of slavery was purely economic. The reasons the master-slave relations were severed was simply racial, but wood laysmore emphasis on economic rationality of the English. Sheportrays them as economic agents who were calculating and could invest insubjugating others for their economic gain. Although the British possessions in the Caribbean were vast, they had alreadyconquered North America and had founded other colonies around the world.But this was how the English looked at the slavery.

The slaves felt thatslavery was a complete loss of humanity. They felt treated as animals a conceptthe English justified.The English looked at slavery asdependency and not necessarily as exploitation. They assumed the poverty oftheir slaves made them depend on their masters and hence they had to work toearn their daily bread, even if it meant just food to keep them alive.

Theirdependence made them lose their legal rights for fair remuneration or formingassociations. They just depended on the contracts that were drawn by their masters which made it impossible for them tonegotiate their fate. The English regarded outsiders as infidels who had losttheir rights and privileges (Wood28).The British population assumed an elite position and no Briton could fathom athought of making his countryman a slave.

Chattel slavery, therefore, meantthat the masters would import or move with their slaves to new lands especiallyEnglish America. Americans resisted the idea of Britons acquiring their land,but the British persuaded them that they would turn their vast wasteland tocommercial estates. The only missing link was the workforce. Since they could not subjugate the Americans in theirland, the Africans became the best option. Thisexplains the evolution of famous transatlantic slave trade that was establishedto cater for social and economic forces that came with acquiring new lands andinteraction with the natives. The colonies weregiven governors who spread the interests of the Crown, and thereforeeven the highest echelons of the British monarchy did not have a problem withslavery.  2Betty Wood is of the opinion that theEnglish preferred the West Africans for enslavement when they colonized NorthAmerica because they considered themselves superior to them and more civilized.

According to them, the Irish, the Scots, and the Scots were considered superior because they had embraced religion; theScots were Catholics, and the rest were European Roman Catholics. The Englishwanted to impose their religion on specifically two groups of people theyencountered in the 16th century, the West Africans and the Native Americans(Wood 36). The first English settlers in North America had no intention toenslave the West Africans. They focused on the North Americans because theyconsidered them as primitive and backward.

The racial aspect was also considered because they were darkskinned. Both Native Americans and West Africans had a different politicalorganization, religious, social qualities, and of course, a different skincolor.The English opted for the enslavement ofWest Africans since they found them legitimate candidates after basing theirtheories on Africans’ primitiveness on ancient Greek and Roman writers, and theBible which was their main source of information. Then there was the racialideology that the West Africans were illiterate and therefore easy to conquer.The sailors who went to trade to West Africa brought narratives of peoplefilled with a simplicity that changed theattitude of the English towards the West Africans (Wood 41). Furthermore, theybecame more prejudiced against them because of their black color which theybelieved was an epitome of evil and sin.

They further argued that according totheir religion, Christianity, the origin of man was perceived to be the firstparents, Adam and Eve and therefore all humanity was supposed to be uniform ofone color. The blacks were then considered lesser humans, or not humans at allsince they were not a part of the creation theory. The best explanation theygave was that the Africans must be the cursed descendants of Ham, Noah’s sonwho primitive enough to look at his father’s nakedness and make a joke out ofit. Slavery in Africans, therefore, was inevitable since it was divinepunishment for their evil behavior.Finally, Wood argues that another reasonfor the English to regard the West Africans as candidates for slavery was thesocial structures that they considered too primitive for humanity. Theyconsidered them not as noble savages but barbarous people who resembled animalsmore than they did resemble humans. Their physical characteristics, accordingto English commentators resembled those of the anthropoid ape (Wood 47).

Onecommentator said that men had flat noses and were libidinous like apes and youcould not differentiate between men and women but for the breasts that hangingdown like the udder of a goat. Thisideally was the basis of the English attitude towards the West Africans and thedoubts about their humanity made them consider them as exploitation material,and not necessarily human beings.  3Peter Kolchlinis of the opinion that America was builton slavery.

He argues that American’s liberties were a mixture of ethnicaffiliations and religion. Some native North Americans had were more privilegedthan others and embraced colonialism that later became full-fledged slavery.The dispossession for the less fortunate and the unprecedented slavery becameworse than the Europe slavery, where it started (Kolchin 1632). North Americans policies forfreedom and immigration enabled the European colonization.

The NativeNortherners dealt with strangers favorably well. Forging alliances, gave asylumto political refugees and protected those in need of land. The Europeansarrived in droves when they found no resistance. They introduced trade andagriculture.

Unfortunately, they brought with them the disease of violence whenacquiring private property which created wars with the natives. When they couldnot win these wars, they were subjugatedto slavery and them that resisted were driven from their lands and homes. Since the land had become a bone ofcontention, the new owners had to come up with ways of controlling the natives.The British Americans had the advantage of an established government which tookcare of their interests.

The Native Americans did not have an arbiter who couldlook after their interests. Neither did the African slaves that the Englishbrought along to work in the vast lands. These Africans’ liberty was curtailed and their rights to live withfreedom abolished.

They could not control their destiny. Unlike natives whocould organize themselves and offer resistance and if defeated, they move toother frontiers, the African’s resigned their fate to the hands of theirEnglish masters and got used to forced labor.Europeans, particularly the wealthyDutch, Spanish and the French, established colonies that later became theUnited States of America.

These were the aristocrats who owned slaves andbenefited from their free labor. The plantation owners who were the ProtestantBritish benefited immensely from the services of indentured servants. Religionbecame the central tool for enslavement. All religions, the Catholic French orthe British Anglicans were based ondenying economic, religious and civil liberty to others. Only the wealthy could be privileged to enjoyunparalleled freedom and liberties such as voting and running for public office(Kolchin 1689).To them, the only thing that mattered was whether the slaves would be resistingthe draconian rules they were proposing in their biased legislation.

The history of America, therefore, is intertwined witha lot of slavery, but if compared with the European slavery, the Americanhistory happens to be worse when it came to how slaves were treated. Slavery as an institution had existed in Europe forcenturies, but when Americans gained their independence from Britain, theslavery became the way of life. In fact, some states threatened to secede ifthe constitution interfered with their rights of owning slaves. 4a)              Slaveryin America as a Cultural InstitutionThe first cultural practice the slaves underwentwas the divide administrative structure where one of them was elevated to the status of a supervisor. Slaveswere mistreated depending on size and location of the plantation they wereworking in, the type of work they were doing and the type of master they wereserving. Those that were directly under the supervision of their owner and wereworking with him in the fields received better treatment than those working forabsentee property owners in vas plantations.

Somedrivers were better known as supervisors who were responsible for agroup or a gang of slaves (Kolchin691).The gang system comprised of about twenty-five slaves under the supervision ofone overseer. These drivers were known to inflict severe punishments whenever atask was not completed or done poorly. It consisted of whipping or sometimesdenying food and the said job being repeated.The second cultural activity was the ‘philanthropic’distribution of clothes to the slaves bytheir masters. Men were given readymade clothes twice a year and shoes once ayear. Women were never provided withready-made clothes.

They were providedwith long clothes to sew clothes for their children and themselves. Food wasdistributed weekly to families and individuals. The rations were made of cornmeal molasses and bacon orpork. The number of calories was assumed to be adequate, but the better part ofthe diet consisted of fats and starch (Kolchin 1702). Sometimes they could be suppliedwith vegetables, chicken, small game or fish if the master is feelingsufficiently philanthropic. They were housedin semi-permanent structures that were not very far from the main house, andthe structures were extremely hot during the summer while during winter theywere freezing. More than one family used to share a tiny cabin.

Marriage wasencouraged since the masters were of the opinions that couples were easy tocontrol and could hardly escape. Marriage ceremonies would vary from oneplantation to another. There was the famous jumping of the broom where couplesswear their commitment to one another by jumping the broom, or a simple weddingin the main house where they would exchange their vows before their master. This did not bind the master to respect theinstitution. He could as well sell a wife or a husband to a different slaveowner if he so wished.b)              Slaveryas an economic institutionSlaves used to work as artisans, thatis, blacksmiths, masons, and carpenters others could work in the main house ascoachmen, tailors, nursemaids, and cooks.

These were considered to be the lucky few because the majority of the slavesused to work in the fields for almost sixteen hours during summer and ten hoursduring winter. Regardless of the task assigned to the slave, the returnsexceeded the output the slave owner was incurring (Kolchin 590).Feeding and clothing the slaves was considered a minor expenditure, oparticularly when juxtaposed to the profits that theygenerated while working for free. In the 19th century when cotton pricesincreased, the prices of the slaves gradually increased but the plantationowners found it as a worthy investment to buy them.Secondly, the number of slaves a farmer-owned determined his financial muscleand the social status in the community. The planter class was the reference toelite farmers who owned more than twenty slaves but less than a hundred.

Theyalso owned a few thousand acres of plantations. They had overseers who handledthe day to day activities of the slaves in the fields, and he only came intocontact with the slaves that could be working in the main house (Kolchin 593).These masters were agrarian businessmenwho invested in heavy machinery and kept a strict record of market prices forhis products. The other category was the Yeoman farmers.

They owned about 100acres or less. They were small-scale farmers who grew sweet potatoes and cornand also kept livestock. They did not own slaves and did not enjoy theaffluence of life as their elite counterparts. In fact, most yeoman farmersleased their services to the big farms as managers or consultants  5Kolchindevelops a that “the growth of a vast Southern empire based on slave laborcoincided with the gradual emancipation of the North’s relatively few remainingslaves, the fate of the South became increasingly associated, both in people’sminds and in fact, with that of slavery.

” He explains the differences in the mentalityof the Northern slave owners and their Southern counterparts. The northernerswere liberal and advocated for the rights of the slaves as opposed tosoutherners who became more paternalistic and rigid. The main reason why thesoutherners resisted the abolishment of the slavetrade was the boom of cotton farming since the steam power made the spinning ofcotton easy which increased the demand forAmerican cotton. This increased the antebellumslavery in the south. In fact, Kolchin argues that the demand for slavesdoubled in the south since almost a million slaves from Africa crossed theAtlantic to America between 1790 and 1860.

The southern states, which includedTexas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, andGeorgia were leading in importing slaves butafter the civil war, slave trade declined tremendously albeit to the chagrin ofthe southerners.Kolchin’s main idea of slavery is thatthe main motivation was not necessarily the desire to conquer and subjectpeople to servitude, but the economic gains associated with slavery. He quotesverbatim of freed slaves to show how they were driven almost to the brink oftheir existence for their masters to outdo each other economically. Kolchin firstexplores the relationship between the slaves and their masters and givesdifferent scenarios of some masters that were so cruel, but most of the timesthe overseers were worse than the masters (Kolchin 596). They lived in eternal fear oflowering productivity, and maybe their position was taken by somebody else, andthey, therefore, pushed their subjects very hard to deliver a positive balancesheet at the end of the year. When he gavestatistics, he wanted to prove that slaves made up almost a third of thepopulation in both north and the south.

Consequently, he intented to show thatthey had become an integral part of an economic driving tool for individualsand the government. Seemingly, this was why abolishing the slave trade, andhuman trafficking took longer than expected. Additionally, Kolchin is ofthe opinion that slavery changed with time, and the relationship between theslaves and their masters changed when they became Americanized. In fact, the mastersbecame benevolent and allowed some of them to own properties this was thebeginning of the end of slavery as more slaves became aware of their rights andstarted agitating for them.

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