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The Portuguese brought a few slaves home from Africa, but found that they were impractical for use in Europe with its small, family-based farms and town life. However, it soon was clear how slavery could be readily adopted in the Americas. Like the overwhelming majority of preindustrial societies, African kingdoms practiced slavery, and when Europeans offered to trade their goods for slaves, African traders accommodated them. As a general rule, African slave hunters would capture Africans, generally from other groups than their own, and transport them to trading posts along the coast for European ships to carry to the New World. However, despite the fact that slavery already existed in Africa, the Atlantic trade interacted with and transformed these earlier aspects of slavery.
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Before the Atlantic slave trade began, slavery took many forms in Africa, ranging from peasants trying to work off debts to those that were treated as "chattel," or property. The Atlantic trade emphasized the latter, and profits from the trade allowed slaveholders both in Africa and the Americas to intensify the level of exploitation of labor. African slaves were traded to two areas of the world: the Western Hemisphere and Islamic lands in the Middle East and India.
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Fewer slaves crossed the Sahara than crossed the Atlantic, but the numbers were substantial. Whereas most slaves that went to the Americas were male, most of those destined for the Middle East and India were female. These women either became a part of a wealthy individual's harem, or collection of wives and concubines that filled his household. The wives were not slaves, and their children had higher status than those of the concubines. The African women were almost always granted the lower status as concubines. Other slaves in the Islamic lands were males who were often bought to fight in the large Gunpowder Empire armies.
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The major reason that slave labor was practical in the Americas was that so many of the Amerindians who probably would have done the work had died. The economic challenge was to get workers to the New World in as cost effective way as possible. The Spanish and Portuguese expeditions were government ventures, but the success of the Atlantic economy during the 17th and 18th centuries was based on private enterprise. The economic system of mercantilism was developed most effectively by the British and the Dutch, with private companies under charter from the governments carrying out the trade. Mercantilism's main goal was to benefit the mother country by trading goods to accumulate precious metals, and thus enriching the country. The African slave trade was an important piece of mercantile trade. The Great Circuit trade went something like this:
1) The first leg from Europe carried hardware, guns, and Indian cotton to Africa
2) The second leg was the notorious Middle Passage that carried African slaves to the New World. Slaves were packed as tightly as possible in the ships, often under very inhumane conditions.
3) The last leg carried plantation goods from the colonies back to Europe
The theory was that on every leg the ships carried goods from a place where they were abundant to a place where they were scarce. The profits could be enormous, but shipwrecks, slave deaths, and piracy could turn profit into loss. A subset of the Great Circuit trade was the Triangular Trade that carried run from New England to West Africa, slaves to the West Indies, and molasses and run back to New England.
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Labor Systems in the Americas
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The Spanish were most interested in finding gold and silver in the Americas, and so early on they began mining for it. In areas where no precious metals existed, they set up plantations to raise crops from bananas to sugar cane. They first tried these labor systems:
- Mita - The Inca had made extensive use of the mita system, a sort of labor tax to support elites and the elderly. Generally, an adult male had to spend 1/7 of his time working for the Inca, a few months at a time. When his obligation to the state was complete, he would return home until his service time came up again. The Spanish adopted this system, particularly for their silver mines in Bolivia and surrounding areas. The problem was that so many natives died, that the Spanish kept having to increase the time spent in the mines that it became impractical. Finally, the work in the mines was so grueling that no Indians were left to do the work.
- Encomienda - This system was used primarily for agricultural work. Natives in an area were placed under the authority of encomenderos, or Spanish bosses, who could extract labor and tribute according to the needs of the area. Again, this system only lasted during the 16th century because so many natives died.
In North America the English colonies had varying bases for their economies. In the north, farms were small and family run, and city-based trade was important. In the south the soil and climate were better suited for large farms, and so a plantation system developed. A labor system used both in North America and the Caribbean was indentured servitude, in which an employer would pay the passage of a person to the New World in return for several years of labor. After the debt was paid in years worked, the servant would be free. This system was limited in its usefulness, especially in the Caribbean where indentured servant eventually refused to go because of the harsh working conditions on the sugar plantations.
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Early Slave Systems in South America and the Carribean
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Before 1650 most slaves were destined either for the sugar plantations in Brazil and mainland Spanish colonies, but during the second half of the 17th century, more and more went to the Caribbean. Sugar cane was not native to the areas, but once imported, it grew well and resulted in great profit. The strong demand for sugar in Europe was complemented by the trade with China for tea. Perhaps most stereotypically, the English teatime depended on a regular supply of these products. Sugar plantations required large investments of capital because the cane had to be processed within a few hours of when it was cut in order to extract the sugary syrup. So each plantation not only had vast fields of sugar cane, but also had a mill and processing plant. Many slaves were needed for the work, which was hot and grueling.
The demand was greater for male slaves than for females because of the nature of the work, so the sex ratio was such that family life was impossible for most. Disease among slaves was particularly problematic in the Caribbean and Brazil, with many dying from dysentery caused by contaminated water and malaria. As a result, slave populations in these areas did not experience a natural growth, and so had to be replaced by more through the slave trade.
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Early Slave Systems in North America
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Sugar plantations were among the first to appear in North America as well, mainly in the warm, humid lowlands of present-day Louisiana. However, in the mid-1600s tobacco smoking became fashionable in England, and so tobacco plantations rose in the tidelands of Virginia. North American climates were generally healthier than those in the Caribbean, so slaves in North America did experience a natural increase, requiring fewer new slaves for trade. However, as plantations spread across the South, and eventually began raising other crops, such as cotton, the slave trade remained vigorous.
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