A Brief History of North American Slavery II
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King Charles the II of England Is Pictured being presented An Imported PINEAPPLE by the kneeling Royal Gardener John Rose
Part II: The Imperial Expansion and the English
The first article of this series offered substantial evidence that slavery was not begun in lands which became the United States during 1619 and that it was established not by England or later American colonists but existed before Europeans arrived only to be perniciously adapted by varying imperial powers over a century earlier. Among the overlooked facts is that slavery was ongoing for centuries prior to the usual four hundred years that some claim. North America represents a minor portion in the greater history of using illegal captive human labor and slavery was not “unique to the United States, it is a part of almost every nation’s history, from Greek and Roman civilizations to contemporary forms of human trafficking.”i A largely misunderstood issue by some who discuss the matter of slavery is how common the practice quickly became due to its use by nearly every culture in North America. Its tribal roots shifted into a feudal and subsequently imperial system that empowered those using people’s fear and disgust of others against them only to render financial value at the cost of human freedom. Past tribal bondage was transformed into the legalized Portuguese enslavement of Native Americans and Africans while the Spanish crown expanded these practices with help from ongoing religious and public support.
Conquistador FRancisco Pizzaro ordered the death of the Last Inca Emporer AtAhuallpa
The University of Houston offers that of the estimated ten to sixteen million Africans that lived to reach the New World “over one-third landed in Brazil” with other accounts placing that number as high as half of all slaves but multiple sources agree by the end of Spanish domination almost two-thirds of all slaves were in Brazil. A domination that was begun to feed the Spanish royalty’s “insatiable lust for gold” and spurred many conquistadors to expand the Spanish Empire.ii While some believe that later slavery was more harsh than Spanish practices this fails to account for no guaranteed legal protections, rampant abuse or murder of countless native slaves, and that death rates for Caribbean slaves far exceeded any later form of the infernal practice.iii The West Indies which included slave populations held by multiple imperial powers including the Spanish accounted for eighty to ninety percent of the local population, higher than any other modern society in history. While the Spanish were prodigious slavers, they also when the chance presented itself to Native Americans were enslaved as well. The tale of the Estevanico a baptized Moroccan native slave of the Spanish Conquistador Andres Dorantes de Carranza recounts a disastrous journey into New World Florida during 1528 that ended with most who survived becoming prisoners and slaves to local Native American tribes. Following their later escape from slavery Estevanico became the scout to another Spanish expeditionary party seeking to locate indigenous tribes but was killed during one such journey by arrow fire that resulted according to one conquistador for his “cruelties and assaults on Indian women”.iv Nevertheless the Spanish were just one of multiple nations to use the slave trade and many focus just on later nations.
Conquistador Hernan Cortes destroyed the Aztec Empire
Among the worst historically verifiable evolutions in the practice of North American slavery began with the mass use of abuse, theft, rape, and genocide to dehumanize generations of indigenous cultures and Africans by slavers and conquistadors. Yet Portugal and Spain’s domination of the slave trade was quickly challenged by other European powers. Some foreign nations predictably attempted like Spanish religious leaders to delude themselves into thinking they were saviors. Their assertion seems to be that using religion or the state to justify incomprehensibly vile acts in the name of gaining wealth and power for themselves is justifiable because they considered those oppressed not as worthy. The utter lack of self-awareness and considerable malice required to embrace these ideas is apparent, yet such ideas had been widely embraced for over four millennia among most nations across the globe. The problem is consequently more profound and the origins so widespread that slavery likely even precedes humanity’s ability to write over seven thousand years ago. The ancient origins of human oppression were adopted from culture to culture and became an ever more toxic practice.
Until roughly the sixteenth century the majority of most nations supported or practiced slavery including the leaders of societies, religions, eminent intellectuals, storied philosophers, and every manner of person besides slaves themselves or their families. The English like most imperial powers had an idealistic vision of its desires to dominate others and prosper from the trade its rivals had created. Similar to other nations the leadership of England sought to justify its adaption of slavery in terms that would be palatable to many of the English public. Some leaders and intellectuals suggested they might “free” the Native Tribes from Spanish domination and find a useful pool of willing subjects to help build a larger British Empire. Conversely, few if any would ever do so and opted instead to enslave Native and later African populations just as the Spanish and Portuguese had. Notably the power of any imperial crown was vested by most international traditions, legal decrees, and enjoyed religious support almost universally in some form.
Sir John Hawkins Coat of Arms contained a Slave because of his Caribbean Slaving Voyages
John Hawkins is reported by the English National Archives to be “considered the first English slave trader.” He was noted to make repeated slaving voyages during the 1560s to Spanish held islands in the Caribbean until his final “disastrous voyage”. A competition between Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Spanish, and English merchants to control the supply of “ivory, gold, pepper, dyewood, and indigo” by utilizing armed settlements in West Africa eventually would lay the foundational requirements to propagate the transatlantic slave trade. However, in this period most of the workers located within English colonial holdings were not slaves but indentured servants. These “servants” were largely the charge of the person who held a contract that on average reportedly lasted about five years.
The practice of indentured servitude that was usually willing but forced on some people was akin to several aspects of slavery but was not modern slavery as some assert. While a slave had no rights in multiple societies most indentured servants possessed legal protections that could not be denied based on the terms of the contract they undertook. As a subject of the crown they were literally part of its dominion and to seriously harm them broke the laws of the crown which subjected the contract holder to at least immense fines or restitution. What some do not understand is the level of poverty for most within imperial nations was so profound and the opportunity of the average peasant so limited they instead opted for servitude in a far-removed land because this was a chance for advancement they never would possess in the Old World. “The timing of the Virginia colony was ideal. The Thirty Year’s War had left Europe’s economy depressed, and many skilled laborers were without work…this explains how one-half to two-thirds of the immigrants who came to the American colonies arrived as indentured servants.”v
Most arriving to the New World did not arrive legally free but possessed the same desire that has driven countless groups of people over centuries to the New World to seek opportunity denied in Europe. While based on endless accounts it was demeaning, brutal, unfair, and they could be subject to violent, unreasonable, and disgusting people holding their contracts these servants would be free one day by law. Additionally, many servants were able to negotiate freedom dues that would grant them a stipend, gun, and land when they completed their time of indenture. No matter their origins the indentured were in nearly every case assured a date of freedom and some form of compensation. Indentured servitude was unjust and had many similarities to ancient slavery in Rome where advancement was possible, but it did not resemble the worst forms of modern human oppression.
Amid the same period indentured servants had become an expensive problem for the English and seeking to expand their influence using other means of control expanded the prior limited Spanish concept of racial differences. This occurred for several reasons but among the most significant was protecting the investment of their funds within human labor and one problem they faced was that indentured servants might emerge from any background. Due to this great variation in the types of people indentured it was much easier for someone breaking a contract to vanish within American continent’s population. Keeping track of a potentially yearly changing population in the colonies was ineffective and the contract holders possessed no assured means of locating every person or the funds to do so which rendered such contracts an increasingly expensive gamble. “As demand for labor grew, so did the cost of indentured servants. Many landowners also felt threatened by newly freed servants demand for land.” The English colonial leadership decided the solution to such problems was creating a class below indentured servants without rights based upon easily identifiable physical characteristic to prevent escape or concealment and separate them from the rest of the public.
These would-be future captors required a unifying trait that was shared largely by the people they wished to subjugate while simultaneously promoting further pseudo-scientific ignorance that painted those wielding oppression as better than people they oppressed. English supporters of slavery and religious leaders in the New World aided the expansion of a twisted concept of classifying multiple cultures into two distinct races needed for greater imperial profit. The English selected the terms black and white to encompass several cultures in the world for legal use despite the obvious nonsensical basis of such classification upon random biology. In time such arbitrary decisions would classify Native Americans as black or white based on the position of varying state and local jurisdictions with likely unimagined other future results. Nevertheless, if we consider the matter rationally, we easily can observe that people emerge from a wide array of cultural origins that no single word could accurately encompass with ease. Race was socially constructed to overcome this fact and the English law categorized slaves by decree on the basis of easily identifiable and officially disdained physical traits and thus dehumanized them. This codified immoral system was taught to future generations and with a few critical changes in English colonial law the transformation from years of servitude to lifelong slavery based on the construct of assigned race began.
Repeatedly it can be observed that slavery is not merely the chosen inhuman abuse of single nation upon one people but nearly everyone in that period were eager to use immoral domination for profit and power. If we consider the thesis of the New York Times 1619 Project, beyond the already proven inaccuracies that required them to make revisions, we can see the very foundation such ideas rely on that ignore contrary facts. Historian Adolph Reed in no uncertain terms deconstructs its original thesis by stating “The first sentence in the first essay is a lie…In 1619…African slaves showed up in North America. Back then they weren’t slaves, so it’s time to drop the curtain, pack up the props and go home…They were sold as indentured servants and served a time of indenture, and they melted into the population…and they were free.” The emergence of race theories heavily influencing substantially codified English slavery laws would not occur until the crown of England gained more legal dominance over its significantly expanded territory decades later.vi vii viii
“The concept of race as a fixed biological identity did not exist when the Europeans settled in Virginia in the early seventeenth century. The English of that era perceived the difference primarily as a matter of culture, society, and especially religion. This tendency led them to regard Indians and Africans similarly as alien peoples with an odd and unfamiliar culture and, most fundamentally, as heathens.”ix Heathens were considered by most Europeans during that period at best to be unsaved noble savages often regarded as willful children and not free-thinking individuals with natural rights if they opposed imperial rule. This distinction is paramount because the approval of most religions certainly fueled the increasingly brutal treatment of natives, servants, and slaves with a seal of religious approval. A reason why imperial founded slavery endured within later history is related to centuries of royals and churches teaching parents and subsequently children that oppression was righteous. What might a person not be capable of if they believed a god and his representatives offered support for such practices?
Enslaved people faced brutal and unsanitary Transport conditions and The survivors of this nightmarish journey became Slaves
The reduction of most indentured servitude coupled with escalating deaths resulting from disease, war, and mistreatment of enslaved Native Americans led the British slavers across the Empire to replace them with African people. Among the chief businesses engaged in the British portion of the transatlantic slave trade were speculative often rich investors. “Portugal and Britain were the two most ‘successful’ slave-trading countries accounting for about 70% of all Africans transported to the Americas. Britain was the most dominant between 1640 and 1807 when the British slave trade was abolished. It is estimated that Britain transported 3.1 million Africans (2.7 million arrived) to the British colonies in the Caribbean, North and South America and to other countries”.x Yet most of these new slaves were not sent to North America but varying locations across the globe to face usually equal abuse or death. They were captured and sent to lifelong slavery by companies who enjoyed royal trade privileges and had no modern taught compunctions about enslaving other humans.
One of the rarely known legal precedents that rendered the first black indentured servant into a slave by changing the definition legally was a case during the 1650s involving a rich man named Anthony Johnson and his African indentured servant John Casor who attempted to break his contract by escaping from Johnson’s control. "The court sided with Johnson, who claimed that Casor was his slave for life...It was a watershed moment in the history of institutional slavery" within Virginia.xi Past freedom achieved by means of religious conversion and prior contracts were denied under an intractable oppressive imperial system from which no redemption existed beyond death or escape. The blind greed of slavery can further be exhibited by studying the past of Anthony Johnson who himself was a former indentured servant from Africa. He was among the rarest of people in the Virginia colony who had worked for other colonists and later possessed a healthy tobacco farm. Eventually he bought his own servants and following John Casor’s escape Johnson acquired his first slave. He was according to a research study one of more than 3,500 free black slave owners that held from one to nine African slaves but the reasoning behind such ownership drastically varied. Reportedly a great deal of former slaves purchased family members and were using horrendous laws to enact philanthropy but this does not mean a vast majority or those like Anthony Johnson did so. It exemplifies that disregard for human rights was the motivating factor and not skin color in some pivotal cases, the common element is all types of people in North America used inhuman oppression.xii xiii
A CARibbean Slave is beaten by other African slaves UPON Order of thier English “Owner”
The Royal African Company that was chartered in 1672 reportedly prospered amidst “speculative enthusiasm” and its greatest source of revenue was generated by the sale of humans in the West Indies. The Company was only able to ply its trade effectively because of the assurances the English royal grant of monopoly provided by King Charles the II which “held several apparent advantages…the 1672 charter barred other Englishmen from even visiting the West Coast south of Cape Blanco without permission…authorized seizure by company officials of the ships and cargoes of intruders, and arranged for their prosecution by establishing the Guinea Coast a court of judicature.” Within the colony of Virginia, the Company had at least seven agents that were deeply involved some aspect of colonial politics. Most of them held estates, wealth, status in local affairs, and even rank in the militia “including two county commanders-in-chief”.xiv Nevertheless the Royal African Company lost imperial favor and its monopoly on the slave trade during 1698. This resulted in further expanding the practice to large and small like-minded groups as the Company increased its shipments of slaves beyond the loss of monopoly over the next decade until its failure and dissolution. The international system of feudal backed enslavement with the blessing of religious leaders had been converted again into a very prosperous and diabolical business with the help of English royal and local agents.
King Charles the II of England Bestowed the Royal African Company A Slaving monopoly
There are past similarities that should not escape our notice between the slavery in the ancient and colonial worlds. “Parallels between ancient and New World slavery abound: from the dehumanizing device of addressing men of any age as ‘boy’, the use of branding and head shaving as mods of humiliation…naming slaves, making fugitive slaves wear a metal collar, to clothing domestic slaves in special liveries or uniforms.” Most slaves in history were often assumed to be of lower intelligence, dishonest, and less worthy due to random biological circumstance, some were even told slavery was their fate set by the gods of several periods. All manner of mythical rule would emerge in later generations seeking to justify the abominable practice because perhaps deep within a few of the most ardent slavers knew the truth, it was largely a business decision based on cruel lies. It was greed and power and not any high-minded or legitimate source from which their assumed superiority emerged; no higher power granted them mastery of other people but the shifting reversals of history in which most were pawns of more powerful nations. It was ancient nefarious ideology which allowed imperial nations to justify the institution of slavery as they sought to quench the nearly ceaseless desire of humans to dominate people more effectively while profiting from it.
While other slaving companies would overshadow the Royal African Company, it faded due in part to opposing factions of “anti-Royalists and anti-monopolists”, it serves as a reasonable template to understand the imperial motivations for slavery that have been ever present. This additionally serves as potential foreshadowing to slavery’s eventual demise without royal protection because it was not efficient to generate benefits for most people in any society that included a large slave population. Any system that granted monopolies or based its foundation upon unearned royal proclamation of dominion could not hope to surpass millions of people willing to do nearly anything to earn a wage for themselves beyond the control of royal dictates. The endorsement of slavery by so many royals presents an ominous truth that many humans can believe power, wealth, or status makes them a better person. Such things make them strong, rich, and famous but they provide no assurance of their real values or worth to humanity.
Sincerely,
C.A.A. Savastano
References:
i. American slavery: Separating fact from myth, June 19, 2017, The Conversation, theconversation.com
ii. Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, August 23, 2019, Everyone is talking about 1619. But that’s not actually when slavery in America started, Washington Post, washingtonpost.com
iii. American Slavery in Comparative Perspective, (n.d.), Digital History, University of Houston, digitalhistory.hu.edu
iv. Donald E. Chipman. (n.d.), Estevanico, Texas State Historical Association, tshaonline.org
v. Indentured Servants in the U.S., (n.d.), History Detectives, PBS, pbs.org
vi. Adolph Reed Critiques The 1619 Project, May 14, 2020, The Michael Brooks Show, michealbrooksshow.libsyn.com
vii. Emily Jashinsky, May 4, 2020, A Pulitzer Prize Was Just Given To The 1619 Essay The New York Times Admitted Was Historically Inaccurate, The Federalist, thefederalist.com
viii. Michael Guasco, September 13, 2017, The Misguided Focus on 1619 as the Beginning of Slavery in the U.S. Damages Our Understanding of American History, Smithsonian Magazine, smithsonianmag.com
ix. Gregory Ablavsky, (n.d.), Making Indians “White”; The Judicial Abolition of Native Slavery In Revolutionary Virginia and Its Racial Legacy, University of Pennsylvania Law School, law.upenn.edu
x. Britain and The Slave Trade, (n.d.), The National Archives, nationalarchives.gov.uk
xi. Kat Eschner, March 8, 2017, The Horrible Fate of John Casor, The First Black Man to be Declared Slave for Life in America, Smithsonian Magazine, smithsonianmag.com
xii. Pressly, T. (2006). "The Known World" of Free Black Slaveholders: A Research Note on the Scholarship of Carter G. Woodson. The Journal of African American History, 91 (1), 81-87.
xiii. Henry Louis Gates Jr., March 4, 2013, Did Black People Own Slaves?, The Root, theroot.com
xiv. Killinger, Charles Lintner, “The Royal African Company Slave Trade to Virginia, 1689-1713” (1969). pp. 12-14
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A Brief History of North American Slavery Part I (Portugal and Spain circa 1444)
A Brief History of North American Slavery Part III (France circa 1629)