Coercive Labor Systems – slavery vs. other coercive labor system

1450-1750
Early Modern Period

1. Coercive Labor Systems – slavery vs. other coercive labor system
   1. Slavery
      1. Justifications for slavery
         1. English – partially racism of Africans
         2. Prisoners captured in battle
            1. Defeated Russians, Slavs, Germans, Poles sent to Istanbul
            2. Mamluks – Turkish/Mongol slave soldiers that fought for Egypt
      2. External Slave Trade
         1. Began around 1100s when Africans supplied captives to Arab merchants
         2. Portuguese bought for European market
            1. Before in East Africa, trade relatively small
            2. When Portuguese left in 1700s, trading cities of East Coast took over
               1. Swahili cities provided slaves to plantation islands off
               2. Africa
                  1. Also to Arabian Peninsula
         3. Origins of slavery in Americas
            1. Spanish in sugar islands of Caribbean
               1. Replaced Native Americans
            2. 1619 Dutch ship at Jamestown dropped off slaves
               1. Initially treated like indentured servants, not slaves
               2. But…when large numbers needed for tobacco farming, policy changed
            3. 1640 – Africans went from indentured servants to slaves for life – “durante vita”
            4. Northern colonies did not keep slaves in mass numbers
               1. lacked farms that had large-scale labor intensive crops
                  1. Climate/terrain unsuitable
            5. English institutionalized slavery
               1. needed cheap, abundant labor
               2. viewed Africans with language/culture as less than human
               3. Native Americans not useful
                  1. runaways, disease, easily hide in forest
               4. Indentured servitude
                  1. runways can blend in
                  2. only have labor for specific time
               5. Supply seemed limitless
                  1. W. Africa
                  2. Natural increase - birth
      3. Largest system of slavery – came mostly from West Africa
         1. Plantations of the Caribbean
         2. Southern British Colonies
            1. tobacco, rice, indigo
         3. Brazil
      4. Plantation system
         1. Required cheap, abundant labor
            1. Sub-Saharan Africa filled need
      5. Legal rights
         1. No legal rights
         2. slave marriages not recognized
         3. slaves could not own property
         4. little protection from cruel owner
         5. could be sold away from families
         6. illegal to teach slave to read or write
      6. Consequences of slavery
         1. Africa
            1. depopulated – captured youngest and healthiest
            2. randomness of slave raids – cross-section of society taken
               1. farmer, leaders, craftworker, mother,
            3. Arts and technology suffered – could make money from slave trade
            4. Sudanic empires lost importance – decline in interior empires
               1. Focus of power shifted to coast
            5. Desire for more wealth, power, guns increased cycle
            6. Africans seen as inferior – helped with justification
               1. Affected race relations to this day
   2. Peonage
      1. Debtor provides service until debt is paid off
      2. Debt bondage basis of tenant farming and sharecropping in US after Civil War
         1. Slaves essentially tied to land
      3. Prevalent in Latin America and still exists today
   3. Serfdom