Warning: Undefined variable $num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 126
Warning: Undefined variable $posts_num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 127
Most history books focus on slavery as a Southern colony decision, a system where wealthy plantation owners use harsh techniques to keep their slaves obedient. Davis, however, explains the use of slaves in the other colonies, and the difference between the slave systems in the Southern colonies.
I had never heard of the rather large slave culture in the Middle Colonies, as Davis describes. While the English on the mainland may have been leery of slavery, the Dutch influence in New York allowed for slavery to develop. The Dutch, lacking the rush of emigrants that other countries had, needed laborers, and turned to free and enslaved blacks for that force. Some worked in fields, but many blacks worked in factories, too. Since there was no one staple crop in the North, those colonies did not rely on an entirely slave labor economy. Many blacks worked side-by-side with indentured servants and other whites, as well, making it a more preferable life.
Even though there were slaves in Northern colonies, the slaves in the South still lived a harsher life, with far less of a chance of ever finding freedom. Davis mentions how many Southern planters feared buying slaves from the West Indies and preferred to buy directly from Africa. This reminded me of Davis’s point from the earlier chapter that in the West Indies, the Africans had a stronger culture and a more tight-knit community. This would cause fear in plantation owners’ minds that these slaves would be more likely to organize a revolt. Just as Matt mentioned in his last post (http://sites.davidson.edu/his141/inhuman-bondage-4-5/), I also had never thought of the slave culture in South America and the Caribbean. That culture, however, is important in the reasoning behind the slave trade in the American colonies. If the colonists had not feared these revolts, most slaves would have probably come from the Caribbean, which would have changed the culture of the slave-labor colonies.
Davis also comments on the difference in slave systems in Virginia and South Carolina. Although South Carolina was the only colony that intended to have slaves, they had a more open system. More blacks had a chance of gaining their freedom. When the whites and the blacks mixed, the white owners would sometimes free their mixed children. Just as Davis compared the slave lifestyle between the West Indies and North America, he hints that slave life in South Carolina would be more preferable than life in Virginia, where plantation owners controlled with the whip. The Stono Rebellion caused slave life in South Carolina to change, but in early colonial life the slave systems in the Southern colonies were not as similarly harsh as I previously thought.