Slavery
The development of slavery
The first slaves to reach the mainland colonies arrived in Virginia as early as 1619. Their numbers at first grew very slowly: even in the 1670s Virginia's slave population did not exceed 2,000. Nor at first were slaves geographically concentrated: New York City in the 1690s had proportionately as many as Virginia.
In the early 18th Century the importation of slaves rose rapidly and slavery took firmer roots. Slavery had a number of distinctive advantages over white wage owners and indentured servants : slaves were permanent workers, they could not easily abscond because of their colour, they were also economical advantages since despite an initial higher cost they are self-producing and employed in gangs they can be an efficient and economical workforce. A further attraction was a fall in slave prices after 1697, when the Royal African Company lost its monopoly of the African slave-trade and English and colonial merchants joined in.
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English: Christian slavery in Barbary - The histor...Therefore, the slave population of the colonies soared from under 20,000 in 1700 to about 350,000 in 1763.
Slaves were to be found in every colony. However, it was in the South, where four-fifths of all slaves were found, that slaves were to be predominately employed. Slaves were to prove the ideal work force for huge plantations in the searing heat of the South. Moreover, the fact that all staples required constant though, though not necessarily skilled, attention meant that slave-labour was ideally suited. In Virginia in 1756 slaves made up 40 per cent of the population (120,000 out of 293,000), while in South Carolina in 1751 they outnumbered whites by almost two to one (40,000 blacks to 25,000 whites).
For a period in the mid to late 18th Century slavery went through a lull. However, in the very late 18th Century the...