Question

Explain the role of African slavery in American cultural development? Terms you must use are Barbados, Stono Rebellion, White Lion, and Tobacco.

Answer 1

For the millions of Africans who would face enslavement in the United States — either at the end of a transatlantic journey from Africa, or from birth as the descendants of Africans transported to the country in bondage — the particular experience of American slavery took different forms based on region and time period. Those enslaved in the northeastern states were not as confined to agricultural work as those in the South and many spent their lives in bondage laboring as house servants or in various positions of unpaid, skilled labor.

Largely for this reason, slavery in the two re-gions diverged. Slavery became less efficient and less socially accepted in the Northeast during the eighteenth century, and those states began passing laws to gradually abolish slavery. In 1804, New Jersey became the last North-ern state to commit to abolition. In contrast, the system of slavery remained a central and necessary ingredient in the Southern planta-tion economy and cultural landscape well into the nineteenth century

By 1860, in the fifteen Southern states that still permitted slavery, nearly one in four families owned enslaved people. The South so desperately clung to the institution of slavery that, as the national tide turned toward abolition, eleven Southern states seceded from the United States, formed the Confederate States of America, and sparked a bloody civil war.

The image of slavery in colonial Americabrings up visions of white European settlers commanding over black Africans. Plantation masterslegally owned African slaves as property. They purchased them from merchants just asthey would livestock or weaponry; therefore,they could control every aspect of the slaves’ lifeand do as they pleased with their “chattel.” The slave would have very littlecontrol over their lives physically or mentally. They would obey their “master’s” every order or else face the severe consequences. However, this image is merely the ideological perception of the slave owners. Even though slaves were continuously treatedas sub-human property, they kept the idea that they were still human beings.

Slaves were not indigenous to the North American continent. They had come mostly from different villages in Africa. They were transplanted to North America from their homelandsand forced into a de-humanizing systemof slavery

One of the main things slaves used this time for was to creategardens of their own. Some plantationownerswould allow slaves to cultivate their very ownsmall areas of land. These little pieces of soil were usually right next to the slaves’ quarters. Slaveholdersusually did not care what condition the area of the slaves’ quarterswas in. Some also felt that allowing slaves to create something of their own would promote passivity to their sub-human status. They felt this compliance would keep slaves fromrunning away and promote the plantation’s overall business.

While the majority of slaves were working the fields of the plantation, some slaves were always working inside the home of the slave owner. Thesepeoplewere usually referred to as house slaves.House slaves were considered to be the highest ranked of all slaves because they were in charge of keeping the master’s home runningsmoothlywith daily chores of cooking and cleaning. Female slaves who were taskedwith the duties of cooking were continuously in the kitchen. They fed not only the head master of the home, but his wife, children and any other relative or visitor that may come by the plantation.They would request certain foods to be made and many times the slave would prepare the food in a manner that they were accustom to in their homeland. This began a blending of two cultural foods and created African-American cuisine.

Where did American slavery come from?

When it comes to the origins of large-scale plantation slavery in the British colonies, however, a one-word consensus has emerged: Barbados.

In the 1640s, English planters on this tiny island in the southeastern Caribbean began to produce sugar. In 1661, they wrote a new set of laws for the “Negros” who toiled in the cane fields and boiling houses. This racial code spread to Jamaica and South Carolina while Barbadian planters and overseers took the cruel secrets of slaving around the Americas.

According to specialists of the island, both British and Dutch investors enabled its move to sugar—and thus to slavery. English planters may have also brought the requisite knowledge from Brazil, then under Dutch control, to Barbados.

The development of a plantation economy and African slavery in Carolina began before English colonists even settled Charles Town in 1670. In 1663, eight Lords Proprietors in England received land grants in North America from King Charles II for their loyalty to the monarchy during the English Civil War. The Lords decided to combine their shares to establish a profit-seeking proprietary settlement, Carolina, between the English colony of Virginia and Spanish Florida. To ensure financial success, they sent representatives to study the lucrative sugar plantation system on the Caribbean island of Barbados. They also recruited white settlers from this English West Indian colony to help launch their new North American settlement. These white Barbadians often brought enslaved Africans and African Barbadians with them.

Sugarcane never became a major cash crop in Carolina, but these Barbadians eventually transplanted their West Indian model of plantations and slavery to the new colony.

Stono rebellion, large slave uprising on September 9, 1739, near the Stono River, 20 miles (30 km) southwest of Charleston, South Carolina. Slaves gathered, raided a firearms shop, and headed south, killing more than 20 white people as they went. Other slaves joined the rebellion until the group reached about 60 members. The white community set out in armed pursuit, and by dusk half the slaves were dead and half had escaped; most were eventually captured and executed. The slaves may have been hoping to reach St. Augustine, Florida, where the Spanish were offering freedom and land to any fugitive slave. White colonists quickly passed a Negro Act that further limited slave privileges.

white lion

The White Lion was a privateer ship of English manufacture that brought the first Africans to Virginia in late August 1619, a year before the Mayflower. Though the Africans were initially sold as indentured servants, it is regarded as the origin of enslaved Africans in English colonies in mainland North America. There had been slavery among Native Americans in the United States since before Europeans arrived, which continued with capture and purchase of Native Americans for work in mainland colonies and export to the Caribbean.

The slaves on the White Lion were probably among the thousands who had been captured in 1618-1619 by a force largely of Africans, under nominal Portuguese leadership, making war.

During the colonial period in the United States, tobacco was the dominant slave-produced commodity. Concentrated in Virginia and Maryland, tobacco plantations utilized the largest percentage of enslaved Africans imported into the United States prior to the American Revolution.

The slave population in the Chesapeake increased significantly during the 18th century due to demand for cheap tobacco labor and a dwindling influx of indentured servants willing to migrate from England. In this century, it is estimated that the Chesapeake African slave population increased from 100,000 to 1 million – a majority of the enslaved workforce and about 40% of the total population.Slaves were not imported to the Chesapeake after 1775, but slave populations continued to increase through 1790 because most were forced by their masters to produce large numbers of offspring.