I. The Meeting of Three Cultures
Learning
Objective:
Understand how Western Europe emerged from the medieval period
into the modern era.
Beginning around the 12th century several simultaneous developments
began to take place in Western Europe. These developments and
the interaction between them fundamentally changed European
society. These developments were: 1) The breakdown of the political
system of feudalism, and the replacement of this system with
the concept of the nation state. 2) The weakening of the economic
system of the middle ages—manorialism—and the development
of capitalism. 3) The development of scientific principles and
the application of the these principles to society as a whole
— the Renaissance & the concept of humanism. 4) The Reformation.
These events were intertwined. Feudalism was the political
system of the Middle Ages. It was a system of local government
that developed in the absence of an organized state. Beginning
in the 9th century after the death of Charlemagne, local nobles
established control over their immediate region — the largest
of these encompassing several hundred square miles. The smaller
landholders accepted the count's protection by becoming his
vassal. The count was his lord. In return for the lord's protection,
the vassal would provide men for combat, give the lord food
and services, and give him advice in his court.
During the medieval period a feudal lord would try to tie his
subjects' loyalty to his family so that when he died his heirs
would be able to rule without discontent. To accomplish this
goal he took actions that developed the concept of nationalism,
with the prince representing the state. During the feudal period,
loyalty was individual — a subject swore an oath to his liege
lord. Monarchs replaced this individual loyalty with a national
loyalty. To rebel against your prince was not just violating
an oath of allegiance, it was treason, and all the resources
of the state would be brought to bear against you.
Monarchs wanted the power of the nobility reduced so that theirs
could increase. During the feudal period a ruler had to share
power with the nobility because he needed military assistance.
The horseback mounted knight was the key to military success.
But technology, and after the plague of the 1300s, an increase
in the European population, changed this method of warfare.
The development of the longbow, massed infantry with pikes,
and later, muskets and cannon, destroyed the military power
of the nobility. On-the-other-hand, the infantry needed to be
paid and fed. Often they were mercenaries. The burgeoning middle-class
had the capital that the king needed to fight his wars and conduct
his royal business. The development of the middle class reduced
the economic and political power of the nobility and correspondingly
increased the power of the king and the nation.
As nationalism increased the power of the Catholic church decreased.
During the middle ages the Church had become the largest land
holder in Europe. With political loyalty during the feudal period
based on personal relationships, many church bishops were also
powerful lords. When the concept of nationalism developed this
condition could not be allowed to continue—a person had to
have a primary allegiance to either the church or the nation.
In every nation the church was subjugated to the State. For
example, in England, King Henry VIII solved this problem by
becoming the head of the Church. In Spain the church and the
government worked together to establish a national consensus.
In France, a bitter civil war resolved the issue.
Before capitalism could develop, Europe had to develop a surplus
in both food and population — the entire population could not
be engaged in food production. The invention of a more efficient
plow, the horse collar, the horse shoe, and later, the replacement
of the horse with oxen to pull plows all increased production
(oxen are twice as efficient as horses). The three field system,
and the planting of more beans (a source of protein for people,
and nitrogen for the soil) increased nutrition. The new methods
of production caused new lands to be put under the plow and
helped increase the population of Europe.
This increase in population lead to a gradual emancipation
of the serfs. Serfs moved onto new lands with the understanding
that a reward for doing this extra hard work would be gradual
emancipation. The increase in population and food also led to
an increase in internal commerce. For example, raw wool would
be sent from England to Flanders, made into cloth, and sold
to Germans in exchange for iron and lumber. Italian merchants
would sell eastern goods in Europe and wool to the East. During
the middle ages Venice had continued to trade with the East.
The Crusades established Genoa and Pisa as commercial centers.
By the end of the l2th century long range trade between the
East and the West through the Mediterranean Sea was common.
Goods were also exchanged through the caravans across the Sahara.
Beginning in the 13th century, merchants began to attend fairs
to exchange goods. Towns also began to grow to provide this
function. With the increase in trade the circulation of money
greatly expanded. Because trade was so risky the Italians developed
the ideas of the joint-stock-company and letters of credit.
The emergence of a money economy helped to transform medieval
society. Increasingly the peasant became a tenant farmer instead
of a serf.
As early as the l3th century some of the characteristics of
capitalism were in place in Western Europe: the concentration
of wealth in the hands of investors; the profit motive; the
acquisition of wealth from the investment of capital rather
than from land; and, an increase in trade. Beginning in the
15th century labor became a purchasable commodity and modern
capitalism truly began. During this period labor became specialized,
and production became standardized. For example, one woolen
cloth manufacturing firm in Florence had twenty different types
of laborers to turn out a finished product. With excess capital
available, banking became a profitable industry, and lending
money to kings increased the power of the capitalists and weakened
the power of the nobility. Lending money to kings was often
risky business since the kings would often renege on their debts.
By the l5th century money had replaced land as the most important
source of wealth, but noble birth was still the main determinant
of one's social status, regardless of wealth.
Learning Objective:
Understand the Iberian phase (1500-1600) of Western European expansion.
Portugal took the lead in overseas expansion in the fifteenth
century. Portugal's small size and its location on the Atlantic
coast oriented it toward the Atlantic rather than toward Europe.
Lisbon was on the route of the Genoese and Venetian sea traffic
with Flanders that sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar,
and many Italian captains and pilots were in the Portuguese
navy. Their superior knowledge of navigation helped the Portuguese
lead the way. Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460) began sending
ships down the coast of Africa in search of gold. By 1460 the
African coast had been explored down to Sierra Leone, and a
number of coastal stations had been established.
European trade with the East was controlled by the Moslems.
Therefore, with the exception of the Venetians, who profited
as middlemen, the Europeans eagerly sought a new route to the
East Indies and its spices. Prince Henry had not thought of
India when he first began his operations, but as the Portuguese
reached father down the coast it was natural that India would
become their ultimate goal.
It was the advanced navigational knowledge of the Portuguese
that caused them to reject Christopher Columbus in 1484 when
he came to them and proposed reaching India by sailing west.
By the l5th century people knew the world was round. The question
was the size of the Earth and what precise relationship its
continents bore to the oceans. Columbus had concluded that less
than 3,000 miles of ocean separated Europe from Japan instead
of the 9,000 miles that actually exist. Accordingly, he believed
that the shortest and easiest route to Asia was across the Atlantic.
The Portuguese were convinced that the globe was larger than
Columbus held, that the oceans were wider, and that the shortest
route to the Orient was around Africa rather than across the
Atlantic. The Spanish lacked the experience of the Portuguese
and in August 1492 they allowed Columbus to sail westward with
three small ships manned by reliable crews with capable and
seasoned officers.
Ten weeks later Columbus landed at one of the Bahamian Islands.
On December 23, 1492 Columbus anchored off the island of Hispaniola
and 1,000 Arawak Indians canoed out to inspect Columbus's flagship,
the Santa Maria. The Spanish sailors stayed up all night trading
beads, brass bells and even shoelace tips for gold. By the night
of the 24th the entire crew of about 50 sailors was exhausted
from their trading and partying the night before. The cabin
boy was given the helm and everyone else, including Columbus
went to sleep. Around midnight the ship hit a reef which ripped
out the bottom of the boat and caused it to sink. The dismantled
wreck was used to build a fort at Navidad. Thirty-nine sailors
remained there when Columbus returned to Spain in early 1493.
Columbus made three additional trips to the New World. Columbus'
discovery did not directly benefit the Spanish until they conquered
the rich Aztec Empire in Mexico in 1521, but it did prod the
Portuguese to circumnavigate Africa and reach India by sea in
1498.
Learning
Objective:
Understand why the Spanish and Portuguese influence in exploration
and colonization declined and England rose to take their place.
In the period between 1600 and 1763 Spain and Portugal were
overtaken and surpassed by the powers of Northwestern Europe
— Holland, France, and Britain. The countries of Northwestern
Europe were to dominate the world — politically, militarily,
economically, and to a certain degree, culturally — until 1914.
The domination of the world by Northwestern Europe did not actually
materialize until after 1763. But it was during the years between
1600 & 1763 that the basis for domination was laid. The
British gained their first foothold in India, the Dutch drove
the Portuguese out of the East Indies, all the northwestern
powers set up stations on the coasts of Africa, and the French
and British became the masters of North America above the Rio
Grande and controlled much of the commerce of the Iberian colonies
to the south of it.
One reason for the Iberian decline was their involvement in
the religious and dynastic wars of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Spanish manpower and treasure were squandered by Charles V and
Philip II to fight the religious wars against the Protestants,
the recurring campaigns against the Turks, and the dynastic
struggles against rival royal houses, especially the French.
In waging these campaigns the rulers of Spain fatally overextended
themselves.
A second reason for the Iberian decline was that they became
economic dependencies of Northwest Europe. The economic dependence
of the Iberian countries was a part of the general shift of
the economic center of Europe in the late Middle Ages from the
Mediterranean basin to the north. By the l6th century the Dutch
controlled the Atlantic trade. In this new trade pattern, the
dependent economic status of the Iberian states was evident
in their exports, which were almost exclusively raw materials
— wine, wool, and iron ore from Spain, and African gold and
salt from Portugal. In return the Iberians received back their
own wool, which had been manufactured abroad into cloth, as
well as metallurgical products, salt, and fish. Thus the Iberian
states, like the Italian, were declining at this time from the
status of developed to underdeveloped societies relative to
the burgeoning capitalist economies of Northern Europe.
In 1496 John Cabot sailed from England and discovered the Grand
Banks — the sea off Newfoundland was teeming with fish. The
regular supply of immense quantities of cod was a great windfall
for a continent where many people lived near starvation for
part of every year.
Northwest Europeans supplied up to 90 percent of the manufactured
goods imported by Brazil and Spanish America, as well as a high
proportion of similar goods consumed in the Iberian peninsula
itself. First the Dutch, and then the British, controlled most
of the carrying trade with the Iberian colonies. The net effect
of Spanish overseas enterprise was to fuel the booming capitalist
economy of northwest Europe, while in the Iberian peninsula
it provided just enough wealth to forestall the basic institutional
reforms that were long overdue.
The economically backward Iberian states were able to take
the lead in overseas expansion only because of a fortunate combination
of favorable geographic location, maritime technology, and religious
drive. But their expansion was not based upon economic strength
and dynamism, which explains why the Iberian states could not
exploit their new empires effectively. One reason for the decline
was the great inflow of treasure which produced a sharp inflation.
Prices and wages rose approximately twice as high in Spain as
in northern Europe. The inflation penalized Spanish industry,
making its products too expensive to compete in the international
market.
At least as important as the price and wage inflation was the
ruinous influence of the Spanish aristocrat, on the national
economy and values. Although the aristocrats, together with
the higher churchmen, comprised less than 2 percent of the population,
they owned about 96 percent of the land. The nobility had all
the social status and prestige. And because the nobility looked
down upon careers in commerce as demeaning for any gentleman,
this became the national norm. Consequently, the ambition of
successful merchants was to acquire estates, buy titles, which
were sold by the impoverished crown, and thus abandon their
class and become hidalgos. As a result of these attitudes, the
economic spurt that occurred in Spain in the first half of the
l6th century ended in failure.
Protestant England under Queen Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603) opposed
Catholic Spain. For political and religious reasons the English
supported the Dutch in their rebellion against Spanish control.
Another cause of conflict between Spain and England was the
English intrusion into the Spanish empire in America. The Spanish
forbade foreigners trading with their colonies. In 1562 the
Englishman John Hawkins disregarded the law and picked up slaves
in Sierra Leone and exchanged them in Hispaniola (Haiti) for
hides and sugar. The profits were so great that Queen Elizabeth
secretly invested in his second voyage. He followed the same
procedure as before and returned with a cargo of silver that
made him the richest man in England. The Spanish strongly protested
this illegal trade, and on his third voyage in 1569 Hawkins
lost three of five ships to Spanish naval action, and he barely
made it back to Britain. During the following decades Protestant
sea captains visited the Spanish Indies as pirates and privateers
rather than as peaceful, though illegal, traders.
In 1581 Francis Drake took his ship through the Strait of Magellan,
captured a Spanish treasure ship off the Pacific coast of South
America, then sailed up to California and from there to the
South Pacific Spice Islands and to the Cape of Good Hope; thus,
when he returned to England after an absence of three years,
he had circumnavigated the globe. The queen knighted Drake,
and no wonder; his cargo of Spanish treasure was worth twice
Elizabeth's annual revenue. In 1585-1586, with the official
backing of his government, Drake took a fleet of 30 ships once
more into the Caribbean to vandalize and plunder the Spanish.
Formal war with Spain gave the Protestant powers the opportunity
they needed to move openly into the Iberian colonies.
By 1586 Phillip II of Spain could put up with England's interference
in Spanish affairs no longer and he began his plan to invade
England. In July, 1588 the Armada with a fleet of 130 ships
and 30,000 men reached the coast of England. The English had
as many ships as the Spanish and better guns and sailors. The
English defeated the Armada, destroying, with the help of a
storm, about half the fleet. The defeat of the Spanish Armada
began the decline of Spain even though the war would drag on
until 1604. In 1648 the Netherlands finally won their independence
from Spain.
The French also joined the European race to colonize North
America. In 1608 Quebec was established. By 1680 French explorers
had canoed from Lake Michigan to the mouth of the Mississippi.
The land claimed by France was named Louisiana in honor of King
Louis XIV.
Learning Objective:
Understand the Slave Trade
Europe had a long history of contact with Sub-Saharan Africa
through the Saharan caravan trade. The Saharan trade began in
the third or fourth century AD when the Berbers of the Maghrib
began using the camel to transverse the 1,000 to 2,000 kilometers
that separate the two edges of the desert.
From the above description, it is obvious that the economic
motivation for the risky and expensive transSaharan trade had
to be significant. And, indeed it was. Gold and slaves were
the motivating factors for the trade. Other goods were imported
from the Sudan — ivory, ostrich plumes, kola nuts — but these
were insignificant when compared to the gold and slave trade.
Ivory, for example, could be procured more efficiently from
eastern Africa.
Until the sixteen century and the exploitation of American
gold, the Sudan was the paramount source of gold both for the
Muslim world and for Europe. Estimates suggest that at the peak
of the Sahara gold trade over a ton of gold reached the Mediterranean
annually. In return for the Sudanese gold and slaves, the Berbers,
and later, Arab traders, transported the goods of the Mediterranean
and European world south. Much of the trade across the desert
to the south was probably in luxury goods — books, paper, horses,
tea, coffee, sugar, spices jewelry, perfumes, needles, scissors,
and later, guns. These commodities had a high value to weight
ratio in order to maximize profit.
Europeans, especially those in the Mediterranean basin, knew
of the West African gold fields and were eager to exploit them.
Portugal was the first nation to take advantage of the explosion
in European maritime technology. By 1490, the Portuguese had
regular trade relations with the West African coast. Other European
nations soon followed.
Between 650 and 1600 about 2 million slaves were exported across
the Sahara to the north coast of Africa and the Middle East.
Millions more were taken from East Africa by Arab traders. This
trade continued into the twentieth century. These slaves were
often individuals who had been captured during warfare. In other
cases, they were political exiles or criminals who were sold
because their labor or special skills they had acquired had
market value. In addition, the incidence of drought and famine
caused the destitute to sell themselves or their children into
slavery. These factors for enslavement would also hold true
when the Europeans dominated the slave trade. Domestic African
and Middle Eastern purchasers of slaves valued women more highly
than men, since the social productivity of women (not only as
domestics, concubines, and wives, but also as laborers) exceeded
the economic productivity of men (as agricultural or artisan
laborers). The highest priced slaves in the Middle East were
eunuchs, which serves to accentuate the basically female orientation
of slavery in that region. With the discovery of the Americas,
and the expansion of the plantation system, men, not women,
became the gender that was the most in demand for slavery. To
understand slavery in the New World, one must first look at
the European "world view" of labor during the "Age
of Exploration. In sixteen century Europe agricultural labor
was not "free," as we would define the term today.
He still had to serve, to cultivate the land which was always
controlled by a feudal overlord. He was free, but everywhere
the state demanded taxes from him, the Church tithes, and the
landlord feudal dues.
In eastern Europe the system of serfdom was reestablished.
Eastern Europe, like the New World, was being pushed into a
colonial-like existence as a supplier of raw materials for western
Europe. To insure an adequate labor supply for the production
of these raw materials (primarily grain) the upper classes of
eastern Europe abolished many of the freedoms the peasant classes
had gained since the 13th century.
Europeans realized that the first European country that could
first circumvent the Arab middle-men that controlled the access
to the gold of subSaharan Africa would, in effect, control the
specie that backed Europe's supply of money. Portugal was uniquely
situated to be this country. It is located on the Atlantic,
right next to Africa. Furthermore, the ocean and wind currents
are such that it is difficult for sailing ships leaving port
farther north than Portugal and southwest Spain to travel due
south. Portugal had significant previous experience with long-distance
trade throughout the Mediterranean basin. The Portuguese had
established commercial connections with the Italian city-state
of Genoa and this connection gave the state access to the capital
necessary for expansion.
During the fifteenth century, Portugal was the most stable
state in Europe. She knew peace when her potential rivals knew
internal warfare. For a small state like Portugal expansion
was the most likely route to the expansion of revenue and the
accumulation of glory.Thus, Portuguese mariners went down the
African coast looking for gold, not slaves. It was the discovery
of the New World that made African slaves a valuable commodity.
The availability of slaves for sale was an unexpected by-product
of the gold trade.
The Atlantic African slave trade began in 1442 when two captains
of Prince Henry the Navigator took twelve African slaves to
Lisbon. The Portuguese proceeded to ship thousands of African
slaves to their homeland. Prior to the discovery of America,
the plantation system had already been established on the Atlantic
islands (the Azores, the Madereiras, the Canaries, the Cape
Verde Islands, and São Tomé), and it was easy
to transfer the system to the tropical climate region of the
New World.
Learning Objective: Understand why Africa was the major source
of unfree labor for the New World.
Why did the trans-Atlantic slave trade develop in sub-Saharan
Africa and not elsewhere? The answer is primarily based on economics,
not race. As indicated earlier, labor was unfree everywhere
during this time period. It has been estimated that between
one-half to two-thirds of all the immigrants to the British
North American colonies came as indentured servants. Other races
besides black Africans had been traditionally enslaved (the
word slave itself probably comes from the fact that many of
the slaves in the pre-Atlantic era were Slavs. In the Ottoman
Empire all the members of the sultan's household, from highest
field commander to humblest Janissary [foot soldiers], were
slaves, recruited mainly from Christian peasant villages located
in the mountainous wild west of the Balkan peninsula).
Expansion involves its own economic imperatives. The ability
to expand successfully is a function both of the ability to
maintain relative social solidarity at home and the arrangements
that can be made to use cheap labor far away (it being all the
more important that it be cheap the further it is away, because
of transportation costs). Europe needed a source of labor from
a reasonably well-populated region that was accessible and relatively
near the region of usage. But it had to be from a region that
was outside its world-economy so that Europe could feel unconcerned
about the economic consequences for the breeding region of wide-scale
removal of manpower. Western Africa filled the bill best.
In 1510 the first shipload of African slaves was shipped to
the New World. The venture was highly profitable, for there
was urgent need for labor in the Americas, especially on the
sugar plantations. Portugal dominated the trade in the sixteenth
century, Holland during most of the seventeenth, and Britain
during the eighteenth. The West African coast was dotted with
about forty European forts which were used for defense against
the rival trading nations and for storing slaves while awaiting
shipment across the Atlantic.
Textbooks often show a map of African commerce with a typical
triangular voyage. The first leg was from the home port to Africa,
with a cargo including metal products, cloth, firearms, hardware,
beads, and rum. The goods were bartered for slaves brought by
Africans from the interior to the coast. The slaves were shipped
across the Atlantic on the so-called "Middle Passage."
The average death rate during the "Middle Passage"
ranged from 10 to 55 percent, depending on the length of the
voyage, the chance occurrence of epidemics, and the treatment
accorded the slaves. The final lap was the voyage home with
the plantation produce such as sugar, molasses, tobacco, or
rice.
Philip Curtin points out that the above model is too simplistic
since "a variety of multilateral trading voyages was possible."
For example, a "French ship might make the outward voyage
to Africa, pick up a cargo of slaves, but sell it in Spanish
America for bullion. The bullion in turn would find its way
to the Compagnie des Indes for shipment to southern India in
return for indigo-dyed cloth of a kind much in demand in Senegal.
This cloth might be sold in Senegal — not for slaves, but for
gum and for Senegalese cloth in demand further down the coast
in Dahomey (Benin). The Dahomean slaves would be sold, in turn,
in the New World, and variants of the same cycle could be played
out again."
A large local supply of labor for the American plantations
was not available. It was not through a lack of effort. From
the beginning, the Spanish and Portuguese planned on using the
Native Americans as an unfree work force. The Iberians were
in desperate need of labor for their sugar plantations and mines
and it could not be supplied from the Mother Countries, therefore
several different systems of unfree labor were instituted. The
mita system was built on the forced labor system of the Incas,
and it required one-seventh of the Native adult male population
of the old Inca empire to work in the silver mines of Potosí
every year.
The encomienda system allocated a chieftain and his people
to a Spaniard. Amerindians had to supply labor, and later, cash
tributes to their Spanish overlords. Both the Spanish and the
Portuguese attempted to enslave Amerindians, but in the lowlands,
where the plantations were located, most of the Native Americans
died from European diseases. The population losses were rapid
and are estimated as high as 90 percent for the Americas as
a whole.
On the Caribbean islands the natives were totally wiped-out.
High Native American death rates were the case in North America
too. For example, at the beginning of the eighteenth century
one European estimated that in only fifty years smallpox and
rum had reduced the number of Amerindians living within 200
miles of Charleston, SC, by over 80 percent.
Estimates on the number of PreColumbian Native Americans vary
from 30 to 100 million. At the time of Columbus, Europe from
the Atlantic to the Urals had only 80 million people, with Spain's
population perhaps 7 million. While 100 million may seem like
too high an estimate, it is important to remember that the Americas
had one-fourth of the earth's land surface and was rich in sources
of food. It seems sensible to begin with the assumption that
there were a lot of Americans in 1492.
Learning
Objective:
Understand slavery in British North America.
In British North America the use of Indian labor was never
a viable option. Indians were too few in number, and they were
not organized into large agricultural groupings as were the
Native Americans of Latin America.
Partially because of the Enclosure Acts, Britain, unlike the
Iberian countries, had a "surplus" population to ship
to the New World. The Virginia company granted 50 additional
acres of land for every new tenant an investor imported to Virginia.
Such land grants were know as "headrights," since
the land was apportioned per each "head" imported.
The settler would then pay off his passage by working for the
investor who paid his way (often by clearing the additional
50 acres). This is the beginning of the famous "indentured
servant" system. So-called because the terms of contract
were written in duplicate on a piece of paper in England. It
would then be ripped-apart prior to the voyage with one half
given to the servant and the other half to the owner's representative
(often the ship captain). When the "indentures" on
the ripped document matched, servant and master knew they had
found each other. Usually the servant worked from four to seven
years. From the master's point of view this was a good system.
For four to seven years of labor he only had to pay out room
and board and passage from England.
It cost a master between £10-£12 to bring over
a servant. He would recoup his investment after only two or
three years. In 1619 one Virginia master with six servants made
a profit of £1,000. Unusual perhaps, but not impossible.
For servants in early Virginia life was hard. First, there was
a terrific mortality rate. The majority probably died after
one year, and any servant, poor as he was to begin with, was
in no position to protect himself from abuse. He had bound himself
for a definite period of time. Running away, or disobedience,
was severely punished, and almost always added time to one's
contract. The government, including the court system, was controlled
by the planter class.
Africans were first imported into British America at Jamestown
in 1619 by a Dutch warship. Prior to 1660 the legal status of
blacks is unknown — it seems that some were held as slaves
and some were servants. Other blacks were either given their
freedom or were able to purchase it. Only during the 1660s did
the Virginia assembly begin to pass legislation that set up
legal definitions of slavery. Historians are not certain why
legal slavery did not develop earlier in Virginia, especially
since the planters were in desperate need of labor. Richard
Dunn has conjectured that it was because slaves were not available.
The African slave trade was just beginning and the journey from
Africa took 4-6 weeks longer to Virginia than it did to the
Caribbean Islands where the demand for slaves was heavy. If
traders sailing from Africa had a ready market in Barbados,
why sail all the way up to Virginia? The slave traders may not
have found the effort worth it.
Edmund Morgan has suggested that because of the high mortality
rate in early Virginia, the extra cost of slaves over indentured
servants was wasted money. Both slaves and indentured servants
would die in two or three years, so the planters bought the
cheapest labor. It was only when the mortality rate fell to
acceptable levels in the 1650s that the advantage of life-long
labor (and the labor of any offspring) caused the Virginian
planters to move away from indentured servants to chattel slavery.
Prior to the 1650s landless freemen where uncommon in Virginia
and the other Southern colonies. In the last half of the seventeenth
century the situation began to change as more of the indentured
servants began to survive their term of labor. While some of
them, after working out their terms, did manage to get land
and begin the process of upward social mobility, many were never
able to rise out of the servant class. If an individual did
get land, it was likely to be marginal. Instead of becoming
their own masters, many became tenant farmers on land owned
by the person who had owned their indenture. For these reasons,
Morgan concluded that Virginia's freemen were "an unruly
and discontented lot." The problems, actual and anticipated,
with this growing and dangerous class of free labor, may have
been another of the reasons that Virginians switched from unfree
English labor to unfree African labor.
Learning
Objective:
Understand how the African slave trade was conducted.
Most slaves were employed on sugar plantations and producing
this crop, before modern machinery, was very labor intensive.
Planters estimated that they needed one worker for each acre
cultivated. Although sugar must be "cured" as soon
as it is cut to remove the plant's water (it begins to decompose
as soon as it is cut), once concentrated, it had a long shelf
life and a high value-to-bulk ratio. This means that it could
be profitably transported from America to Europe.
In the seventeenth century the cost of slaves was low in Africa.
So low in fact that Brazilian and West Indian planters believed
that it was cheaper to work their slaves to death and buy new
ones, than it was to raise them from birth. If a slave lived
two years, a planter got his money's worth of labor. With the
exception of the British North American colonies, this attitude,
the prevalence of tropical diseases, and the high ratio of men
to women, insured that the American slave population could only
be maintained through the continued importation of more slaves.
We do not know why the North American colonies were an exception
to this rule. (It might have to do with the cost of slaves.
Because the United States was so far north, it was on the periphery
of the slave trade. It took months longer for ships to reach
the American south from Africa than it did to reach Brazil.
The death rate on the middle passage was as much as 50 percent
higher, and therefore the cost of slaves would be more, perhaps
making it more economically desirable to not work one's slaves
to death).
At the mouth of the Gambia River in the 1680s a young male
slave sold for goods worth about £5.50. According to Philip
Curtin "Five pounds sterling would have bought 17 trade
muskets or 200 liters of brandy or 349 kilograms of wrought
iron. The cost of slaves was so low because "the economic
model for enslavement is one of burglary, not of production.
In economic terms, the value of the slave is not a real cost
[e.g. how much it cost to raise the slave to a saleable age]
but an `opportunity cost.'"
If an African king captured a neighbor's village in war he
was entitled by law and custom to enslave the inhabitants. The
captives were "free" booty from the war and were essentially
without cost to the king (assuming he was fighting the war for
political objectives). While the women and young men might be
kept as local slaves, keeping recent enemies of fighting age
around was dangerous. The usual practice was either to kill
the captive immediately or to sell him a distant point. We do
not have enough evidence to know whether some West African wars
were caused by the desire to capture slaves, or if the captives
were simply a by-product of wars fought for other reasons.
Most Africans were sold into bondage by other Africans. There
were several reasons for this. First, tropical diseases were
extremely deadly to Europeans when they reached West Africa.
Europeans wanted to get in and get out of the region as fast
as possible. The sparse historical evidence available indicates
that during a slave trading voyage it was not uncommon for the
death rate to be higher among sailors than slaves. This high
mortality rate precluded Europeans from sending expeditions
ashore to capture slaves. This high mortality rate is also why
the Europeans did not establish formal colonies in West Africa
until the late nineteenth century, when modern medicine finally
made the European death rate from tropical diseases politically
and economically acceptable.
Second, African leaders wanted to control the slave traffic.
They wanted the profits they could achieve as middle-men, and
they wanted to insure that the people sold into bondage were
the ones they wanted to sell. By keeping the trade in their
own hands, the African rulers who controlled the trade guaranteed
that their subjects were not the ones sold into slavery (some
exceptions to this rule are discussed below).
The third reason ties in with the first two. It was cheaper
for the Europeans (who had a tremendous amount of capital tied
up in their ships and trading goods) to pay Africans for slaves
rather than spending the time and resources in capturing them
themselves. To the slave-ship owner, slaves were a commodity
(like sugar, tobacco and textiles) to be transported. It was
someone else's job to get the commodity to the dock.
The corrupting influences of the slave trade affected Africans
as well as Europeans. Many African societies sold condemned
criminals into the slave trade. Such prisoners also included
political opponents of the king and his friends. In some societies
an adulterer could be sold to the profit of the husband. It
was not unknown for a husband to use a young and attractive
wife to snare a victim. If the police power of a region was
weak, bands of young men would raid well away from their own
village trying to pick up individuals or small groups that were
unable to defend themselves. In southeastern Nigeria people
were "sacrificed" to important oracles — they were
not killed but were sold into slavery.
Higher slave prices meant that slaves could be taken farther
away from the coast. All the costs of slavery — guards, food,
taxes and tribute paid to different rulers for protection —
increased the farther inland one went. At peak prices slaves
came from as far as 1,000 miles from the African coast.
The total African slave trade took about 28.7 million Africans
from their homes over a period of centuries (650-1920). Out
of this total, 12 million were involved in the Atlantic trade
(the others were taken through the Red Sea, from the Swahili
Cost, and across the Sahara). An additional two million West
Africans were killed in the course of enslavement, and an estimated
4 million became slaves within Africa. In 1700, West Africa
had an estimated population of 25 million. Prior to 1650, the
trade was rarely more than 10,000 per year. From the late seventeenth
century to the 1750s, driven by the growing demand of the sugar
plantation system, slave prices began rising at an average rate
of 2 percent per year and this increase drove up the number
of slaves shipped. In the peak decades of the 1780s and 1790s
the trade averaged 100,000 slaves a year.
Historians are not sure of the impact of slavery on West Africa,
but some speculations can be made. If warfare was initiated
for the primary purpose of capturing slaves (something that
historians are unsure of) it would have disrupted the social
and economic fabric of the region. Some ethnic groups (e.g.
the Aja in the Bight of Benin) lost substantially amounts of
population. Since the Atlantic trade shipped twice as many men
as women for economic reasons, a surplus of women developed.
Polygamy was reinforced, and women took over jobs traditionally
done by men. The fear of enslavement may have encouraged men
to marry at a young age, and to take a second wife at a younger
age. Africa's population would surely have been greater without
the slave trade.
Learning Objective:
Understand the culture of the Americas c. 1500.
The Indians crossed into North America across the Bering Sea
at least between 20,000-40,000 years ago (recent research indcates
that it may have been as long as 100,000 years ago, and that
they may have come by sea). American Indians differed greatly
in the languages they spoke—about 2,000 distinct Indian languages
have been classified. This represents almost as much variation
in speech as in the entire Old World, where about 3,000 languages
are known to have existed in l500.
Indian cultures can be classified into three groups: 1) hunting,
gathering, and fishing cultures; 2) intermediate farming cultures;
and, 3) advanced farming cultures. The advanced farming cultures
were located in central and southern Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras,
and the Andean highland area (Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and northern
Chile). The intermediate farming cultures were generally in
adjacent regions, while the food-gathering cultures were in
more remote regions — the southern part of South America, and
the western and northern part of North America.
Indians domesticated over 100 plants, about as many as were
domesticated in all Eurasia. About 50 percent of the crop tonnage
of the world today is from plants first domesticated by Indians:
tobacco, tomatoes, corn, potatoes, yams, and manioc (tapioca)
are all New World crops. Horses, cows and pigs came from Europe,
and turkeys and llamas came from the Americas.
When Hernando Cortes landed on the Mexican coast in 1519, the
Aztec empire was at its height. The Aztecs had developed a harsh
and efficient military system that allowed them to conquer all
of central Mexico. Their domination provoked constant rebellions
among the tribes they subjugated, from whom they extracted slaves
and human victims for their gods. In one especially dry season,
the Aztec ruler, Montezuma I, claimed that "the gods are
thirsty," and 20,000 Indians were sacrificed. The Aztec
social system rested on a rigid class structure with most manual
work being performed by slaves captured during military campaigns.
Their capital city of Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City, was described
by the conquering Spaniards as being equal to any in Europe.
The Inca civilization was the most advanced of the Indian cultures.
It was a totalitarian state that systematically expanded its
power — at the time of European discovery the Incas controlled
an area of more than 350,000 square miles. At the head of the
system was the ruling god-emperor, called Inca. Under him was
a highly structured noble class and priests, followed by lower
level officials. All property was owned by the state and all
work was organized on a communal basis. Through a system called
"mita" (which the Spanish adopted) all members of
the lower classes had to work free for the empire for a period
of four months a year. The capital of Cuzco ("navel"
in the Inca language) had enormous palaces and temples, many
of which were gilded with gold, and other imposing dwellings
which housed the elite.
The Aztec Empire had a population of over 10 million, and the
Inca Empire over 6 million, yet all three Indian civilizations
were destroyed by a comparative handful of Spanish adventurers.
Why? There are many reasons: the advanced technology of the
Europeans — the Indians were a stone age culture, without firearms
or horses. The different Indian tribes were not united and often
fought each other instead of the Europeans. Yet, even with these
disadvantages, the numbers were on the Indians side — they
should have been able to kill the first few hundred Europeans
to arrive. It was European, and later, African diseases that
allowed the Indians to be so easily defeated. Because of their
geographical isolation, the Indians had no natural immunity
to Old World diseases like smallpox, tuberculosis, measles,
malaria and yellow fever.
Hernando Cortes' conquest of Mexico in 1519 illustrates the
role disease played in the European domination of the Americas.
The Aztec ruler, Montezuma, did not fight Cortes and his fewer
than 600 men, but instead allowed them to enter his capital
Tenochtitlan (Mexico City). The Spaniards took Montezuma hostage
and controlled the city. Later, the Aztecs revolted. The Spaniards
killed Montezuma, and retreated to a safe haven. But, they left
smallpox behind and an epidemic swept the city. After a seventy-five
day siege, Tenochtitlan again fell to Cortes. According to a
contemporary account when the Spaniards entered the city: "the
streets, squares, houses, and courts were filled with bodies,
so that it was almost impossible to pass. Even Cortes was sick
from the stench in his nostrils."
Historians use the phrase "Colombian Exchange"
to describe the exchange of plants, microorganisms, and animals
between the Americas and the Old World.
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Courtesy of George Burson, Aspen School District,
Aspen, Colorado.
