Slave Labor System and the Enslavement of the Africans

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Labor System
The English came to North America hoping to attain economic independence and religious freedoms unavailable at home. Between 1620 and 1640, more than 40,000 individuals left England for North America. Throughout the 1600s and 1700s, the English relied on indentured servants as its major labor force. Surprisingly, other colonialists like the Portuguese and Spanish were already benefiting from the labor of enslaved Africans. For instance, “The Spanish crown, keen to use colonization as a means of rewarding, and thus controlling, Spain's lesser nobility, placed the conduct of overseas conquest under central control, creating the Council of the Indies in 1524 to administer the whole Spanish empire from the port city of Seville.”(Clark, Hewitt, Brown, Jaffee, 24). However, things changed in the 18th century when the English considered enslaved Africans an alternative to indentured servants.
The demand for tobacco prompted the English to consider a new slave labor system in the 1600s. The first English settlement in Jamestown in 1607 by the Virginia Company of London was driven by a misguided fantasy of a place where people could become quickly without much effort. However, the settlers encountered a harsh environment, forcing the company to introduce harsh military discipline. Coercive methods became the order of the day as a means of maintaining the colony. Such forcible approaches set a precedent for the later introduction of slavery. Towards the 1970s, the planters needed a large workforce, but they were unwilling to improve the conditions for the workforce. Some servants lived long enough to attain their freedom and acquire land. However, the land was usually of poor quality compared to the wealthy colonialists, which often created tensions. There were efforts to ensure that free and slave black people were subject to greater scrutiny. Further, there was a need to break the ties between the whites and the black laborers. As a result, the English colonialists imposed new restrictions on freed blacks on their legal and political rights. The 1660s laws, which legalized slavery, started taking a racial approach. While “Christians” could not be subjected to slavery, Africans were excluded from the particular principle. Other laws prohibited interracial cohabitation or marriage, blacks from carrying arms, and made freeing slaves more challenging. Slaves could not own land because they were the property of their masters. Laws that prohibited rape did not cover slave women.
. The tensions in the colony cultivated into the Bacon’s rebelling in the Chesapeake. The rebellion changed how blacks and whites coexisted. “Bacon's Rebellion of 1676: A Turning Point. For Governor Berkeley and wealthy planters, this discontent posed a threat.” (Clark et al., 77). There was a need to minimize the tensions among the whites. “By 1705, the contempt earlier generations of planters had shown for Indians, and English indentured servants had reached its logical culmination in a slave code that gave masters unrestricted power over a permanently unfree labor force.”(Clark et al., 81) In other words, implementing the new laws allowed the masters unrestricted power over the unfree labor force. As the blacks lost their freedom, the whites benefited immensely from the new changes. The poor whites enjoyed more privileges compared to the blacks. The laws worked to separate the blacks from their counterparts whites and elevated the former immensely. There was a difference between the enslaved Black people and white servants, with the latter enjoying more privileges. The ultimate aim was to reduce the chances of some white servants joining the blacks in another rebellion.
Moreover, after 1680, the supply of new white indentured servants and free white migration to the area reduced significantly, making purchasing slaves necessary to meet the labor demands. The English economy had undergone a revival, creating more opportunities for poor whites in England. Newly opened colonies like Pennsylvania brought a lot of competition for the labor force in Chesapeake. This minimized the flow of white servants who could undertake farm and craft work. “Young families also came as indentured servants. They tended to work off their indentures in a...