Increase of slavery in 1680s Virginia

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from the book Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, & Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia, Kathleen Brown, U. of North Carolina Press, Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture (sponsored jointly by the College of William and Mary and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation), 1996. This book also won the 1997 John H. Dunning Prize in United States History, American Historical Association.

pages 180-181:

“ . . . As convicts fell into disfavor by the 1670s and slaves became more accessible, owing in part to the Royal African Company’s search for new markets, Africans appeared in Virginia in increasing numbers. By the 1680s, the prices of white indentured servant men had risen enough to make the purchase of African slaves a good investment.[115]

“The Africans who arrived in the colony during the final quarter of the century confronted the racially charged aftermath of Bacon’s genocidal campaign against Indians. Despite the royal commissioners’ attempts to discourage the prolonged service of Indian prisoners of war, the Virginia Assembly of 1677 ordered Indians taken captive to be kept as slaves. Over the next few years, new restrictions lumped those Indians together with Africans into one legal category designated ‘negroes and other slaves.’ By 1682, the Assembly had decided that owners of Indian women ‘ought to pay levies in like manner as negroe women.’ Virginia planters also reiterated the prohibition on Africans and Indians escaping perpetual bondage by converting to Christianity. As of 1682, all servants ‘whether Negroes, Moors, Mollattoes and Indians’ were to be considered slaves if their parents and native country were not Christian at the time of their first purchase [emphasis added].[116] Built on an earlier legal foundation of racial differentiation that had been newly politicized by Bacon’s Rebellion, racism toward Africans and Indians swelled during the 1680s and 1690s.

“Enslaved African men bore the brunt of measures designed to ensure tranquility in the aftermath of the rebellion because they were potentially rebellious male laborers in a colony that had just witnessed the devastation of widespread military rebellion.[117] Virginia’s planters excluded them from the privileges of white manhood that hard experience had already shown to be dangerously empowering and conducive to rebellion. During the last quarter of the seventeenth century, white legislators systematically stripped enslaved men of the trappings of masculinity enjoyed by white men: propertyownership, gun possession, and access to white women. In doing so, they transformed the rebellious potential of autonomous white men into a form of domestic patriarchy that reinforced rather than undermined the social order. . . ”

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[115] Menard, “From Servants to Slaves,” Southern Studies, XVI (1977), 355-390; David W. Galenson, Traders, Planters, and Slaves: Market Behavior in Early English America (New York, 1986), 67. See also “Conway Robinson’s Notes,” in MCGC [Minutes of the Council and General Court of Colonial Virginia], 494, 519, for mention of a contract for slaves with the Royal African Company. [H.R. McIlwaine, ed., Minutes of the Council and General Court of Colonial Virginia, 2d ed. (Richmond, Va., 1979).]

[116] SAL [Statutes at Large], Feb. 20, 1677, II, 404; Nov. 10, 1682, II, 490, 492. [William Waller Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of the Legislature, 13 vols. (1823; facsimile reprint, Charlottesville, Va., 1969).]

[117] Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 328.

... Please do notice how Christianity is redefined in order to allow slavery to roll forward.

Slavery still exists , try to quit the military.

My point is, that it's important to have some understanding of the transition from indentured servitude to slavery, I guess especially for those of us who are American citizens. I mean, it was a pretty lousy chapter in our country's history.

And maybe it didn't have to be this way. Maybe even with the greater economic gains on the table, the people of colonial Virginia could have decided, no, it's too high a price to pay, it's not worth it. There has to be a better way.

We employ people in China, India, other Third World countries for basically slave labor conditions (sometimes literal slavery in those parts of the world) so we can have $80 Android tablets and the like.

If you work for around minimum wage in the States, I'd call that slavery. You cannot live off that, and would need to work multiple jobs. .

Which means one can live by his labor. Not wonderfully well, but it beats dead or dying, yes? There are people in Uganda who would gladly trade places with the poor, poor wage slaves.

ruveyn

"One can live by his labor" .. you can't live on minimum wage .. beats dead or dying? Of course. Historically, I look at how slaves were treated. They were house, fed, and the women cooked, acted in a nanny role. They were in essence apart of the family, and that gave great stability. I'm sure physical slavery in Africa is bad, however they still haveto eat.. still haveto be housed.. their labor is stable. It's a hard life, but a life.

What about two minimum wages and a 65 hour week. It is hard, but it is doable. Combined with sharing living quarters with other parties and pooling the money to buy food from co-ops it is doable. No one said it was comfortable or easy. For a few years, my wife and I lived on minimum wages. We had to get fresh unprepared food at bargain prices and forgo some of the fancy packaged stuff. We both worked, so that is two salaries right there. And then I took an extra job. Two and half salaries. Not exactly the American Dream, but it is far from the African of Hataian nightmare.

ruveyn

I did, and received an "Honorable Discharge".

If you volunteer, then it's service; If you're conscripted, then it's servitude.


I assume that you've never been in the military.