The Basis of a Form of Contractual and Uncontractual Labour: Traditional Slavery - Research Paper Example

Introduction The history of slavery in Europe stretches from ancient Rome to Nazi labor camps. In the contemporary world it manifests in human trafficking or white slavery as it still sometimes called. Still, Europe has generally been viewed as a protector of liberty and a provider of welfare despite its previous history of slavery. The cause of human trafficiking is the only real blight on its reputation, and this was mostly due to the end of communism which turned Eastern Europe upside down. As Slavic women faced dismal conditions in their native villages and cities, images of Western Europe's wealth and charm drifted across the borders. Women from Asia and Africa have been lured by these images for decades, but the proximity of these former communist countries intensified the appeal. This problem is now being dealt with by various European governments. It shows that no matter how hard we try, it is very difficult to stamp out this terrible phenomenon. This essay will look at slavery and its differences with indentured servitude. Throughout the centuries many societies have owned and maybe even inherited other people as slaves; some of these people may earn their freedom, some may not have. The point is that slavery has been a part of civilization. However, some communities set limits on how long a person remained in slavery. Perhaps some civilizations had laws that provided a time limit on how long a person was a slave. This paper will also look at how the new colonies needed a continuous influx of labourers and how slavery had its origins in establishing economic growth. As the British Empire expanded, from merchants to explorers to farmers a lot of new energy was needed to establish a new colony. Sometimes individuals who were looking for jobs as labourers could not afford to pay their fare over to the new world so they entered into a contract to work for a period of time. This group of people was known as the indentured servants. Britain did not want to be responsible for paying to ship all the people who were willing to move to a new world so they permitted private companies to take care of the problem. This worked for many years. Another group of people were unwilling participants in settling in the British new colonies. This group of people included convicts, military convicts and other immigrants who may have moved to England with hopes of having a new start but not being able to find employment were also known as vagabonds. Smith notes that some of the Irish were shipped to the new colonies and weren’t welcomed by the previous settlers, who were inhospitable, and the ships’ captains would often have to return these indentured servants back to England (Smith, 1999). Slaves accounted for approximately a twenty percent growth in population, but clearly there was a conscious decision to bring more slaves to these colonies than indentured servants. A reason is that previously much slave labour came from Barbados and for a sugar plantation to run effectively, the owner needed seven white men for every fifty black males. Three black workers could do more work, do the work cheaper than one white male (Smith, 1999). This led to that particular ratio. While black people may have been cheaper to care for, a problem that the officials did not consider was that the colony began to bring in more black people than white people which could in turn be a hindrance for encouraging more immigration of white people. Back in these days there was a lot of concern about mixing races. Initially, indentured servants came from Britain but soon the colonies realized the benefits of purchasing slaves. The leaders in colonization during this period were the French, Dutch, English and the Spanish and all were involved in the slave trade and shipping the African people to where the demand was highest. Each of the colonies needed slaves for the purpose of economic expansion and economic development. As the British Empire expanded, from explorers to merchants to farmers, all were necessary when establishing a new colony in the Americas. Without a diverse work force it was very difficult to get things done. Sometimes individuals could not afford to pay their fare to the new world so each entered into a contract to work for a period of time. This group of people are known as indentured servants. Britain did not want to be responsible for paying shipping costs for people who were willing to relocate to the Americas, so Britain permitted private companies to take care of the problem. The slave trade really defines this issue. It began in the sixteenth century and continued for a number of centuries afterwards. The trade composed the largest group of the migrants. It was understood that more than 8 million came against their will in chains. Africans were the largest group that migrated to the Americas. Many could not withstand the grueling trip across the ocean. As a result, these Africans perished. The fact that the first Africans to be brought over were not indentured servants is predicated upon historical data that was calculated through numerical research. The historical data is based upon educated estimates of the number of people involved in the African slave trade. The data as set forth in this article that reveals that prior to the end of the slave trade in the eighteenth century over 8 million (John, 1997) African slaves were brought to the colonies. In percentages of people that migrated 70% were African and total settlers were 30% (John, 1997). As time went on, the number of slaves went down in relation to the number of free immigrants. Many of the slaves brought with them diseases, which created massive population loss to the African slaves, settlers, and the Indian peoples. As a result of the disease problem in a majority of the new world, the Africans outnumbered the Asians. This whole situation was a terrible tragedy. English Law Past historians had taken the perspective that the Africans that first arrived in the Americas came as indentured servants. This viewpoint presents an unrealistic and positive approach to this time period. These historians cast a positive view of this time period because of their desire not to diminish the importance of the great accomplishments of this time. It was always the desire of these particular traditional historians to write about events in an uplifting fashion and not blemish a particular time period. In today’s society we are more receptive to a realistic and analytical approach to the views of history. History should not be viewed though rose colored glasses (Foner, 2006). The seventeenth century England witnessed some modifications in the 'unfree' labour where unfree labour was measured as a universal legal shape of consensual manual labour. Labour agreements were restricted by various punishments in the English law which if violated were followed by imprisonment. Masters held the right to imprison their workers until they were willing to complete the service contract (indentured servitude) or return to their employers for the time period they had agreed upon (slavery). These agreements initiated the major disparities between indentured servitude and slavery on the basis of two things: contractual agreement and time period. It was the English law that was imitated by the early American colonies and applied restrictions on departure not only to servants and apprentices but also to labourers and artificers. In the seventeenth century, English and American law acknowledged the significance of 'unfree' labour and declared free labour as a self conscious set of legal and social practices, therefore the concept of unfree labour was alleviated. Critics claim the English law to be responsible for initiating 'unfree' labour since it embedded concepts about liberty, labour, religious church teachings, gender specificity and observations of other European New World colonies, into the New World. Authors believe that Europe followed the roots of enslavement of Africans for practical reasons, and adapt the initial origins of slavery in Europe (Miller, 1999). An indentured servant is bound by a legal document which indicates they must work as a foreigner with a minimal wage for a specific period of time. The worker is subjugated by the contract to work under extreme conditions with only as much remuneration sufficient for survive. After serving for a specific period of time (mentioned in contract), indentured servants are set free to live rest of their lives. On the contrary, slavery does not entail any legal documentation and is the formal ownership of persons by individuals for a life time period. Indentured Asians migrated from India to all parts of the British Empire on depressed wages, which often lead to the start of many movements. Northrup suggests “Serial indentured contracts had a long history in British colonies in the Americas where more than half of the European migrants to British colonies were estimated to have been indentured” (Northrup, 1995). Among the new indentured migrants were Asians, Africans, Pacific Islanders of the nineteenth century, and those who belonged to Australia. Indentured servitude, which amounted to virtual slavery for the length of contract, was a primary source of labour in the colonies. Most emigrated from various parts of Europe and were looking to start a new life. This structure of labour was contractual, persons who indentured themselves tapered with their manager or a ship's captain for the expense of passage and the stipulation of food, clothing and shelter. In return, the individuals provided themselves as a labour source, (Johnson, 1996). Many were young adventure seeking males. Generally in their late teens and early twenties, they looked upon the new world for chances for success. Thousands of women also entered into these agreements and often worked off their debts as domestic servants. The endurance of the indenture servitude was usually 4 to 7 years, but many times varied given unknown variables (Peabody, 1995). It could be even longer than these numbers in some cases. Sickness, disability or pregnancy usually extended the servitude contract due to lost service time. Women worked the same hours as the men; consequently; unlike white servants, pregnant slaves, blacks, were expected to continue labour until their child was born, (Johnson, 1996). Most servants willingly took it upon themselves, except for a few convicts, to enter into the labour contract. On the other hand, almost all slaves were forced into servitude. There were success stories of people who had started as indentured servants and later became prominent citizens, but the number was probably very small. The dark side to the labour systems consisted of those who completed their service, but could not afford to buy land. Soon these people were unable to find employment that resulted in hundreds of roving men in many frontier areas. This helped fuel movements of social unrest, including Bacon's Rebellion. During times of social query, plantation owners turned more to slavery. Slave and Servitude Culture Slaves began arriving in North America in the late seventeenth century. As slaves poured in, usually straight from Africa, colonial lawmakers adopted discriminating laws designed to suppress slave freedom and individuality (Berlin, 1998). The laws declared that slavery meant servitude for life. It was a condition that only applied to blacks and on occasion Asians. The children of slave mothers were also slaves by ascription. The Virginia General Assembly adopted other regulations that prohibited interracial marriages. Latent colonial laws came to exclude black voting, serving on juries, bearing arms or even having white servants, (Parent, 2003). Even though laws varied from colony to colony, the ambiguities continued and helped give way in the transformation from a society with slaves to a slave society. Servants fared better than slaves legally because they had access to the court system that granted them limited rights. Servants were also entitled to own land if they could conjure up the costs. Masters retained their right to prohibit their servants from marrying and had the authority to sell them to other masters at any time. Family life was as difficult for the servant as it was for the slave. Palmie’s (1996) work pertains to slave community and discusses how cultural survival helped in the reconstitution of African cultures. This culture reshaped African traditions towards a new slave religion based on 'magical shamanism' (Palmie, 1996). We can still see a glimpse of slave culture in American society where various emotional experiences are from African customs (Wood, 1997). It is also visible in religions such as Santeria. Throughout the centuries of slavery it was through slave religious and cultural traditions that slaves were able to survive the abrasiveness and misery with a smile. In fact many slaves after witnessing the death of their loved ones put off their customs; others adapted and blended African religious rites that gave them a new form of religion. Lovejoy (2000) relates slavery with bondage and provides an 'African-centered' focus of slavery where black slaves were made to use systematically with the West Indian Company. Lovejoy (2000) gives a peculiar account of difference between slavery and servitude by pointing out that men resisted slavery at the point of enslavement particularly when they found themselves enslaved on huge board ship with the first cargo of 11 Africans. Later it amalgamated by British Caribbean colonies resulting in the concept of racism. Later slavery was used as a weapon to subjugate workforce with an aim to serve the political purposes or for judicial or religious reasons (Lovejoy, 2003). Abolitionists despised slavery because they thought it was something devilish as it contravened human decency as well as fundamental principles of the Christian religion (Saunders, 1984, p. 6). The solution they thought to legitimize slavery was through free labour. Cheap Labour Between the years of 1700 to 1754 the value of salves were as follows: a Negro carpenter valued at 30 pounds; Negro cooper and carpenter valued at 35 sterling pounds; a fine sawyer and clapboard carpenter valued at 100 sterling pounds; a fine Mulatto woman who understands all kind of needle work valued at 100 sterling pounds and sometimes the landowner or plantation owner could loan out their slaves for hire for a period of time. (Jernegan, 2007) This could prove to be very profitable for many landowners. According to Jernegan the slave trade made it possible for the plantation enterprises to be profitable by purchasing slaves as well training them to in various fields of employment. The land owner and plantation owner had to opportunity to recover their expenses by apprenticing the slaves into various trades and allowing them to be available to be hired out. In the West Indies the population consisted of four classes. You had, for example, the “whites, free people of color having special privileges granted by private acts, free people of color not possessing such privilege, and slaves (Green, 1991). This is an example of how the Europeans were influential in promoting their values and forcing other classes of people to adapt. The main economy of the West Indies was sugar, as result more workers were required whether these workers were free or slave. Unfortunately, by the 1830's the sugar economy was on the decline and the sugar economy had to compete with other sugar producing colonies (Green, 1991). Europeans used slaves for their own economic gain, a witness who had returned to Britain after the West Indies slave revolt stated that he lived in the West Indies Colony and admitted to knowing nothing about the African or Creole slaves (Green, 1991). Around or after 1751 within the Colonies slaves who were “ountry-born and brought up by white people and these same white people made the slaves useful because the slaves were trained to be mechanics, coopers, carpenters, masons, smiths, wheelwrights and other tradesand the owners believed their slaves were reconciled to their positions of servitude (Menard, 2001). In order for some of the colonies to survive, land owners and Plantation owners had no other choice available to them and began to purchase slaves due the lack of workers available to them. Unfortunately, the purchasing of slaves proved to be more profitable than the indentured servants because there were added bonuses that came along with the buying of slaves. Without slaves, the Colonies never would have been able to survive and compete within the economic world. What slavery accomplished. In South Caroline slavery isolated blacks and removed them from the political process; racism united whites by concealing class differences behind a republican rhetoric that asserted the equality of free men. Also, this system allowed land owners and merchants to prosper within the old empire, prosperity, slavery and revolutionary politics were thoroughly entwined (Menard, 2001). The African people who were transported and sold as slaves instituted another class within the colonies population. This group of people came to be viewed as permanent workers and for a period of time laws were created that offered more protection for the colonists than the slaves. Conclusion Over the last decade, historians have differentiated indentured servitude and slavery on the basis of a form of contractual and uncontractual labour. Though such labour in both the cases was not free, traditional slavery, took place after Americans and European tradespeople witnessed a profitable venture. Many believe that slavery was the initial form of indentured servitude and initiated in Europe after seeing a profitable venue of Americans black slaves. Even the work in both the regions however, has not substantially altered the sense that indentured servitude was somehow particular, limited, and a divergence from contemporary norms whereas English labour of the period was deeply regulated for the public authorities were entitled to fix wages (Steinfeld, 1991). Rawley (2003) writes that slave trade was a vastly extended system, with its three corners separated by thousands of miles, unlike any; therefore the question that has raised the issue of the prevalence of free labour instead of slaves is why the labourers were transplanted across a wide ocean to work in America? An obvious answer is that since black slave labour was cheaper than white labour even that of indentured servants available for a term of years in return for ocean passage, therefore African slave labour was indeed cheap. Furthermore Rawley mentions that at the end of the seventeenth century British planters could buy a slave for the worth of 600 pounds of raw sugar on the London market. British slave merchants could buy a slave for the worth of sixteen guns (Rawley, 2003). European bartering and trading systems on the coastal areas felt a voracious demand for imported goods that stretched far deeper into the African interior than Europeans had seen or visited. Therefore those European traders who settled on the coast, and the transient captains, in return filled the holds of their ships with African slaves (Walvin, 2002). By the time the British decided to forge their own early settlements in the Caribbean and North America, black slavery had already taken root in Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch settlements but at the same time Europeans acknowledged the other dimensions of buying slaves that would be more profitable for them. Europeans contemplated upon other forms of buying slaves' services and decided to borrow the technologies of sugar cultivation as Walvin points out that backed by Dutch money, and with domestic political support, the British found the commercial opportunities afforded by slavery irresistible (Walvin, 2002). This led to disaster for a whole race and for many generations, and a shame many European still live with to this day. References Berlin, I., (1998). Many thousand gone: the first two centuries of slavery in North America. Cambridge (MASS), The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press Foner, E., (2006). Give me liberty: An American history. New York, W.W. Norton Green, William A. (1991). British Slave Emancipation The Sugar Colonies and the GreatExperiment 1830-1865. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Jernegan, Marcus W., (2007). Slavery and the Beginnings of Industrialism in the American Colonies. American Historical Review 25. John M. Murrin, (1997). Beneficiaries of Catastrophe: The English Colonists in America, Diversity and Unity in Early North America, 259-282. Johnson Howard, (1996) The Bahamas from Slavery to Servitude, 1783-1933: University Press of Florida: Gainesville, FL. Lovejoy, E. Paul, (2000) Identity in the Shadow of Slavery, Continuum International Publishing Group. Menard, Russell R. (2001). Migrants, Servants and Slaves Unfree Labour in Colonial BritishAmerica Aldershot, Great Britain: Ashgate Publishing Limited. Miller M. Randall, (1999). The Origins of American Slavery: Freedom and Bondage in the English Colonies, The Historian. Volume: 61. Issue: 2, p. 437. Northrup David, (1995) Indentured labour in the age of imperialism 1834-1922, Cambridge University Press. Palmie Stephan, (1996) Slave Cultures and the Cultures of Slavery, University of Tennessee Press. Parent, A., (2003). Foul Means: The Formation of a Slave Society in Virginia, 1660-1740. Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press Peabody Sue, (1995). Race, Slavery and the Law in Early Modern France, The Historian. Volume: 57. Issue: 4, p. 501. Rawley A. James, (2003) London, Metropolis of the Slave Trade: University of Missouri Press: Columbia, MO. Smith, Abbot Emerson, (1999). Colonists in Bondage White Servitude and Convict Labour in America 1607-1775. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1947, Steinfeld J. Robert, (1991) The Invention of Free labour: The Employment Relation in English and American Law and Culture, 1350-1870: University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, NC. Walvin James, (2002). Slavery and the British: James Walvin Reviews Current Ideas about the Vast Network of Slavery That Shaped British and World History for More Than Two Centuries, History Today. Volume: 52. Issue: 3, p. 48. Wood, B., (1997). The origins of American slavery: Freedom and bondage in the English colonies. New York, Hill and Wang Read More