The Origins Of Slavery By Betty Woods

Words: 1293
Pages: 6

Throughout the book, The Origins of Slavery, the author, Betty Woods, depicts how religion and race along with social, economic, and political factors were the key factors in determining the exact timing that the colonist’s labor bases of indentured Europeans would change to involuntary West African servitude. These religion and racial differences along with the economic demand for more labor played the key roles in the formation of slavery in the English colonies. When the Europeans first arrived to the Americas in the late sixteenth century, at the colony of Roanoke, the thought of chattel slavery had neither a clear law nor economic practice with the English. However by the end of that following century, the demand for slaves in the …show more content…
The island’s value to England was set on the relationship that had been forged during the previous twenty years between sugar and slavery. In 1625 after being settled by several hundred settlers the intent to acquire land to grow a profitable crop for the colonist was achieved when the discovery of sugarcane was made. They borrowed their planting and labor methods from the sugar colonies of the Portuguese in Brazil. These sugar plantations in the Caribbean required a huge labor force from the English. Since there was a Civil War in England at this time, there was a lack of indentured servants that were coming over to the colonies. This required the planters in Barbados to look for another source of labor. This search of labor ended when the same Dutch slave traders who sold to the Portuguese in Brazil provided West African slaves for the labor demanded in the Barbadian cane fields. By widening the lens to include the whole of English America, Wood makes it possible to appreciate how fully the Caribbean patterns were adopted in, and adapted to, the mainland plantation colonies. The colonies would not just become a colony with slaves but rather a slave colony.
Since land was scarce in Barbados, it was divided among wealthy planters rather than giving the land to indentured servants at the end of their contracts. This caused the people of Barbados to rally for a new colony. They