400 years ago the British brought to Virginia the first group of African slaves. This event marked the beginning of British and American transatlantic slave trade. Just from 1619 to 1860 the U.S. was forcibly imported about 600 thousand African slaves. By the mid-nineteenth century the number of black slaves in the United States reached approximately 4 million people. Their operation has played an important role in the development of American capitalism. Slavery in the United States was prohibited only in 1865, however, another 100 years the country had segregation restrictions. According to experts, the socio-economic consequences of the system of slavery in America are still being felt today. In particular, black people on average are poorer than white and gets an inferior education.

  • The arrival to Jamestown, Virginia, a British ship with a group of African slaves for sale, 1619
  • © Hulton Archive/Getty Images

In August 1619 (researchers often talk about the date August 20) Harbor the first permanent English settlement in the territory of the modern US town of Jamestown in Virginia, the ship arrived with two dozen black slaves. Privateer (private individuals with the permission of the authorities used the ships to capture enemy merchant ships) handed over prisoners to the inhabitants of the colony in exchange for supplies. This date usually is counting the British-American transatlantic slave trade.

Dark-skinned slaves

On the African continent South of the Sahara, slavery existed before the arrival of Europeans. However, according to historians, it differed significantly from slavery in the conventional sense of the people of Europe or the Middle East. A person could temporarily become a slave because of debt or become dependent on the ruler, but was not considered a thing.

However, once in the fifteenth century, Europeans began to set sail along the African coast, the maintenance of slavery has changed. The Portuguese began to seize local residents to turn them into a commodity, or negotiated with the leaders of the belligerent peoples of the redemption of their captives.

First black slaves in Europe for the most part turned into domestic workers. However, with the development of the New world by Portuguese and Spanish colonizers created the demand for labor on plantations and in mines. The Indians fiercely resisted his coercion to the hard grind of work, and in 1513 Spaniards first brought slaves from Africa to Puerto Rico. In the second half of the XVI century black slaves appeared in the Spanish colonies in the territory of Florida.

The beginning of British slave trade

In the case of the colonization of the New world, the British initially lagged behind Portugal, Spain and France. The attempts of the British to gain a foothold in America in the late sixteenth century were unsuccessful. The population of the first colony on Roanoke island was forced to evacuate because of the hostility of the Indians, and the second disappeared without a trace, creating a lot of mystical rumors.

In 1607, the British managed to build the first permanent settlement in North America Fort James, eventually renamed to Jamestown and became the center of the colony of Virginia. From 1612 on its territory, the British began to grow tobacco.

In 1619-m English privateers intercepted off the coast of Mexico a Portuguese ship carrying slaves from Angola. About 20 people went to the team of the ship “White lion”. In August, the ship arrived in Jamestown, where the captain exchanged prisoners for provisions.

  • Commemorative sign, indicating the delivery of the first slaves in Jamestown
  • © Jimmy Emerson, DVM / Flickr

Initially in the North American colonies there was no legislation on slavery. Legal relations arising in connection with the ownership of slaves was regulated by the courts or by mutual agreement of the colonists. Only in 1641 in the Massachusetts act was passed that allowed to buy slaves outside the colony, to enslave prisoners of war, criminals, and those who do would agree. Over time, similar laws appeared in other colonies.

Also

“Immoral commercial project”: as at the end of the XIX century in the West was a “human zoo”

135 years ago at the International exhibition colonial and export goods in Amsterdam opened “display”, which later would be called…

In 1672 the London introduced a state monopoly to trade black slaves. At the end of the XVII century the English Parliament allowed private individuals to sell slaves, and at the beginning of the next century, Britain was among the countries most actively engaged in the slave trade. The proportion of slaves in the population of some colonies exceeded 40%.

In 1703, slaves were kept for 42% of new York families. In the Northern colonies, black slaves often were used as domestic servants or workers in the South were forced to work on plantations growing Indigo, tobacco and rice.

British traders bought slaves on the African coast, loaded them on a specially equipped ships and transported for sale in the New world. From diseases due to lack of proper nutrition and inhuman conditions of detention in many of them perished on the way. However, the profits from trafficking covers any costs.

America and slavery

Experts say that the War for independence in 1775-1783 United States years has not fundamentally changed the situation of black slaves in North America.

“In the Constitution, which itself was inexpensive enough, nothing was said about slavery,” — said in an interview with RT, the Director of Fund of studying of the USA Roosevelt MSU Yuri Rogalev.

According to him, the laws of the United States considered slaves as chattel and defended the rights of slave owners.

Also

“He changed the lives of millions of Americans”: how Martin Luther king influenced the racial policy in the United States

On 4 April 1968 in Memphis killed the most famous defender of the rights of black citizens of the United States Martin Luther king. The mission of the legendary…

In 1807, the U.S. government is forbidden to buy slaves from Africa, and in 1820 m equated the transatlantic slave trade to piracy. However, illegal shipments of African slaves to South American States continued until the second half of the nineteenth century.

According to historians, in the XVII—XIX centuries in the North American colonies and the United States was brought about 600 thousand black slaves. Because their children were also slaves, by 1860 the total number of slaves of African descent in the United States reached approximately 4 million people. Of the 1.5 million white families living in the southern States, and nearly 400 thousand were slaves.

“Slavery, from the point of view of the American planters was economically viable. His goal was to benefit”, — has explained in conversation with RT journalist Armen Gasparyan.

However, a number of historians believe that slavery was an integral part of the process of formation of American capitalism.

The economic efficiency of slave agriculture planters sought cruel ways, in particular physical punishment. Many slaves went with the scars on the back: they were beaten for every “offense” — for example, due to insufficient amount of harvested cotton.

  • A slave with the marks of whipping on his back. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1863
  • © Mathew Brady/Wikipedia

A separate party of slavery in the United States was sexual exploitation of girls. The planters turned them into concubines, and were subjected to abuse — the law is not limited. Some slave-owners even opened a public house. And the children of black slaves from the white men was also considered slaves. Slave girls, in which the woman was the only grandmother or great-grandmother, slave-owners valued particularly highly. Their fate is described in a number of famous literary works — in particular, in the novel “Kvarteronka” by Thomas Mayne Reid.

In XVIII—XIX centuries in the USA was about 300 uprisings of black slaves, but they were brutally suppressed.

The abolition of slavery

In the late XVIII — early XIX century, all Northern States either abolished slavery or adopted plans for its phase-out. In the southern States slavery, by contrast, actively developed. After the ban on the importation of slaves from abroad flourished the domestic market of the slave trade. Moreover, businessmen from the Northern States have invested in the slave trade and plantation economy of the South.

Also

“The police stood and watched them hit”: 75 years ago in the United States was one of the most massive racial confrontations

In 1943 in the American Detroit riots on racial grounds, in which dozens people were killed, hundreds…

Black slaves fled EN masse from the southern States to the North to gain freedom. In 1850, their position has sharply deteriorated due to the adoption by Congress of a law allowing to detain runaway slaves in areas where slavery was abolished. However, the United States has gained popularity of the abolitionist movement, speaking under the slogan “All men are born equal” and demanding the complete abolition of slavery.

Between the North and the South is gradually growing socio-economic contradictions. North advocated protectionism, and the South for free trade. The southern States sought to maximize sovereignty and opposed the creation of a new populated Northern States in the West.

In 1854 was created the Republican party of the United States, expressed the interests of northerners. Her representative Abraham Lincoln six years later became President. Southern States began to secede from the United States, and in 1861 between the North and the South started the Civil war. Luck some time was on the side of the South, but over time, their power dwindled and they were defeated.

In 1865, the United States entered into force the 13th amendment to the Constitution prohibiting slavery. Soon, however, on part of the territory of the country was adopted segregation laws that deprived black people of a number of civil rights. African-Americans could not attend the same schools, restaurants, cafes, hospitals, and white. There were even separate toilets and seats in public transport. Apartheid restrictions were lifted only in 60-e years of the twentieth century.

  • A colored man around the waiting room for “colored” population
  • © Library of Congress

“In the U.S. today do not love once again remember about the era of slavery and oppression. Easier to pretend that this never happened,” — said Gasparyan.

In turn, Rogulev stressed that the period of the existence of slavery is “a significant epoch in the history of the United States,” the consequences of which are felt to this day.

“At first it was slavery, then segregation. Racial inequality reigned in the US throughout most of the history of the state. Today at the legislative level it is no more, but the effects have not gone away. Blacks in the United States, on average, poorer than whites, receive inferior education, among them more unemployed, their quality of life is lower”, — concluded Rogulev.