07 The Great Contradiction: The Birth and Growth of Slavery

I. Euro/American Slavery – Four unique characteristics
a. A cheap labor system designed to produce profits
b. Racially-based: black=slave and white=free
c. Slaves as property
d. Slavery as a permanent and inheritable condition
II. Slavery in the New World from 1500
a. New Spain: Indians and encomiendas, and (later) African
b. Caribbean and Brazil – British, French, Spanish, Dutch
i. Slavery and sugar
ii.      c. the horrors of “sugar slavery”
III. Slavery in the American Colonies
a. Why Africans as slaves?
i. Profit
ii. Stability
iii. Access to Caribbean slave trade
iv. Racism
1. Negative associations with “black”
a. Complexity – the case of Anthony Johnson
b. Racism as a consequence of slavery as well as a cause?
2. “White over black” and the “social floor”
IV. Slave Life and Culture
a. Relatively less harsh than in Caribbean, Brazil, etc
i. “kindness” as a method of control
b. “Spaces” and slave autonomy
i. Slave music, stories, religion
c.  Slave resistance
i. Passive: slow work, breaking tools, etc.
ii. Active: running away, rebelling
1. Stono Rebellion (1739)