- Mar 11, 2015
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It wasn't that blacks replaced indentured servants because evil white men in the America's decided to oppress them...there simply weren't enough people in Great Britain desperate enough to sign up for indentured service! The economy in Great Britain had improved...jobs were to be had...there wasn't the need to barter away a portion of your life in servitude in order to keep from starving! Better economic conditions in Great Britain is what stopped indentured servitude...not the importation of slave labor.
That is incorrect.
"From the standpoint of the masters, the poor whites of Europe presented equally serious problems. The supply of poor whites, like the supply of Indians, was limited; and poor whites, like Indians, but for different reasons, could escape and blend into the whiteness of their countrymen. The most serious problem, however, was that poor whites had tenuous but nonetheless important connections with circuits of power. There were pressure groups in England that concerned themselves with the plight of poor whites. This fact alone drastically limited the options of Colonial masters. For in order to safeguard the relatively limited supply of poor whites, it was necessary to make costly -- from the standpoint of the masters -- concessions to white servants and to improve their living conditions.
The last group -- the group finally selected -- did not have these disadvantages, as Oscar and Mary F. Handlin noted: "Farthest removed from the English, least desired, [the African] communicated with no friends who might be deterred from following. Since his coming was involuntary, nothing that happened to him would increase or decrease his numbers. To raise the status of Europeans by shortening their terms would ultimately increase the available hands by inducing their compatriots to emigrate; to reduce the Negro's term would produce an immediate loss and no ultimate gain. By mid century the servitude of Negroes seem generally lengthier than that of whites; and thereafter the consciousness dawns that the Blacks will toil for the whole of their lives. ..."
Unhappily for the Africans, they had none of the disadvantages of the Indians and poor whites, and they had -- again from the standpoint of the planters -- distinct advantages. They were marked by color and hence could not escape so easily. The supply seemed to be inexhaustible, and the labor of Africans was relatively inexpensive when compared with the cost of transporting and maintaining white indentured servants for a limited number of years. This last fact was decisive, and it was clearly understood by the colonists as early as 1645. It was in that year that Emanuel Downing sent a famous letter to his brother-in-law John Winthrop, saying, among other things: "If upon a Just Warre the Lord shold deliver [Narragansett Indians] into our hands, wee might easily have men woemen and children enough to exchange for Moores, which wilbe more gaynefull pilladge for us then wee conceive, for I doe not see how wee can thrive untill we get into a stock of slaves sufficient to doe all our business, for our children's children will hardly see this great Continent filled with people, soe that our servants will still desire free dome to plant for themselves, and not stay but for verie great wages. And I suppose you know verie well how wee shall mayneteyne 20 Moores cheaper than one Englishe servant."
Twenty Africans for the price of one English servant -- how could a Puritan resist such a deal! And how could he overlook the final and deciding factor: the Africans were vulnerable. There were no large power groups nearby to retaliate in their name. Nor did they have power groups on the international scene to raise troublesome questions. They were, in fact, naked before their enemies, and their enemies were legion.
As the pointer on the roulette wheel neared the African number, the power brokers of England suddenly and dramatically increased the odds against Africans by announcing a new policy of restricted white emigration and massive support of the African Slave Trade. With the formation of the Royal African Company (1672), the wheel of fate came to an abrupt halt before the black square. For henceforth, as James C. Ballagh has pointed out, it would be "the policy of the king, and of the Duke of York, who stood at the head of the [Royal African] Company, to hasten the adoption of slavery by enactments cutting off the supply of indented servants, at the same time that large importations of slaves were made by their agents."
'The Road Not Taken', by Lerone Bennett