Coercive Labor Patterns their connection to World Trading System and Demographics

African DiasporaRelationship with American Encomienda (tributary trade system)

Trading Companies

Russian Barshchina

Indentured Servitude

Spread of Trade systems and more

• After 1450, much of Africa was brought into the world trade system, often through involvement in the slave trade.

• Through the institution of slavery, African culture was transferred to the New World, where it became part of a new social amalgam.

• Involvement in the slave trade was not the only influence on Africa in this period.

What is the relationship between the core regions and dependent regions and the type of coercive labor that they use during this era?

(Also look at type of goods and social structure of the regions)

• Huge areas of the world remained outside the trade system and retained indigenous economies with little incentive for rapid technological change or consumption of manufactured products.

• East Asia largely remained outside the world trade system. • China simply ignored European trade in favor of continuation of its

traditional reliance on an internal system of exchange. • With the exception of some copies of European firearms, the Chinese kept

the Europeans at arms' length until the eighteenth century.• Japan initially showed some interest in trade with Europe, but quickly

reversed course. • From the seventeenth until the nineteenth century, Japan's rulers

maintained isolation except for the single Dutch enclave near Nagasaki. • The Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires within the Islamic world

similarly limited European merchants to enclaves within their cities. • Russia's trade was oriented toward central Asia. Much of Africa, with the

exception of the slave trading kingdoms, remained outside the orbit of European trade.

Not all negative

• East Africa remained part of the Islamic trade system, and the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia continued its independent existence.

• In some parts of Africa, states formed into larger kingdoms without outside influence.

Overview• In many regions of Africa all land was the property of the

ruler• If one wanted to increase their status they could own

other people but not land• The control of slaves was one of the few ways in which

individuals or lineages could increased their wealth and status

• Europeans did not come to colonize at first they came to increase their wealth

• Despite enormous difficulties slave families were often allowed to continue to live together as family units

• Slaves were very resistant, causing rebellions, were oftern recalcitrance, and often tried to run away

Pattern of escalation• Although gold was the primary export item in the initial

trade relationship with Africa, slaves were always important.

• The first African slaves brought directly to Portugal arrived in 1441.

• As relations with African rulers expanded, the export of slaves grew in volume.

• With the development of plantation agriculture in the Atlantic islands and then the Americas, slaves became the primary component of the coercive labor system.

• By 1600, the slave trade was the greatest component of European trade with Africa.

Demography• High slave mortality in the plantation environment

required constant replenishment of workers.– Only in the southern United States was there positive

population growth among the slave population. • The plantations of the Caribbean and Brazil

imported more slaves than elsewhere. • Although the greatest number of slaves were

shipped to the New World, Muslim traders continued an active business in the Red Sea, trans-Sahara, and East African routes.

• The points of origin of the slave trade moved from the Senegambia region in the sixteenth century to central Africa in the seventeenth century and then to the Gold and Slave Coasts in the eighteenth century.

Trend Toward Expansion • Between 1450 and 1850, about 12 million Africans were

shipped to the plantations of the Americas. – 80% in the 18th century – The volume of slaves shipped increased from the sixteenth century

to a zenith in the eighteenth century. – By 1800, about three million slaves resided in the Americas. – after 1650 Caribbean plantation islands and southern British Atlantic

colonies also became important

• Perhaps as many as four million more Africans were killed in slaving wars prior to shipment.

• At its end in the nineteenth century, the slave trade still shipped more than one million slaves to Cuba and Brazil.– from 1530 to 1650 most slaves shipped to Latin American mainland

Volume, destination and origins

• in 16th century most slaves came from Sengambia, 17th century from west and central Africa

• 18th century from interior states of Asante and Dahomey

Caribbean• Between 1600 and 1870 some four million West Africans were

imported to the Caribbean as slaves. • By comparison, the North American mainlaind received some

460,000 Africans in the same period while Jamaica alone, for instance, received almost 750,000!

• This was due to high death rates and small birth rates among the Caribbean slave population at the time.

• New slaves from Africa had to be imported continuously. In Barbados, for instance, 387,000 slaves were imported but at the time of emancipation in 1834 there were only 81,000 to be freed.

• Caribbean slavery was different from any other form of slavery that has ever existed.

• It was the only time in history when there were societies with almost nine out of ten inhabitants being slaves, which was the situation on the sugar producing islands

Demographic Patterns• The Atlantic slave trade concentrated on male

laborers, rather than on females for use as concubines.

• It has been estimated that the drain of slaves from western and central Africa resulted in much slower population growth in that region. In some African societies, females began to outnumber males.

• Trade with the Americas did result in the importation of new food crops, such as maize and manioc, that helped support more rapid population growth.

Organization of the trade• Until 1630, the slave trade remained in the hands of the

Portuguese. • The Dutch and British began to export slaves to plantation

colonies in the Americas after 1637. • France did not become a major slave exporter until the

eighteenth century. • Europeans sent to coastal forts to manage the slave trade

suffered extraordinary mortality rates from tropical diseases. • For both Europeans and Africans, the slave trade proved

deadly. European traders often dealt with African rulers who sought to monopolize the trade in slaves passing through their kingdoms.

• Both Europeans and indigenous peoples were active participants in the commerce, because it was possible to realize major profits.

• Risks, however, cut severely into profit margins. By the eighteenth century, British profits in slaving averaged between five and ten percent.

Triangular Trade• Slavery was part of the triangular trade, in which European

manufactured goods were shipped to Africa for slaves sent to the plantation colonies from which sugar and cotton were exported to Europe.

• Overall profits in the triangular trade contributed to the longevity of the commerce in human beings.

• Over 40 percent of all slaves exported to the Americas left in the century after 1760.

• In Africa, participation in the slave trade often reduced local economies to dependence on European manufactures.

• In this peculiar fashion, Africa was linked to the global trade system.

African Societies, Slavery & the Slave Trade • Slavery was an indigenous feature of African culture and

economy. • Slaves were an important component of social status and

personal wealth. In the Islamic Sudanic states, slavery was regarded as suitable only for unbelievers.

• Despite prohibitions, states often enslaved both pagans and Muslims.

• The existence of slavery prior to European arrival allowed European merchants to tap into a system that already flourished.

• In some African states, rulers were eager to increase their own wealth and power by exchanging slaves for technology in the form of arms.

• For this reason, states in the process of political centralization were often the most active participants in the slave trade.

African slavery intertwined with more centralized states

• Africans had practiced slavery before Europeans as result of captives taken in war

• emphasis on female slavery as means of extending lineage, authority

• constant warfare in western and central Africa supplied stream of slaves

• interruption of Europeans gave external focus to slave trade, primarily in males

• exchange of firearms for slaves enabled expanding states to utilize slave trade as means of enlarging political power.

Slaving and African Politics

• Much of western Africa was divided into small kingdoms engaged in a virtually constant process of expansion and war.

• War raised the social status of warriors and made the slave trade an extension of African political development.

• European participation in the slave trade shifted the locus of political centralization among African states from the savanna to the Atlantic coast.

• The most powerful African kingdoms developed just inland from the coastal regions.

• The exchange of slaves for guns and other weapons allowed these central African states to dominate their neighbors.

Asante• In the Gold Coast, the Asante empire rose during the era of

the slave trade. • On the basis of access to Western arms in exchange for

slaves, the Oyoko clan of the Akan people began to centralize the region after 1651.

• Osei Tutu became the first asantehene, or supreme civil and religious leader of the Asante.

• By 1700, Osei Tutu's organization of the Asante caused the Dutch to deal directly with the new political power.

• On the basis of control over a gold-producing region and the slave trade, Asante maintained its power into the first two decades of the nineteenth century.

• To the east of Asante, the kingdom of Benin also was well organized, but its commerce with Europeans was less dependent on the slave trade than that of Asante.

Dahomey• In the seventeenth century, the kingdom of Dahomey

developed among the Fon people.• Using the slave trade to pay for European arms, the kings

of Dahomey created an autocratic system of government. • The royal court controlled the slave trade and raised

armies that were used to raid neighbors for more captives. • Dahomey continued to exist as a slaving state until the

latter portions of the nineteenth century. • Slaving states often developed ruling ideologies and

bureaucracies that were, in some ways, comparable to the emergence of European absolutism.

• The slave states also generated a significant culture based on bronze casting, woodcarving and weaving.

East Africa and the Sudan

• The Swahili cities of Africa's eastern coast continued to carry on trade with the new powers of the Indian Ocean, the Portuguese and the Ottoman Empire.

• Gold and slaves were sold to both commercial partners. Swahili, Indian, and Arabian merchants established plantations to produce cloves along the eastern coast and on offshore islands. These also produced a demand for slaves.

Sudan

• Less is known concerning the interior of eastern Africa.• The Luo peoples combined with the Bantu residents of the

region to create a composite kingdom at Bunyoro. Another state developed at Buganda.

• There was little contact with the outside world among these indigenous kingdoms. In the savanna region, the breakup of the kingdom of Songhay in the sixteenth century produced political fragmentation.

• By the 1770s, Muslim reform movements penetrated the region through trade networks.

• The Sufi reform movements had a powerful impact on the Fulani people of the western Sudan.

Nigeria (Hausa)

• By 1804, Usuman Dan Fodio brought the Sufi reform to the Hausa kingdoms of Nigeria.

• Under the reform banner, the Fulani took control over many of the Hausa kingdoms.

• Eventually a powerful Sokoto state emerged under a ruling caliph.

• The reform movement successfully imposed a stricter form of Islam throughout the region of West Africa.

• The reform wars produced numerous captives that were sold into slavery.

• The number of slaves within the savanna region rose, and slavery became a common social element of the Sudanic states.

White Settlers and Africans in Southern Africa

• The southern end of the African continent was only slightly affected by the slave trade.

• The indigenous peoples were largely agricultural. • By the sixteenth century, much of the population of

southern Africa was Bantu and organized into relatively small chiefdoms.

• Constant expansion brought the Bantu peoples into contact with Dutch colonists in the seventeenth century.

• The Dutch East India Company established a colony at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652.

Conflict with expansion

• Initially commercial, the colony began to expand as farmers pushed outward from the Cape.

• By the 1760s, the Dutch crossed the Orange River and began to compete with the Bantu population for available land.

• As the European expansion was occurring, the British seized the colony from the Dutch and imposed formal control by 1815.

• British attempts to limit Boer expansion failed, leading to increased conflict between the Dutch farmers and the Bantu.

• The Boers, seeking both new land and to escape the authority of the British, opened up several autonomous Boer states.

• After 1834, when the British abolished slavery, the Dutch moved across the Orange River into Natal.

The "Mfecane" and the Zulu Rise to Power • As the Dutch were moving northward, the Bantu peoples

were being reorganized into a new military organization. • The architect of the political and military reformulation of

Bantu society was Shaka, who became leader of the Zulu state in 1818.

• Although Shaka was assassinated in 1828, his reforms continued to provide the basis for a more powerful Zulu state.

• The expansion of the Zulu created a process of political reconfiguring called the mfecane, or wars of crushing and wandering.

• Other Bantu states, such as Lesotho and Swazi, began to develop in addition to the Zulu.

• The Boers were able to survive the growth of Zulu power, but the African state was only suppressed after the Zulu Wars with Britain during the 1870s.

The African Diaspora

• The slave trade defined the basic relationship between Africa and the New World.

• African middlemen profited from the increasing value of slaves in the eighteenth century.

• Description of ship by slave

Destinations evolved

Africans in America

• Most slaves were intended for the plantations and mines of America.

• Slaves also provided a significant proportion of the labor force in American cities.

North America• All servants imported and brought into the Country. . . who were not

Christians in their native Country. . . shall be accounted and be slaves. All Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves within this dominion. . . shall be held to be real estate. If any slave resists his master. . . correcting such slave, and shall happen to be killed in such correction. . . the master shall be free of all punishment. . . as if such accident never happened.

• Virginia General Assembly declaration, 1705

• This disorder that the indentured servant system had created made racial slavery to southern slaveholders much more attractive, because what were black slaves now? Well, they were a permanent dependent labor force, who could be defined as a people set apart. They were racially set apart. They were outsiders. They were strangers and in many ways throughout the world, slavery has taken root, especially where people are considered outsiders and can be put in a permanent status of slavery.

• David Blight, historian

American Slaves Society• American society was based on both ethnicity and

race. • American society placed whites at the top of the

social hierarchy, slaves at the bottom, and free men and women of color in an intermediary position.

• Within the slave community itself, there is some evidence that members of the African elite who had been sold into slavery continued to exercise authority in the New World.

• Slave communities, in some cases, continued to recognize ethnic divisions derived from African origins.

Varied societies developed

• Slave societies varied regionally. In the Caribbean, Africans made up the majority of the population.

• In Brazil, slaves made up a smaller proportion of the total population, but free men and women of color were almost equal in number to the slaves.

• Combined, these groups comprised nearly two- thirds of the population.

• Creoles predominated among the slave populations of North America, and there were fewer free men and women of color.

• Because of successful rates of reproduction in North America, fewer slaves had African ties.

Resistance and Religion

• Slaves in Latin America were converted to Roman Catholicism, but retained African religious practices.

• Obeah, candomble, and Vodun were varieties of African religion transported to the New World.

• Religious practice in the New World tended to be eclectic rather than uniform.

• Muslim slaves were more resistant to combining their religious beliefs with other faiths.

• Resistance to slavery was common in the Americas. Outright rebellion and the formation of communities of escaped slaves were two of the most direct forms of resistance.

Why did Europeans participate in the Atlantic slave trade?

• Need to supply qualified labor for American colonies in Latin America, Caribbean, and North America

• Africans already skilled in metallurgy and intensive agriculture as Indians were not (they had no metal tools)

• slaves generally failed to reproduce in New World and required constant resupply from Africa

• slave trade was profitable, although not much more so than other business ventures

• creation of triangular trade slaves to New World, plantation products to Europe, manufactured goods to Africa (markets)

Africa and the end of the trade

• The abolition of the slave trade was due to what were essentially European cultural movements, but it revolutionized relations with Africa.

• There is little evidence for an economic motive. Intellectual movements, such as the Enlightenment, began to portray slavery as an aspect of retrograde societies.

• Britain was the first nation in which a strong abolition movement under the leadership of religious humanitarians arose.

• Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807, but the complete end of the slave trade did not occur until 1888.

Impact of Slave trade

• The slave trade drew Africa into the world commercial system with various results. In some areas, the outcome was the formation of more centralized kingdoms.

• Coercive labor patterns continued to be the rule in Africa, even after the slave trade was abolished.

Cultural Views• From the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, European

peoples looked to Africa as a source of labor for massive plantations that they established in the western hemisphere.

• In exchange for slaves, African peoples received European manufactured products, most notably firearms, which they sometimes used to strengthen military forces that then sought further recruits for the slave trade.

• Only in the early nineteenth century did the Atlantic slave trade come to an end.

• The impact of the slave trade varied over time and from one African society to another.

• Some African kingdoms escaped slavery's tentacles because they actively resisted or their lands were distant from the major slave ports.

• Other societies flourished during the early modern times and benefited economically from the slave trade.

Negative Interaction• On the whole, however, Africa suffered serious losses, both

demographically and socially, European intervention• The Atlantic slave trade deprived African societies of sixteen

million or more individuals, in addition to perhaps another five million or more consumed by the continuing Islamic slave trade during the early modern era.

• The slave trade also distorted sex ratios, since most exported slaves were males.

• This preference for males had social implications for the lands that provided slaves.

• By the eighteenth century some African states responded to this sexual imbalance through polygamy, changes in subsistence patterns and changes in gendered economic roles.

Americas• Viceroys & consulado (economic)

• Receolilacion (law code administered in Americas) by the audiencias– Later replaced by the Intendancy system of the

French

• First mined silver (mine at Potosi’) then foundation changed to agricultural endeavors– Merchant guild in Seville had monopoly over

goods shipped to Americas and silver returned

• Social hierarchy based on race

Encomienda (Stage I)• from Span. encomendar=to entrust], system of tributory labor established in

Spanish America. • Developed as a means of securing an adequate and cheap labor supply, the

encomienda was first used over the conquered Moors of Spain. • Transplanted to the New World, it gave the conquistador control over the

native populations by requiring them to pay tribute from their lands, which were granted to deserving subjects of the Spanish crown.

• The natives often rendered personal services as well. In return the grantee was theoretically obligated to protect his wards, to instruct them in the Christian faith, and to defend their right to use the land for their own subsistence. When first applied in the West Indies, this labor system wrought such hardship that the population was soon decimated.

• This resulted in efforts by the Spanish king and the Dominican order to suppress encomiendas, but the need of the conquerors to reward their supporters led to de facto recognition of the practice.

• The crown prevented the encomienda from becoming hereditary, and with the New Laws promulgated (1542) by Las Casas, the system gradually died out, to be replaced by the repartimiento, and finally debt peonage.

• Similar systems of land and labor apportionment were adopted by other colonial powers, notably the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the French.

Repartimiento (Stage II)• Spanish colonial practice, usually, the distribution of

indigenous people for forced labor.• In a broader sense it referred to any official distribution of

goods, property, services, & the like. • From as early as 1499, deserving Spaniards were allotted

pieces of land, receiving at the same time the native people living on them; these allotments known as encomiendas & the process was the repartimiento;

• the two words were often used interchangeably. • Encomienda almost always accompanied by system of

forced labor & other assessments exacted from the indigenous people.

• The system endured and was the core of peonage in New Spain.

• The assessment of forced labor was called the mita (like a tax only in labor) in Peru and the cuatequil in Mexico.

Peonage• System of involuntary servitude based on the indebtedness of the laborer (the peon)

to his creditor.• It was prevalent in Spanish America, especially in Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, and

Peru. • The system arose because labor was needed to support agricultural, industrial,

mining, and public works activities of conqueror and settler in the Americas.• With the Spanish Conquest of the West Indies, the econemienda establishing

proprietary rights over the natives, was instituted. In 1542 the New Laws of Bartolemé de Las Casas were promulgated, defining natives as free subjects of the king and prohibiting forced labor. Black slave labor and wage labor were substituted. Since the natives had no wage tradition and the amount paid was very small, the New Laws were largely ignored.

• To force natives to work, a system of the repartimiento [assessment] and the mita was adopted;

• it gave the state the right to force its citizens, upon payment of a wage, to perform work necessary for the state.

• In practice, this meant that the native spent about one fourth of a year in public employment, but the remaining three fourths he was free to cultivate his own fields and provide for his own needs. Abuses under the system were frequent and severe, but the repartimiento was far less harsh and coercive than the slavery of debt peonage that followed independence from Spain in 1821.

• Forced labor had not yet included the working of plantation crops—sugar, cacao, cochineal, and indigo; their increasing value brought greater demand for labor control, and in the 19th cent. the cultivation of other crops on a large scale required a continuous and cheap labor supply.

Forced Labor - serfdom

• To force natives to work the plantations got them into debt by giving advances on wages and by requiring the purchase of necessities from company-owned stores.

• As the natives fell into debt and lost their own land, they were reduced to peonage and forced to work for the same employer until his debts and the debts of his ancestors were paid, a virtual impossibility.

• He became virtually a serf, but without the serf's customary rights.

• The system was eventually litigated out of operation but even in the United States in the 1960 a type of the system known as sharecropping still existed

Hacienda (Stage III)

• Plantation System

Global Trading Corporations & Colonization Companies

• Map 1600 – 1800• Article on Companies• Trading Companies (commercial institutions)

– British (English) East India– Dutch East India (V0C)– Hudson Bay Colony– French East India– Danish East India

• Colonizing Companies– Virginia Company– Massachusetts Company– New Sweden Company– Company of New France

• Fur Trade in Americas– First French– Then British phase– Lastly America phase

• Technological Advancements– Early in era

• Compass• Deep-draft, round hulled ships• Gunpowder adapted to gunnery• Moveable type

Evolving Sea PowerGalley to Galleon

Tudor Caravel 1470Tudor Caravel 1470 Caravel Redunda 1470Caravel Redunda 1470 Tudor Carrack 1470Tudor Carrack 1470

English Galleass 1546English Galleass 1546 English Great Ship 1520 Galleon 1550Galleon 1550http://website.lineone.net/~dee.ord/Tudors.htm

Evolving Sea PowerGalleons to Ships-of-the-Line

British Great Ship 1683British Great Ship 1683Fishing Vessel 1630Fishing Vessel 1630 British Collier Brig 1680British Collier Brig 1680

British Naval Cutter 1710British Naval Cutter 1710 Brigantine or Brig 1790Brigantine or Brig 1790 British First Rate 1780British First Rate 1780http://website.lineone.net/~dee.ord/Golden.htm

Russian Labor System

• Eastern European labor systems often supported the Western European and began their subordination to the west that continues today. Serfdom remained in many of these areas in different forms until after the French Revolution

• Barshchina • Obrok• Becomes hereditary in 1649

Indentured Servant and Sharecropping

• person who worked without wages, usually for a period of five to seven years, in exchange for payment of the person's passage to the American colonies

• The contract, called an "indenture," entitled the servant to food, clothing, shelter, and medical attention

• Devised by the Virginia Company in the late 1610s, the system provided cheap labor

• estimated that one-half to two-thirds of all European immigrants to the colonies participated in the system, some voluntarily, some as victims of penal servitude

• disappeared after 1800.

New patterns by late 1600s• Proletariat

– People without access to producing property– Had to move to the cities but no benefits– Working class

• Bourgeoisie– People who moved to the cities and profited through trade and

services– Became the ownership part of the Middle Class

• Western response was to develop a more caring attitude towards the problems of the poor

• Manufacturing (domestic) began to increase and although the factory system is not well developed there was a rapid spread of household production of textiles and metal products (putting out system)– Rural workers continued their agricultural practices but often mixed

them with this domestic production system

1450 – 1750 (Hegemony of the West)• Forced labor and European influence tended to generate weak

governments in dependent regions, while increased trade revenues tended to generate increasing government strength in core states

• Government powers had expanded• Science came to form the centerpiece of Western intellectual life• Popular outlook, about personality and family and concepts of nature had

shifted• The ideas of the Deists began to dominate

– While there may be a divinity, its role is only to set natural laws in motion• The absolute monarchs had created profession, national armies,

diminished the role of the nobility by creating new bureaucrats to control their empire and tax their citizens, parliaments and the concept of their role was diminished, and their was constant warfare among the monarchs fueling their need for “gunpowder” weaponry.

• Population increases caused by the growing agricultural surplus, new products such as the potato and corn, and better medical knowledge caused migration to Eastern Europe and the Americas

• The new ideas of the Enlightenment created hotbeds for revolution in these politically and religious motivated migratory areas

• Economic and political quests for territories and resources to protect the newly acquired territories only served to increase the demand for new resources and territory and a self-sustaining attitude.

End of Atlantic slave trade• Economic:

– African states began to switch from slaves to legitimate products, less European demand for slaves

– no clear evidence of economic motivation as plantation economies remained strong.

• Enlightenment: – general social and philosophical reversion for slavery after

eighteenth century. • Religious:

– evangelical religious groups began to advocate end of slave trade, abolition of slavery.

• Impact of Britain: – Britain influenced by all of above– took role of suppressing slave trade in Atlantic.