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Colonial North America & the African Americans

Colonial North America & the African Americans. SOC 327 Race & Ethnic Relations. The Incorporation of Africans into the Americas & the Atlantic Slave Trade.

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Colonial North America & the African Americans

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  1. Colonial North America & the African Americans SOC 327 Race & Ethnic Relations

  2. The Incorporation of Africans into the Americas & the Atlantic Slave Trade • The Atlantic slave trade was successively expanded and controlled over four centuries by the Portuguese, Dutch & British - with a parallel French “Exclusive” • It was the labor foundation for a triangular, mercantilist, lucrative production and trade “virtuous” circuit between Europe, Africa, & the Americas: the boats were never empty Soc 327

  3. The impact of the forced transfer of Africans to the Americas • 100 million directly affected in Africa per se from 1440s - 1880s, only partly offset by the vast agrarian expansion with American crops • 10-12 million recorded “live sales” of African enslaved workers in the Western Hemisphere; • An equal number is estimated to have died in capture, transit or waiting: the America’s second holocaust Soc 327

  4. The Atlantic Slave Trade Destinations • One third of the African slaves went to Portuguese Brazil • Another third went to the Caribbean • Most of the rest went to Spanish America • Only about 4 % to British North America (half of Haiti’s percent) Soc 327

  5. Origins of Chattel Slavery • Preceded by a massive system of European indentured servitude in the 17 Century plantation colonies in the Caribbean and North America • Conversion to/hardening of African chattel slavery <=> softening/demise of European indentured servitude • Rise of a “white planter aristocracy" in Southern & Caribbean colonies => less & less room for yeoman "whites" Soc 327

  6. Evolution of U.S. African Slavery & anti-Black Racism • Plantations: tobacco, sugar, cotton • Initial “African servitude” became Blackchattelslave legal system by 1700 • Southern social system became caste-like & paternalistic, but based on human exploitation, terror & human trafficking • Ideological racism became “scientific” > 1850s (Social Darwinism), too late to make a difference • Fear of slave revolution grew in time > 1800 Soc 327

  7. The U.S. Slave Population Anomaly The U.S. became the only historical case of slave population growth: • 400,000 sold alive to the U.S. area from 1619 to 1865, most of them in the 1700s. • About the same number of Blacks were counted in the first U.S. census of 1790, which is remarkable and unique. • 4,000,000 were emancipated in 1865! • Between 1790-1865: 1000% growth! Soc 327

  8. Three Reasons for the Unique U.S. Slave Population Growth, 1790-1865 • The invention of the cotton gin gave the stagnant South a 2nd. wind: heightened demand in England was matched by supply from a reconfigured US South. • The development of an internal slave trade systemwithin the South: breeding plantations (northern zone) fed the cotton plantations with an ever growing supply of slave workers (southern zone). • The implantation of the “one-drop rule” for African-descent slaves and of hereditary chattel slavery • => populationgrowth of BOTH “Negroes” and slaves. Soc 327

  9. Significance of Haitian Revolution to the Americas • Clarified the national liberation strategy of the Spanish American settler revolts: the criollos embraced the abolitionist cause and the call for national independence from Spain. • Made Cuba the “new Haiti” but now with vast ingenios based on the steam engine, producing slavery’s most industrial & regimented model! => Led to the 10-year war of independence (1868-1878) crushed with U.S./British support Soc 327

  10. Significance of the Haitian Revolution (1789-1804) to the U.S. • Napoleon’s dream of settling Louisiana with re-enslaved Haitian sugar profits vanished, so he sold it to the U.S. for $15 Million in 1803, doubling the size of the U.S.: a great geopolitical success! • Made the Southern planter class even more fearful of imminent slave revolution, hence more opressive, while the Northern capitalists became more convinced that slavery was too explosive and thus doomed as a modern labor form: US “national” polarization grew. Soc 327

  11. British Reasons for Ending Atlantic Slave Trade • Haitian Revolution of 1789-1804 was the writing on the wall for all of plantation America • British Industrial Revolution favored machine-made production & the wage labor in Europe: new leading commodities = manufactured goods • Incorporation of Africa itself and Asia as European colonial peripheries in the XIX Century changed direction and form of colonial migrant labor flows from intercontinental to intracontinental • Abolitionist movement in Great Britain gained momentum: homeland liberal democracy in the era of British imperialism yielded some fruits Soc 327

  12. The End of the Atlantic Slave Trade in Four Stages: Trade unilaterally & globally banned by the hegemonic British in 1807 but: • After the 1812 War, the British encouraged U.S.Southern cotton planters to expand production using home-grown slaves & supported the U.S. South’s attempt to seceed from the Union • British Caribbean planters given roughly 30-year period to abolish slavery itself (1834) • Spanish American republics all abolished slavery • British (& U.S. too) “winked” at massive Cuban/ Brazilian slave contraband up to the 1880s Soc 327

  13. U.S. at the Crossroads, 1850s/60s • British hegemony & its new industrial/agrarian global system of capitalist accumulation gave the U.S. great opportunities, but also great challenges regarding its own “nation-building project”: • Rise of the manufacturing US North became a British regional rival in N. America (potentially global) • Rise of the renewed rich Ante Bellum plantation South could easily become a British cotton-producing preserve at the expense of the U.S. North, if it seceded. Soc 327

  14. Four Strategic U.S. Nation-Building Tensions in 1850s/60s • Develop an industrial/agrarian core-bound economy vs an agrarian/industrial semiperipheraleconomy, tied to British core economy • Develop one continental nation vs. 2, 3 nation-states • Develop free wage system vs. continue with a mixed system of labor regimes (free/slave) • Build (a) a monoracial nation-state vs. (b) a multiracialegalitarian plural society vs. (c) a multiracial inegalitarian plural society Soc 327

  15. U.S. Civil War 1861-1865 It resolved at a very high price in blood: • Labor system issue: waged labor only • National issue: a single, continental nation-state poised for internal territorial expansion: "Manifest Destiny” to establish the “Sphere of Liberty” & “Anglo-Saxon Civilization” • Global issue: Poised to build a new world power => "Monroe Doctrine" enforced in the Americas vs. European powers Soc 327

  16. Post Civil War Era: The construction of American Apartheid Left unresolved was the multiracial character of the new nation-state: • Indian genocide & military “ethnic cleansing”campaigns => reservations • Jim Crow apartheid forced on Blacks to stabilize North-South relations • Mexican-American land usurpation/ethnic subordination, plus waves of expulsions • Anti-Asian exclusionary & discriminatory laws from the 1850s until 1960s • Open door policy for non-WASP European immigrants: the new industrial labor force Soc 327

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