Colonial America is one of the countries which actively practiced slaves trading. Initially, the first slaves were brought into America by British colonialists. This event marked the beginning of the British and American transatlantic slave trade. From 1619 to 1860, about 600 thousand African slaves were forcibly brought into the United States (Fullerton et al., 2015). The exploitation of black slaves played an essential role in the rise of American capitalism. Slavery in the United States was banned only in 1865, but segregation restrictions were in force for another 100 years (Hepburn, 2018). The socio-economic consequences of the slavery system in America are still being felt.
Slavery, from the perspective of American planters, was economically viable. The economic efficiency of the slave was achieved by cruel methods, in particular by physical punishment. At first, Africans did not have a clear legal status in the North American colonies being neither servants nor slaves (Hepburn, 2018). However, in 1641, the Massachusetts authorities were the first to legalize slavery (Hepburn, 2018). In Virginia, a law was passed later according to which the children of slaves inherited this status from their parents, becoming slaves automatically. Slavery arose in America through the so-called “triangular trade,” the transatlantic trade exchange held in Africa, Europe, and the New World (Berger, 2018). Europeans brought textiles, weapons, and metals to Africa, selling or exchanging them for captives, then shipped slaves from West African ports to North and South America.
The slavery traditions were different in various colonial regions. For example, Carolina and Massachusetts are famous for the most violent attitude towards slaves. In Virginia, slaves were treated like paid servants at first (Berger, 2018). After passing the slavery laws, the treatment became more violent. However, many first Africans earned their freedom by fulfilling an employment contract or converting to Christianity (Berger, 2018). Even though the authorities approved the physical violence in Louisiana, the owners were prohibited from torturing slaves, separating married couples’ small children from their mothers. New York and New Jersey’s authorities allowed slaves to have several fundamental rights (Berger, 2018). They were accepted into the Dutch Reformed Church and married by its ministers. Another fundamental right that slaves had was the willful baptizing of their children. Slaves could testify in court, sign legal documents, and bring civil suits against whites. Some were allowed to get additional work, receiving wages equal to white workers.
Terminologically and practically, slavery and indentured servitude have some differentiating features. In antiquity, hired labor was considered an analog of slavery, a condition shameful for a person (Berger, 2018). In the first case, a person acts as a subject who disposes of himself and his products or labor. In the second case, a person works as an object. Slavery is a complete lack of legal capacity, rights, and freedoms (Fullerton et al., 2015). In terms of rights and free will, the slave is comparable to animals: the owner decides what the slave will do, where to live, what is in the absolute working maximum. Indentured servitude is different from the point of human rights (Fullerton et al., 2015). Even though the workers can perform the same actions as a slave, the fact that they are doing this on their own will changes the perspective. The government should control that the entrepreneurs comply with all the rights and freedoms of workers. In indentured servitude, the product is labor, while in slavery, the human body.
Thus, slavery is different from indentured servitude in many aspects. The most significant difference between these two types of labor is in the concept of the product. Slavery was widely-spread in many regions of Colonial America. Some of them provided mitigating norms for slaves, supporting the idea that they were also people. Other areas considered slaves a mere product contributing to the commercial profit through free-of-charge labor. Society has come an enormous way to make better changes and establish rational moral norms. Even though indentured servitude can often be pretty difficult and unfair, now people at least have the right to be protected.
References
Berger, T. (2018). Places of persistence: Slavery and the geography of intergenerational mobility in the United States. Demography, 55(4), pp. 1547-1565. Web.
Fullerton, J., Keene, J., & Ventura, S. (2015). U.S. history. OpenStax. Web.
Hepburn, S. (2018). Eighty-eight years: The long death of slavery in the United States, 1777-1865. The Historian, 80(1), 120–133. Web.