- Published: September 12, 2022
- Updated: September 12, 2022
- University / College: Durham University
- Language: English
- Downloads: 26
In America, English colonists were part of the group that advanced slavery in the regions. For a long time in the 17th century, the economy of the southern and northern American depended on slavery because those African that were captured worked in the plantations as laborers. This means that advance of slavery became as important as that of liberty in the American political systems. By the 18th century, the quest for liberty by the enslaved rose and this ultimately led to the most popular American Revolution (Foner 129-133). The American colonists got an idea of the bad treatment to which they subjected the slaves and this caused fear of enslavement by the British colonialists.
In the beginning, the African that went to America were just servants that would work and have freedom to do other things of their choice in the society. However, with continued colonization by the British colonists, the demand for labor in the American south plantation and the northern regions rose. The act of servitude legally started in the Virginia colony of the British in 1661 and it was followed by such others like the Maryland, Carolinas, Georgia and Massachusetts and immediately, all Africans were became slaves. The number of slaves in the British colonies increased as the years went by because the colonists imported more slaves into the plantations (Blackburn 5-8).
In the course of enslavement, some colonial leaders advanced some proposals to have liberation of some of Africans but at first, it failed. A later force to counter the slavery caused some people to adopt the need for liberation of the enslaved and a strong divided came from the involved leading to the American Revolution (Lancaster and Plumb 36-38).
Works Cited
Blackburn, Robin. The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern ; 1492 – 1800. London [u. a.: Verso, 1999. Print.
Foner, Eric. The Story of American Freedom. New York: W. W. Norton, 1998. Print.
Lancaster, Bruce and Plumb, J H. The American Revolution. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 2001. Print.
