Summary The Plantation Economy Of The British North...

Zainab Omosanya HST 1510 LD 01 Analytical Essay 1 Prof. Korey Bowers-Brown Trace the shift from non-racially specific indentured servitude to perpetual race-based slavery in the British North American colonies. Why did this shift occur, and what impact did the shift have on the lives of colonial inhabitants? The plantation economy in the Atlantic created a tremendous need for human labor. In the absence of machinery, human labor was required for the cultivation, planting and harvesting of the various cash crops e.g. rice tobacco and indigo. Although slavery had been existing throughout the 1600s, indentured servitude was an ancient English labor contract, it is a system whereby the servant would be at†¦show more content†¦By 1640s, slave status and racial boundaries began to harden Virginia’s planter-lawmakers moved to regulate human bondage and interracial relations (Carson pg. 48). The book also stated that as time went on, judges and legislators established precede nts that assigned Africans to lifelong slavery. The shift from non-racially specific indentured servitude to perpetual race-based slavery started as the racial boundaries and slave status became strict in legal terms, and the system of indentured servitude failed as masters did not hold up their end of the contract and subjecting servants to lifelong slavery, which later resulted in a rebellion (Bacon’s rebellion). The system of indentured servitude never took off at a good start because most of the masters did not abide by the contracts and most slaves were forced to live the better part of their lives as slaves. Anthony Johnson, a free African who acquired lands for himself and his family in Northampton County on Virginia’s eastern shore and started a tobacco plantation, who also owned a herd of cattle and hogs as well as two black servants. Anthony and his family lived in a region where slave status and racial boundaries had not yet hardened. Anthony got married to woman named Mary and one of their sons married a white woman, this was not very common in that time, but it happened as he could provide her with a