why was there a desire for slaves in early american times?

Question

Also anything you know about the middle passaage, slavery in africa and other topics.

Answer 1

There was not really a "desire" for slaves, as much as there was an economic "need" for free labor. The black slave owners in Africa sold captured slaves from various tribes. The original slave traders were Africans; they dealt with the French, the English, and the Spanish.

THE MIDDLE PASSAGE. Slaves experienced a long and traumatic ordeal as Africans during the Atlantic slave trade. Black African slave traders, English slave traders, and Colonial slave traders profited for nearly four centuries. Slavery trade continued until the end of the Civil War.

Millions of Native American tribes and African tribes were savagely torn from their homelands, herded onto ships, and dispersed all over the so-called New World and into Europe. Although there is no way to compute exactly how many people perished, it has been estimated that between thirty and sixty million Native Americans and Africans were subjected to this horrendous triangular trade system and that only one third-if that-of those people survived...'

I believe you must add to your research information, for thoroughness and accuracy, that black slave traders in Africa were the first to trade slaves with the English and with the French. The website below will tell you about the history of the African land of Liberia that was purchased by America for the freed slaves. In Liberia, the freed slaves ultimately continued slavery of their own, by purchasing other slaves.

Answer 2

Agriculture is manpower intensive. That's why the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans all had slaves. In the Middle Ages the practice of enslaving white people was stopped because it wasn't considered to be a "good" thing. So the nobility and the church set up a system that locked people to their land and turned the peasants into all but slaves. They couldn’t leave their land, they had to pay the king and their noble lords of the permission to use the land and that payment came off the top. If the peasants starve then that was their problem. Meanwhile the church preached about a better after life to keep the peasants in line. The church also preached that the kings and queens ruled by divine right, so to revolt against a king or queen would be to act against god.

After the Black Plague the population was decimated. Peasant labor became rare. The middle class was born when the value of a person’s labor couldn’t just be commanded. European society became based on trade and the production of goods. Their food stocks were often purchased from other countries that had slave labor or something similar to the peasant system. In Europe agriculture was still practiced in many areas though, that’s why summer vacation was invented. Children were let out of school so they could help plant the crops in the spring and then help harvest them in the fall.

In early America the economy was again agriculture based; especially in the south. As the northern colonies improved then they too became a trade-based society, importing their food from areas that used slave labor or something similar to grow and harvest the food. The south still needed mass labor so they started importing black slaves. Soon after Southern Africa was colonized blacks became enslaved. It didn’t happen in Northern Africa because most of that area was controlled by the Moslems who had kicked out the Europeans after 4 crusades. Middle Africa had some pretty violent natives, especially in the Congo River valley. Slavery didn’t do well there because the natives would try to kill any Europeans that landed. But, Southern Africa was a rich area for the slavers. This became the start of apartheid.

The American Civil War was fought for many reasons. Slavery wasn’t the biggest issue, economic issues were. The creation of the Cotton Gin, around the same time, reduced the manpower requirement for picking cotton, until then the cottonseeds had to be teased out of the cotton by hand, one at a time; this took a lot of people and time to do.

The invention of the mechanical harvester (the first ones were towed by horses) spelled the end of labor-intensive agriculture. But, even today we have a “slave” class of people used to harvest our crops. Oranges, lettuce and some other products can’t be picked with a machine so they require a lot of labor. Most of this labor is done by Hispanic Share Croppers. Share Croppers lived in shacks and moved from field to field, as migrant workers. They weren’t unionized until Caser Chavez led the migrant worker movement. Even after this a lot of illegal aliens are willing to work very cheap to harvest the fields. They aren’t slaves per say, but they are seldom treated any better than the European Peasants of the middle ages were. This year the orange harvest forecast has been predicted to be lower than normal because the labor will not be available; thanks to the tightening on the border.

So the desire for slaves is to plant and pick the crops. It is a manpower intensive activity and to make a profit the owner of the farm or the plantation owner had to have very low expenses. No one wanted to pay a lot for their food so if the prices got high then they would just switch providers. This need still hasn’t disappeared. We treat our sharecroppers better, but not a whole lot better. The reason for the poor treatment of the blacks was the theory that they were subhuman. This fiction made it easier to mistreat the black slaves, just because they weren’t white, they were treated no better than animals.

As for the Middle Passage and treatment of the slaves, things were pretty bad. Slavers expected to lose slaves on the voyage, mainly due to sickness, disease and malnutrition. The slaves were not “broken” so they couldn’t be trusted on the deck, or trusted to move about below decks. Therefore they were chained for the entire voyage, in cramped quarters with little light, air or food. It has been said that sharks changed their migration habits to follow the slavers route so they could pick up all the dead thrown overboard from these slaver ships. For more information on this check out the book Roots written by Alex Haley. He retraced his slave ancestors, and even spent time in a former slave ship so he could feel how his ancestors felt.

Answer 3

Slavery was a means of obtaining relatively inexpensive labor. Of course, the Plantation owners had to deal with the cost of purchasing the slaves and their care and upkeep (slaves in ill health or who were underfed tended to be poor workers). It was, at the time, considered an important part not only of the rural South's economic system, but of their social system as well. Plantation owners who owned more slaves were more respected by their peers.
The journey from other lands (not just Africa, by the way) was probably the most difficult aspect of enslavement. The ship owners had little responsibility for the health or well-being of their human cargo, and tended to be less than sympathetic. Interestingly, life was better in many cases in the New World than in the Old, even under the burden of slavery.
Slavery itself is morally repugnant, of course, but from an economic standpoint, it was essential to the growth of the southern United States at the time.

Answer 4

A plantation owner needed free/cheap labor. A slave was as acceptable to own as a horse or mule. Throughout history there has always been slavery, even now there is slavery in Africa. There has been more white slaves in history than black. During the time Rome was in power, most slaves were white. Mankind always wants to dominate other humans, now it's done through economic means.

Answer 5

Seriously?
If you had a field to plow, wouldn't you want a horse or a tractor? In those days, that's how slaves were looked at. As possessions, like horses or tractors. Some people thought they were doing the right thing by bringing heathenous people to a place where they could learn about Christianity. Some didn't care if it was right or not because they needed laborers and some didn't realize they were doing anything wrong. That's why you should always think for yourself. Doing what you've always done just because that's what you know or that's what people do could lead to unintentionally hurting someone who doesn't deserve it.

Answer 6

Cheap labour, it was impossable to economically clear the land and farm such intensive crops as cotton without free labour. With the advent of the industrial revolution it became economically viable to free the slaves and replace them with machinery.

Answer 7

Plantation owners in the South needed cheap labor to harvest their crops.

Answer 8

I guess they made if fundemental.I guess everything had a purpose 2 fall in order.But I dont agree with how lots of our ancestors had 2 suffer like that

Answer 9

Because slave owners were lazy, arrogant and stupid (superior god complex) They did not want to work yet wanted everything in sight. They enslaved people to work for them and had their way with all women.

Answer 10

Because people could use them to help make themselves wealthy. Think about it this way, if you have three hundred acres, is it easier to "own" people and have them do the work or actually pay people to do the work.