English colonies and slavery?

Question

The English colonies in North America did not practice slavery before the 1660s. Initially Indentured Servants supplied the labor needs of planters to grow the lucrative crops of tobacco. Yet after 1660, slavery was established and became an institution throughout the colonies.

How did an indentured servant live thier lives? and why was slavery introduced in the colonies? why did planters decided to replace indentured servants with slave?How was the slave trade carried out? What were the results of slavery for slaves and planters?

Answer 1

Cross-posting answer... Another person asked about Bacon's Rebellion, and connected that with the transition from "indentured servitude" to "slavery," and also the introduction of formal discrimination in unfree labor.

Check out this question and the first (only as of this posting) answer:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AgKop1KrPPwdhhUpyhKYPoUjzKIX;_ylv=3?qid=20070909181710AASIyQ5

I think that the idea of slavery appearing after Bacon's Rebellion is semantic more than actual. I often use the term "unfree labor" because the labels do change, and our current ideas are too narrow and grounded in 21st century perspective to allow us to communicate effectively.

In a way, we're practicing the allegorical speech featured in one of the most interesting Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes, "Darmok," in which Picard is marooned with a creature who speaks only in allegorical references, but to a body of stories that Picard doesn't know. So much for the universal translators.

I think it's interesting on this anniversary of the attacks in 2001, when the phrase "nine eleven" is so fraught with meanings, to consider the ways we resemble the creature that speaks only in allegories. We speak in symbols that have different meanings, depending on our group beliefs.

Oh, and when will Apple add universal translation to the iPhone? Just curious.

Answer 2

Ummm, the first Africans in the English colonies weren't indentured servants. In 1619 John Rolfe wrote of a Dutch ship selling twenty Africans in the Jamestown colony. An English colony where the colonists purchased slaves long before 1660. They weren't indentured servants as they were not immigrants who agreed to work unpaid in exchange of their passage to the colony. They were bought and sold, property of the people who purchased them. A sure mark of slavery. They only called it indentured servitued.