The slave business ensued for the reason that it became a practical and profitable business in the 1600 to1800’s. Many people have not considered the parts they play and how different they may be. The most obvious similarity between the two happens to be their eyes for profit .The men that entered the slave business did it for income. Despite this similarity, there remained three items that the two did not share, status being one. Another being that they had a completely different need of the slaves they dealt with. The final difference is that the slave owners paid for their slaves and the slave Traders took the slaves and sold them to the Owners. There are a few people that discuss the differences and similarities between Traders and Owners: …show more content…
Howard Zinn is the main person that discusses this topic in his work A People’s History of the United States, but W.E.B. Du Bois also discusses it in his work, A Black Reconstruction. The Owners and Traders happened to be similar when it came to profit, but differed in class, occupation, and how they treated the slaves. Slave Traders and Owners share a major goal, revenue. Slave Owners intend to gain this profit from working their slaves. “Slavery was immensely profitable to some master. James Madison told a British visitor shortly after the American Revolution that he could make $257 on every Negro in a year and only $12 or $13 on his keep”(Zinn 33). Madison happens to be able to earn back the money he spent on his slaves relatively quickly by putting the slaves he purchased to work and earn off their labor. This turns out to be how the Traders consider the slaves. The Trader’s journey to Africa and gain profit from selling the slaves they acquire to wealthy plantation or other agricultural Owners. “Under these conditions perhaps every three blacks transported overseas died, but the huge profits(often double the investment on one trip) made it worthwhile for the slave trader, and so the blacks were packed into the holds like fish”(Zinn 29). The Traders would make their money by transporting a large amount of slaves that losing a few would not hurt their profits. Traders transported countless slaves that by the time they reached their destination the money that they spent on the voyage would be earned back and more. This is exactly like the plantation Owners that use the slaves to earn vast profits for themselves. Plantation Owners bought their slaves and after working them hard, they easily earned their losses back. While the Owners and Traders began to gain profit only one of the two gained status with the profit that was made. Owners and Traders belonged to two completely different classes. The plantation Owners emerged from the wealthy class, and by wealthy it is more like wealthy of the time. This is explained more in depth by DuBois as, “It found itself hindered by slavery in the South: directly because of the growing belief of the influential planter class in oligarchy and the degradation of labor” (183). Planters, with the help of slaves, began to grow in their wealth and while their presence became strong, the presence of Traders had diminished. The wealth of the plantation Owners began to swell, however the fortune of the Traders became irrelevant. The reason the Traders had become irrelevant ensued because of the status they had. This is explained more by Zinn in A People’s History as, “On one occasion hearing a great noise from below decks where the blacks were chained together, the sailors opened the hatches and found the slaves in different stages of suffocation” (29). The Traders proved to be sailors and did not play a huge role in the United States, except to get the slaves to the country. After the product befell to the Owners the Traders had no significance any longer. The trader’s participation in the plantation Owner’s society ended the moment that the Owners took their slaves; which is why the presence and significance of slave Traders vanished after a certain time. Status difference between the slave Owners and Traders led to another difference, the need of the slaves. The slave Traders and Owners had different needs of the slaves.
For example, the slave Owners needed the slaves to work their fields and bring in the profit and the crops they needed to survive. This idea is proven by Zinn, “The Virginians needed labor to grow corn for sustenance and to grow tobacco for export” (25). The Owners of the slaves needed them in order for their efforts to bring in profit. In order to survive and bring in an income Owners needed slaves to cultivate the land that they had. This is different from the needs of the Traders, which focused solely on profit. The Traders did not need the slaves to work the land they had, they needed them so they sell them to the Owners. The Trader’s needs are explained by Zinn, “By 1800 10 to 15 million blacks had been transported as slaves to the Americas” (29). With this many slaves being transported Traders began to gain a vast profit. They did not need them to survive like the Owners did, they needed others to keep wanting slaves so the Traders can keep providing them what they needed, and by the numbers Zinn gives “10 to 15 million” that’s enough demand to give plenty of Traders a profit. With that amount of slaves being transported, one can only imagine the profits that motivated the slave Traders to keep taking slaves to the Americas. Understanding the needs of the Owners and Traders makes it easier to identify the treatment that both gave to the …show more content…
slaves. Treatment of slaves is entirely different between the slave Traders and Owners.
The slave Traders genuinely did not care about the treatment of slaves, and they treated them how ranchers would treat their cattle. This is proven by Zinn, “They are brought down to a large plain, where the ships surgeon examines every part of them, to the smallest member, men and women being stark naked… Such are allowed good and sound are set on one side… Marked on the breast with a red hot iron, imprinting the mark of the French, English, or Dutch companies” (28). The Traders did not care about the treatment of the slaves only that the slaves got to their future Owners marked and ready for servitude. If a few slaves were lost along the way it did not bother the Traders much, they still got their profit and moved on. While the slave Owners had to treat them a little better because they were their property now. The treatment of slaves in America became known as, “It was a harsh servitude, but they had rights which slaves brought to America did not have, and they were altogether different from the human cattle of the slave ships and the American plantations” (27). The slave Traders treated the slaves like products while the slave Owners simply thought of them as farming equipment. The Owners knew in order to prosper they needed to take care of their equipment, but the slave Traders had the mentality that “there’s more where that came from”. It is in this way the slave Owners and Traders are
vastly different. At this time there was one common goal between slave Owners and Traders, profit, but they prove to be different. Owners used slaves to bring in revenue, and Traders did the same, it’s in this way that they are similar. Although they were similar profit wise the Traders were sailors and, therefore, inferior to the class that Owners had just begun to establish. In class, the Owners and Traders became different, but their need of the slaves was different as well. Slave Owners needed slaves to survive and grow crops so they could earn a profit from the land they acquired. The slave Traders did not need slaves to survive, they needed them so they could sell them and gain wealth for themselves. Another area that the slave Owners and Traders differed in was the treatment of the slaves. Slave Traders treated slaves with no compassion or care; they just wanted the profit that it would bring them. While slave Owners needed to make sure that the slave’s basic needs, food, and shelter, remained taken care of. The slave Owners and Traders are extremely different and the difference between the two needs to be established because they are not the same people.
Frederick Douglass, the author of the book “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, said “I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon both slave and slaveholder” (Douglass, p.71). Modern people can fairly and easily understand the negative effects of slavery upon slave. People have the idea of slaves that they are not allow to learn which makes them unable to read and write and also they don’t have enough time to take a rest and recover their injuries. However, the negative effects upon slaveholder are less obvious to modern people. People usually think about the positive effects of slavery upon slaveholder, such as getting inexpensive labor. In the book “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, Douglass also shows modern readers some brutalizing impact upon the owner of the slaves. He talks about Thomas Auld and Edward Covey who are his masters and also talks about Sophia Auld who is his mistress. We will talk about those three characters in the book which will help us to find out if there were the negative influences upon the owner of the slaves or not. Also, we will talk about the power that the slaveholders got from controlling their slaves and the fear that the slaveholders maybe had to understand how they were changed.
In “Slaves and the ‘Commerce’ of the Slave Trade,” Walter Johnson describes the main form of antebellum, or pre-Civil War, slavery in the South being in the slave market through domestic, or internal, slave trade. The slave trade involves the chattel principle, which said that slaves are comparable to chattels, personal property that is movable and can be bought or sold. Johnson identified the chattel principle as being central to the emergence and expansion of slavery, as it meant that slaves were considered inferior to everyone else. As a result, Johnson argued that slaves weren’t seen as human beings and were continually being mistreated by their owners. Additionally, thanks to the chattel principle, black inferiority was inscribed
Within the economy a great development had been achieved when the upper south handed its power to the lower south all due to the rise of an agricultural production. This expansion was led by the excessive growth of cotton in the southern areas. It spread rapidly throughout America and especially in the South. During these times it gave another reason to keep the slavery at its all time high. Many wealthy planters started a ‘business’ by having their slaves work the cotton plantations, which this was one of a few ways slavery was still in full effect. Not only were there wealthy planters, at this time even if you were a small slave-holder you were still making money. While all of this had been put into the works, Americans had approximately 410,000 slaves move from the upper south to the ‘cotton states’. This in turn created a sale of slaves in the economy to boom throughout the Southwest. If there is a question as to ‘why’, then lets break it d...
The Transatlantic Slave Trade started out as merchant trading of different materials for slaves. With obtaining a controllable form of labor being their main focus, the Europeans began to move to Africa and take over their land. The natives had to work on the newly stolen land to have a source of income to provide for their families.Soon others Europeans began to look for free labor by scouring the continent of Africa. Because Europeans were not familiar with the environment, Africans were employed to kidnap other Africans for the Transatlantic Slave Trade. After trade routes were established, different economies began to link together, and various items were exchanged across the world. As the Atlantic Slave Trade grew larger, problems began
The absence of humanitarian concerns influences the treatment of slaves during the slave trade tremendously. At first glance, one can simply pick up the fact that Africans were treated as subhuman. This did not begin as a result of difference in appearance to those in settling in America, the inhumane torture actually started back in their homeland. There were always slaves in Africa, however, due to the constant need of non-Christian slaves in America the slave trade became a booming business in Africa. Any person, any day had the likelihood of being kidnapped and taken to a faraway land to be treated as mere possessions. The lack of civilized concerns towards the Africans during the times of the Slave Trade resulted in the callous behavior
Slave trading was very traumatic for the slaves, being separated from the only thing they knew. Some lived on plantations under a watchful eye, and others worked right beside their owners. Slaves on large plantations usually worked in gangs, and there were better positions to work than others. Some gangs were separated into groups of lighter workers, consisting of men and women. Other gangs weren't so lucky and were assigned to hard labor.
The slave trade into the United States began in 1620 with the sale of nineteen Africans to a colony called “Virginia”. These slaves were brought to America on a Dutch ship and were sold as indentured slaves. An Indentured slave is a person who has an agreement to serve for a specific amount of time and will no longer be a servant once that time has passed, they would be “free”. Some indentured slaves were not only Africans but poor or imprisoned whites from England. The price of their freedom did not come free.
Slavery played a prominent role in the history of the United States of America. The. The antebellum south is specifically known for its dependence on the institution of the institution of slavery. Today, Americans have access to numerous slave narratives. that contain first-hand memories of what the culture of this country used to be like.
Slaves and slave trade has been an important part of history for a very long time. In the years of the British thirteen colonies in North America, slaves and slave trade was a very important part of its development. It even carried on to almost 200 years of the United States history. The slave trade of the thirteen colonies was an important part of the colonies as well as Europe and Africa. In order to supply the thirteen colonies efficiently through trade, Europe developed the method of triangular trade. It is referred to as triangular trade because it consists of trade with Africa, the thirteen colonies, and England. These three areas are commonly called the trades “three legs.”
The concept of the slave trade came about in the 1430’s, when the Portuguese came to Africa in search of gold (not slaves). They traded copper ware, cloth, tools, wine, horses and later, guns and ammunition with African kingdoms in exchange for ivory, pepper, and gold (which were prized in Europe). There was not a very large demand for slaves in Europe, but the Portuguese realized that they could get a good profit from transporting slaves along the African coast from trading post to trading post. The slaves were bought greedily by Muslim merchants, who used them on the trans-Sahara trade routes and sold them in the Islamic Empire. The Portuguese continued to collect slaves from the whole west side of Africa, all the way down to the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa), and up the east side, traveling as far as Somalia. Along the way, Portugal established trade relations with many African kingdoms, which later helped begin the Atlantic Slave Trade. Because of Portugal’s good for...
Slavery has been a main problem in the world for centuries. Slavery goes back to Babylon over 2,500 years ago and it is still a growing problem in the modern society. Slavery is not just one dimensional; it involves gender, race and physical appearance of a slave. In this paper, I am going to compare and contrast David Brion Davis’ view of ancient slavery along with modern day slavery by Ryan J. Dalton, and discuss why they are not similar with each other. In Modern Day Slavery by Ryan J. Dalton, discuss the problem of human trafficking in Tennessee. Dalton mention that women and children were forced into prostitution by gangs and other organized crime groups to earn money. This is different from ancient slavery discussed by David Brion Davis in Inhuman Bondage, slaves were captured and they could be raped and quickly sold. The difference between modern and ancient slavery in sex are modern slave trafficking’s main goal is to earn profit by the owner while ancient slave owner rape their slave without profit.
“In Arkansas and Alabama, convicts are forced to work through the winter without shoes” (Wormser 76). The slaves would have had to work through the winter with little clothing also. This was common though because people wanted to keep the slave mentality that was just taken away from them. “That there is not an inn between Washington and Montgomery, a distance of more than a thousand miles, that will accommodate me to a bed or meal” (Rapier). The whites still thought of themselves as higher than the slaves too. They were “better” than others but in reality were treating them very harshly. This is wrong just because you can not be better than someone else if you are that harsh, mean, cruel, or unfair to them.
Forced labor has been a worldwide problem for thousands of years. Millions of marginalized human beings have been kidnapped, taken away from their families, and forced against their will to work for people of higher power. In the 15th century, as Europeans were starting to settle in the Americas, the demand for cheap and efficient labor increased. The native americans that were already providing labor at the time were very susceptible to the diseases the Europeans were bringing over, and they weren't very efficient in farming. This led the Europeans to invade Africa, and kidnap Africans because they were immune to more diseases, and they were more proficient in the agricultural field. These Africans were ripped from their families, thrusted
Slave Auctions and the ownership of slaves in the U.S. did not help the making of America because it went against everything written in the Bill of Rights. Slaves didn’t have the freedoms that were granted in the Bill of Rights. Specifically, the Tenth Amendment is corruptly broken with slavery. States in the north prohibited slavery, but in the south, the slaves were not given any rights of the Bill of Rights by their state.
Slavery has been a part of human practices for centuries and dates back to the world’s ancient civilizations. In order for us to recognize modern day slavery we must take a look and understand slavery in the American south before the 1860’s, also known as antebellum slavery. Bouvier’s Law Dictionary defines a slave as, “a man who is by law deprived of his liberty for life, and becomes the property of another” (B.J.R, pg. 479). In the period of antebellum slavery, African Americans were enslaved on small farms, large plantations, in cities and towns, homes, out on fields, industries and transportation. By law, slaves were the perso...