Question

Explain how and why tobacco planters in the chesapeake region came to rely on african slaves rather than european indentured servants over the course of the seventeenth century. at what point did the chesapeake become a "slave society" rather than merely a "society with slaves"?

Answer 1

The first 20 Africans arrived in Virginia in the early 1600s and small numbers followed in subsequent years. Compared with indentured servants, slaves offered planters more advantages. As Africans, they could not claim the protections of English common law. Their terms of service never expired unlike the indentured servants whose terms lasted 5-7 years. African men, unlike the Native Americans, were accustomed to intensive agricultural labor, and they encountered many diseases known in Europe and developed resistance to them, so were less likely to succumb to epidemics. England gets involved in the transatlantic slave trade in 1640 so they no longer have to rely on the Dutch and Portugese. This made slaves more available and cheaper. At the start of the 1700s is when slave labor began to replace indentured servitude on Cheasapeake plantations. Recognizing the growing importance of slavery, the House of Burgesses enacted a new slave code that embedded the principle of white supremacy in the law. Slaves were property and completely subject to the will of their masters and the white community. Virginia had changed from a "society with slaves," in which slavery was one system of labor among others, to a "slave society," where slavery stood at the center of the economic process.

Answer 2

During the early years of the colonies, most work was performed by new settlers, as well as European indentured servants. These servants would come for a number of years and work with no pay in exchange for passage, board, food and other basic necessities. At the end of their contract, they were free and able to make a living on their own. This system, however, proved to be insufficient as plantations developed. Tobacco became an extremely succesful cash crop, and this meant that more labor was needed. The colonists turned to African slaves to satisfy this need for workers.

The Chesapeake became a "slave society" rather than a "society with slaves" when slaves became the main laborers in the region. Moreover, this change occured when plantations were no longer sustained in any other way aside from slave labor.