Final answer:
The early development of slavery in the Southern Colonies was primarily due to the need for cheap labor on tobacco and rice plantations. The scarcity of indentured servants led to the reliance on enslaved African labor, which became entrenched through legal codes that defined slaves as property.
Step-by-step explanation:
The condition partly responsible for the early development of slavery in the Southern Colonies was the need for cheap labor on tobacco and rice plantations. The intensive labor demands of these cash crops outstripped the availability of indentured servants, leading to an increasing reliance on a permanent labor force through the enslavement of African peoples.
This economic dependence on slavery was further solidified by a legal system that adapted and adopted laws such as the Barbados slave codes, which treated enslaved individuals as property, purchasable commodities integral to plantation success.
Slavery in the English colonies grew out of a gradual transition from indentured servitude to chattel slavery, a system that legally defined African slaves as property, unlike their own cultural practices. In North America, British colonists capitalized on the lucrative cultivation of highly demanded commodities such as tobacco, rice, and later cotton, which were less viable in the small-scale family farms of the North.
The explosive growth of these cash crops led to an increase in the number of enslaved individuals to meet the labor demands, setting the stage for the inextricable link between southern economic prosperity and the brutal institution of slavery that would impact American society for centuries.