Atlantic Slave Trade: The Rise Of Slavery In Colonial America

Upon arriving at the colonies, these colonists were treated terribly. Knowing how much giving each servant their own piece of land would cost them, the plantation owners made life almost unbearable to the indentured servants so that they would eventually die off before their seven years of work was completed. If this happened the plantation owners wouldn’t even have to pay out anything to the servants’ families either. The meals the workers received were poor with the servants often only receiving peas, gruel, and a tiny amount of beef and bread. Clothes were also a precious commodity to the servants with many people having only set of clothes and many others had to also go without shoes. The settlers also lived in a constant fear of an Indian …show more content…
Initially, the slavery was not bound to any particular race with basically any prisoner of war being capable of being enslaved such as Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans all becoming enslaved. The idea of using Africans as slaves initially came from the Kingdom of Portugal which of whom worked the indigenous peoples of their islands to death and turned to West Africa to replace them. This lead to the rise of the Atlantic Slave Trade.
The Atlantic Slave Trade was an essential major economic boon for the colonies allowing plantations in the south to buy laborers to produce their cash crops, while merchants in the north bought slaves from the Kingdom of Portugal or took them from Africa themselves and then sold the slaves for a profit in the southern colonies. In total, around 389,000 American slaves were originally natives of Africa.
The conditions for the slaves were horrible, not only in the plantations but also during the journey to America. Known as the Middle Passage, the route linking West Africa to North America was most commonly used by merchant ships transporting dozens of