Essay On Slavery In The Southern Colonies

By the late seventeenth early eighteenth centuries, the southern colonies was immersed in a labor transition from indentured servitude to slavery. Indentured servants were under a labor contract which consisted of passage to the British colonies with the repayment made by services provided at a plantations for a term of four to seven years, and once the term was completed, they would receive 50 acres. This labor system began to decline for various reasons, such as economic stability in England, increased survival rates of the indentured servants, the establishment of Pennsylvania, and limited land provisions. All resulted in a large labor shortage in the southern colonies. In response to this shortage, colonist turned towards a bound and permeant …show more content…
The quarters typically were arranged in a circular pattern with an open center. “In African cultures, dwellings often were grouped into compounds with a shared central space.” The center was equivalent to what is today a court yard. This suggest an area of high interaction. The importance of a yard or a central space was highly emphasized in West African culture and it was transmitted into slavery because slaves created and built their homes. The space around the house was just as vital as the house itself. These quarters that were arranged in a circular pattern were either structures for single families, duplexes, and some were barracks. As Patricia Samford states in the William and Mary Quarterly, “The traces of fenced enclosures, and the spatial grouping of structures denote communal spaces for socializing and cooking and indicate that a substantial portion of free time was spent outdoors.” Because of the distance between slave and master, the slave population was able to develop a community on the model of West African villages. “Enslaved individuals […] incorporated the larger planation landscape of fields and woodlands to meet their need.” The interior of these quarters suggests the slave population had more autonomy within their private sector and this contributed to the transmission of West African culture into their daily …show more content…
Taking a group of people and placing them within a new area does not differ who they are. The roots of themselves will permeate the area around them. This is clear when one examines the roofs of diaries and smokehouses or the porches on the Georgian homes. It clear that there was autonomy within the private sector of a slave’s life. That is supported by the layout of slave quarters and material evidence provided by subfloor pits. The slave population had the capability to incorporating their cultural roots within their private lives by being able to converse with one another in the center yard of their community, to adapt to their surrounding and materials to meet their needs maintaining some of their social and religious customs in a highly oppressive labor