The Development of Slavery in the British Americas

Slavery has been common throughout human history but the form of racially based chattel slavery that had emerged in British America in the middle of the seventeenth century—in which Africans were viewed simply as units of labor—was uniquely exploitative and brutal among slave systems. The enslavement of Africans existed along a continuum as one of many forms of unfree labor in the early modern world. African slavery existed alongside other forms of coerced labor in the New World, such as indentured servitude or convict labor or the enslavement of the indigenous in the Americas, but it was predominantly enslaved African labor and coerced African migration that drove the settlement and expansion of the British Americas. The enslavement of Africans existed along a continuum as one of many forms of unfree labor in the early modern world. The English used African slaves very quickly after settling colonies in the Americas, albeit in small numbers.