ABSTRACT
In most European New World colonies the death rate among slaves exceeded the birth rate, so a substantial slave trade was required just to maintain a working slave population. As economic conditions in England improved during the seventeenth century, fewer English men or women sought alternatives abroad. Indentured service in the colonies may have become less attractive, to potential servants and masters alike. Although the English were active in the slave trade and relied upon slave labor in their Caribbean colonies, slavery was not a significant aspect of English society, nor was it for several decades a significant aspect of England’s mainland American colonies. When the Tidewater Aristocracy perceived the economic benefits of slavery, the House of Burgesses enacted the necessary legislation. The systems of slavery that Virginia and other European colonies in the Americas developed were different from the systems that already existed in Europe.
