WI No African Slave trade in the New World
- Thread starter RemoTT
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Deleted member 5719
No USA, I'm pretty sure. The big question is how to avoid the slave trade, any ideas?
There could be blacks, just not slaves. Have a few African settlers.
This is not ASB. Some of the first slaves were actually settlers brought over as indentured servants, which was pretty much a "willing" slavery, exchanging work for food and board. This type of deals rapidly evolved into slavery and because some of these servants were white, laws were passed so slaves would not be confused for actual paid servants. Very soon the slave trade grew and well you know the rest.
If you can some how keep a system of paid servitude rather than slavery the African-American slave trade will not exist. Because this system is not based on race then Africans will be able to own property, some might even become quite successful and encourage more African settlement.
This would result in some very interesting POD's.
For one the African culture of the black population will not be suppressed, homogenized, and beaten down. Thus you could get an extremely diverse black American culture, which in turn influences everything else. It would be possible to see music like Jazz and Swing emerge much earlier.
Interaction in the Americas between whites and blacks will be greater. Giving a possibility of a very large (maybe even the majority) mulatto population in some areas.
Still would have Africans come to the New World just not as slaves. You would still have the evolution of music, just maybe no Rap.
Are you positing that there are no African slaves because the Europeans choose to import none or because the African nations can prevent their export? The former, I suspectr, is ASB, given how Europeans at the time dealt with anyone they met. The latter - interesting, and a much more extensive POD.
POD: HIV emerges from animal reservoirs in the 1100's and by the 1400's has made its way to the west coast of Africa via caravan and other population movements. The resultant population crash makes efficient collection of slaves impossible. Those that are collected by early Portuguese explorers tend to sicken and die within a few years and are physically debilitated in the mean time. Net result: no large scale export of African slaves to the New World. Two major butterflies are 1) the importation of a very lethal disease back to Europe, with all kinds of historical consequences and 2) eventually the rest of the world. (The same breakout would have already infected the Islamic world through the East African slave trade, and probably India as well.) Scary scenario!
AmIndHistoryAuthor
Banned
IOTL the African slave trade begins because Spanish monks and priests suggest African slaves as an alternative to enslaving Indians, though the monks wanted Africans brought in as paid laborers. There was some slave trading in Africans prior to this. Colombus not only brought the first enslaved Indians to Europe, he brought the first African slaves to the Americas.
If Spanish abolitionists successfully convince the Spanish monarchs to curtail the African slave trade as well, it'd at least dramatically reduce the overall number of Black slaves.
Just a few things that'd change:
The demographics of much of Latin America, esp the Caribbean.
Brazil might develop entirely different, depending on if the Spanish decision influenced Portugal's monarchs.
How would France react to the Spanish decision? No Haitian colony?
Slaves would be more expensive and likely rarer in British colonies.
In all these nations there'd proably be a greater Indian slave trade. If you want an example of what that does to Indian tribes, look at what became the SE US, where the Indian slave trade did the most damage. Even before the Trail of Tears, much of the SE had been depopulated by entire villages sent to the Caribbean.
If Spanish abolitionists successfully convince the Spanish monarchs to curtail the African slave trade as well, it'd at least dramatically reduce the overall number of Black slaves.
Just a few things that'd change:
The demographics of much of Latin America, esp the Caribbean.
Brazil might develop entirely different, depending on if the Spanish decision influenced Portugal's monarchs.
How would France react to the Spanish decision? No Haitian colony?
Slaves would be more expensive and likely rarer in British colonies.
In all these nations there'd proably be a greater Indian slave trade. If you want an example of what that does to Indian tribes, look at what became the SE US, where the Indian slave trade did the most damage. Even before the Trail of Tears, much of the SE had been depopulated by entire villages sent to the Caribbean.
Typo
Banned
No matter the moral justification, slavery will occur if there is an economical incentive to do so, it might just occur a bit later.
You need to greatly increase the amount of cheap/free labour available, especially in the American south and the Caribbean in order to keep African slavery out.
You need to greatly increase the amount of cheap/free labour available, especially in the American south and the Caribbean in order to keep African slavery out.
Actually, most of the above is untrue.
1) While the first Africans brought into the English colonies were given "indentured servant" status, they were not "African settlers who willingly exchanged work for food and board and passage to America." They were people who had been captured by other African tribes, and sold as slaves to the Dutch traders who brought them to Virginia.
2) The reason why they were granted "indentures" rather than immediately put into slavery is that slavery, by law, did not exist in Virginia at that time.
3) Slavery only came to exist later...in 1654...when one Anthony Johnson sued in a Virginia Court, claiming that he should be entitled to enslave one of his African indentured servants, one John Casor. Johnson won his suit, thus establishing that Africans could be legally enslaved in the English colonies in America. Ironically, Johnson himself was one of the original 20 Africans brought to Virginia by the Dutch slave traders in 1619, who had served out his own indenture, then, as a free man, acquired land and indentured servants of his own. He then got tired of losing his servants when their indentures expired, and decided to revive the old African custom of enslaving them.
Snake Featherston
Banned
No African Slave Trade can only come with no mass Indian die-offs to disease. Hence it's implausible.
Snake Featherston
Banned
The only justification to slavery is the brute force that keeps the evil system going. And that brute force depends on self-reinforcement. With the evolution of industry in the Northern USA, the presence of two rival economies with the North superior killed slavery in the South. There was no common consensus to keep it going, especially when the War of 1860 started.....
Stephen
Banned
What if the European countries make more or all crimes punishable by indentured servitude to fill the labor shortages in American countries. Or how about a POD where someone discovers Penicilin and cowpox/smallpox vacination creating a population boom in Europe capable of filling up America with free settlers and indentured servants with no need for the slave trade.
As was said earlier - the rise of the Atlantic slave trade occurred in the early 1600's, and was a result of various economic factors etc, which saw an increase supply for labor in the Americas. With disease responsible for the deaths of up to 95% of the Native American populations throughout much of the Caribbean, there was a certain lack of cheap manual labor sources.
The Portuguese, not the Spanish, were actually the first to initiate the slave trade, the result of an ever increasing demand for sugarcane in Europe. While the Portuguese initially attempted to establish plantations of the west african coast, they eventually decided it much more profitable to build them in the new world. This was followed by the other European colonizers, who soon began importing african labor to the new world.
However reprehensible the Europeans actions might have been - one must also remember that the african kingdoms of "Guinea" and the rest of west Africa actually fought wars with each other for access to pupulations to enslave and trade to teh europeans in exchange for finsihed goods.
So, in order to prevent something like this - you need to either radically alter the economy of the new world to not be centered around the production of cash crops on plantations - or change the mindset of the afircan kingdoms who provided many of the slaves.
In general, keeping the american (European) population much smaller will probably lead to less of a slave trade.
Honestly, that was essentially slavery in all but name. Relocating populations and forcing them to work with few if any freedoms, and being paid in food and housing - sounds a lot like slavery to me.
The Portuguese, not the Spanish, were actually the first to initiate the slave trade, the result of an ever increasing demand for sugarcane in Europe. While the Portuguese initially attempted to establish plantations of the west african coast, they eventually decided it much more profitable to build them in the new world. This was followed by the other European colonizers, who soon began importing african labor to the new world.
However reprehensible the Europeans actions might have been - one must also remember that the african kingdoms of "Guinea" and the rest of west Africa actually fought wars with each other for access to pupulations to enslave and trade to teh europeans in exchange for finsihed goods.
So, in order to prevent something like this - you need to either radically alter the economy of the new world to not be centered around the production of cash crops on plantations - or change the mindset of the afircan kingdoms who provided many of the slaves.
In general, keeping the american (European) population much smaller will probably lead to less of a slave trade.
Honestly, that was essentially slavery in all but name. Relocating populations and forcing them to work with few if any freedoms, and being paid in food and housing - sounds a lot like slavery to me.
AmIndHistoryAuthor
Banned
Jycee is slightly off, but what he says is much closer to being true than that kind of revisionism that has become a popular claim among conservative apologists for slavery. I have no idea if you are, but at the least you've certainly fallen for the central premise. "Blame Blacks for slavery."
You even engage in an ugly bit of race-baiting by calling slavery "an old African custom." False on a couple of counts. Slavery is not uniquely African, obviously.
Slavery among African tribes, pre colonial plantation era, was largely limited to criminals and POWs, and the working conditions were not nearly as brutal as on plantations. There was no forced cultural assimilation, no hostility to African religions and language, often no enslavement of children as in colonies. In some cases slaves were put on display for conspicuous consumption, to show off the wealth of their masters. In some cases slaves could acquire the rights of tribal membership.
http://autocww.colorado.edu/~blackmon/E64ContentFiles/AfricanHistory/SlaveryInAfrica.html
The case you describe doesn't even fit African tradition at all. He's assimilated and using the European legal system.
Most historians would say Bacon's Rebellion is the central event which brings permanent racialized slavery to the colonial US.
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http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p274.html
....Bacon took it upon himself to lead his followers in a crusade against the "enemy."
....Each leader tried to muster support. Each promised freedom to slaves and servants who would join their cause. But Bacon's following was much greater than Berkeley's
....Bacon's Rebellion demonstrated that poor whites and poor blacks could be united in a cause. This was a great fear of the ruling class -- what would prevent the poor from uniting to fight them? This fear hastened the transition to racial slavery.
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Bacon united both Black and white indentured to revolt. What the authorites did to prevent this uniting across racial lines was offer Blacks as slaves to whites who fought vs Bacon.
After Bacon's Rebellion you start seeing Blacks almost exclusively as slaves in the colonies and whites only as indentured.
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