Titus_Pullo
Banned
Would it be possible for indebted Europeans who are sent to the American colonies as indentured servants and Europeans convicted of crimes, have their status changed to slavery along with blacks?
Why would it happen?
Right. If you had some kind of labor-intensive cash crop in the north equivalent to cotton or tobacco that might be enough. No idea what that would be though; maybe a higher-yield strain of flax could fill in the same niche as cotton?
Could we get formal, plantation-style slavery out of that, though? Deplorable as things like debt bondage were/are, the people trapped in the company towns were at least nominally free citizens with full legal rights.Mines, railroads, factories, and the company store.
And escaped whites and natives blended in well with nonslaves. Black people stuck out, and were much easier to find.WHen the English started setting up colonies in the world, Irish slaves were used. But they soon found out that the Irish slaves kept dying from tropical diseases. Native slaves were hard to get because they would often die from European diseases. So African slaves were used as they fared better against and European and new world diseases. After that it just became habit and old habits are often hard to break.
Were there any legal obstacles to keep white slaves? Lets say that someone buys a batch from the slavemarkets of North Africa or the Ottoman Empire could they then keep them as slaves in the Americas?
Not to say that this is a solution by any means, but some Roma Gypsies in England were forcibly sent as indentured servants to the colonies in Virginia, Jamaica and Barbados during the 1660's. Initially, though, I think they were just counted among any criminals or poor-people who would get deported from time to time. Later, in 1714, some merchants and planters applied to the Privy Council for permission to take "Egyptians" to the colonies as actual slaves.
That is interesting. I'd like to see the source of this.