AHC equal white and black slavery in America

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?
 
I think it would be easier for Africans to be bumped up in status to indentured servitude. That's how it work with the very first African slaves brought over. If you have indentured servants coming over in larger numbers and fewer African slaves you could see both getting similar treatment since African slaves won't become the main labor source. Avoiding Bacon's Rebellion could help as well.
 
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.
 
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?
 
They changed slaves n Illinouis, with it's two slavocrat Senators from when they got statehood, into "apprentices", which apparently had Benjamin Frnaklin fleeing New England when his brother tried doing the same thing to him a second time. Would there be a reference in the constitution to this less than conceptual labor?
 
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?

Mines, railroads, factories, and the company store.
 
Mines, railroads, factories, and the company store.
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.

By the time railroads & factories were economically significant I don't see anyone being able to create a slave system out of whole cloth where one did not previously exist, even if slavery would be effective in those roles.
 
It could be argued that the very New England industrialists and tradespeople who advocated for the abolition of de jure slavery in the South acheived and maintained their own wealth by de facto systems of indentured and debt-payment labor that was slavery in all but name.

One way to make "slavery" in the US not race defined would be if such a system extended to the south, where indentured or indebted white immigrants were "sold" to plantation owners to work as foremen, household help, etc. while blacks were bought as field labor. You might eventualyl see some intermixing of these roles and an evolution to a mixed system that becomes true slavery for some whites as well as blacks
 
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.
And escaped whites and natives blended in well with nonslaves. Black people stuck out, and were much easier to find.
 
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?
 

NothingNow

Banned
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?

Only if common-law prohibitions against enslaving christians still apply, and the one drop rule would make it pretty easy. The only problem of course, being disease and opposition by the neighbors.

That said, you'd probably see laws specifically banning white slavery if people started importing them in decent numbers, and it'd be easier going for the abolitionist movement.
 
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.
 
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.
 
That is interesting. I'd like to see the source of this.

For now, I could only recommend an article on the subject found at www.tshaonline.org, but I would like to find the book Pariah Syndrome by Ian F. Hancock, a Romanichal historian. Also, It seems that Christopher Columbus also took a few Gitanos (Spanish Roma) on his third voyage to the Americas in 1498.
 

birdboy2000

Banned
Slavery was abolished in most of Europe by the time the Americas were settled. Some Irish got shipped overseas after a rebellion by Cromwell, but even a perpetual thorn in the side like Ireland isn't going to rebel constantly.

Indenture existed because of the promise of transport and land and a decent living in America once the term of indenture ended. People often came out of desperation, to be sure, but to reduce them to slavery is another matter entirely. Theoretically it would be possible to buy slaves from the Muslim world, but enslaving fellow Christians was a big no-no, and Christians were the white people Muslims were enslaving.

OTL, Africa had plenty of slavers - entire kingdoms whose wealth was based on shipping people overseas. I'd think you'd need Europe to have its share, and for them to be cheaper than Africa's, in order for widespread white slavery to develop.
 
Might have had a less time with slaves or an acceptable white slave class if the Irish Travlelers had been shipped en masse to the Americas or the Crown used transportation and indenture in the colonies in leiu of execution after 1630 or so?
 
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