Chattel slavery banned, consequences for African immigration

Poorer because it lacks the huge export volumes of cash crops (tobacco, rice and indigo, mostly) which made colonies so profitable in OTL.

And yet, the monied interests cogregated in the north, where a mich more diversified economy thrived.
 
Indentured servitude was a much shorter-lived process. Large numbers of indentured servants were worked to death by the end of their (7 year) contract. Skin colour or country of origin made little difference in how hard indentured servants were worked.
The newest group of immigrants/indentured servants/slaves was always worked the hardest. Just look at how miserably refugees fleeing the Irish Potato Famine were treated.

As for Europe being closer to America than Africa .... not when sailing westwards. The triangle trade was defined by trade winds and the Gulf Stream. Sailing ships carried manufactured goods southwards to Africa .... slaves westwards to the Caribbean .... then carried sugar, cotton and tobacco northeastwards.
Few goods sailed counter-clockwise except for salt cod from Newfyland to Caribbean plantations.

Outlawing slave trading in British colonies was one thing, but enforcing that new law was a vastly different process. For example, early in the enforcement process, Royal Navy ships' captains sold their prizes (including slaves from Africa) after they seized ships illegally trading slaves. RN ships operated almost the same way as privateers.
 
If chattel slavery was banned in America, and instead indentured servitude is used instead, what would be the consequences for African immigration? Would Africans willingly come to the continent for the money the plantation owners were paying? If yes, would the rising population of free blacks end up with racist white elites banning further black immigration?

Why would any Africans come? Chinese came to California in the 1840s because there was gold in it for them, work for the trans-contintental railway for high labor wages due to lack of labor in the west, and to escape the Taiping Rebellion. Trade was already well established between China and the West. And the immigrants originally intended to stay only temporarily. There is no obvious opportunity for Africans to want to come to the New World - certainly not to work in plantations. Africa is historically underpopulated given its size. There'd be little appeal to travel very distantly far away with little chance of getting back home.

How would they even get to the New World? The Africans don't have their own boats to transport them. Given the high incidence of death for European sailors in African waters from malaria and other tropical diseases, why would they sail there for simple transport of Africans when there is so little profit in it?

If there is no slave trade, then very few Africans make it over prior to the 20th century.
 
And yet, the monied interests cogregated in the north, where a mich more diversified economy thrived.

In time, yes, but they took longer to develop. And the southern colonies were the wealthiest (hello, Virginia) for quite a while in OTL.

ITTL, it's an open question whether Virginia et al would be more profitable in the long run - perhaps so - but would be much poorer during the colonial era, which was the period I was referring to.
 
In time, yes, but they took longer to develop. And the southern colonies were the wealthiest (hello, Virginia) for quite a while in OTL.

ITTL, it's an open question whether Virginia et al would be more profitable in the long run - perhaps so - but would be much poorer during the colonial era, which was the period I was referring to.

Which is why I am of the position that they would likely develop more slowly, but not absolutely poorer for it. The North was already becoming more of a financial center than the south before the Revolution broke out.
 

TinyTartar

Banned
Something to consider is that while Chattel Slavery of AFRICANS may be banned, chattel slavery of the Irish will not be. The Irish were seen as the lowest form of scum, lower than the Africans, and as a result, slavery was seen as both a punishment and form of social control while also being an economic venture.

The hatred of the Irish ran so deep that the mortality rates for Irish slaves made them quickly die out of use, despite having tons of them shipped over after the Cromwellian clearances.

Someone has to do the work, and I doubt that indentured servitude is going to be extended to the Irish.

As for how Africans get involved in a chattel free America, I simply don't see how or why. Maybe some initially shipped over for slavery and then made indentured servants could form a community, but I hardly see anyone from West Africa going to the Caribbean or Virginia willingly to be an indentured servant.
 
I still think Africans would be a popular target for indentured servitude because IOTL, they had the longest lifespans of any slave group (Native American, European, African) by a large margin, they knew how to successfully grow crops in the tropics, and they knew how to forge metal.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by DominusNovus
I wouldn't say poorer, just slower to develop and forced to diversify quicker. But I do think that indentured servitude could work, just not as well as slavery.

Poorer because it lacks the huge export volumes of cash crops (tobacco, rice and indigo, mostly) which made colonies so profitable in OTL.

Probablly see more industrial development than in OTL slave colonies/states.
 
Poorer because it lacks the huge export volumes of cash crops (tobacco, rice and indigo, mostly) which made colonies so profitable in OTL.

The profits of those crops (i.e. the return to capital) were extremely high, but was that because revenue was higher than crops like wheat or was it just because they stole the return to labour due to slavery? Because if the return to capital plus return to labour wasn't that much higher than other crops, then America will have nearly as much wealth, just spread more evenly. After all the Midwest was not a poor place.
 
Something to consider is that while Chattel Slavery of AFRICANS may be banned, chattel slavery of the Irish will not be. The Irish were seen as the lowest form of scum, lower than the Africans, and as a result, slavery was seen as both a punishment and form of social control while also being an economic venture.

The hatred of the Irish ran so deep that the mortality rates for Irish slaves made them quickly die out of use, despite having tons of them shipped over after the Cromwellian clearances.

Someone has to do the work, and I doubt that indentured servitude is going to be extended to the Irish.

As for how Africans get involved in a chattel free America, I simply don't see how or why. Maybe some initially shipped over for slavery and then made indentured servants could form a community, but I hardly see anyone from West Africa going to the Caribbean or Virginia willingly to be an indentured servant.

The idea that the Irish were seen as lower than Africans is just absolute nonsense. They weren't even forced into chattel slavery in our timeline.
 
Why would any Africans come? Chinese came to California in the 1840s because there was gold in it for them, work for the trans-contintental railway for high labor wages due to lack of labor in the west, and to escape the Taiping Rebellion. Trade was already well established between China and the West. And the immigrants originally intended to stay only temporarily. There is no obvious opportunity for Africans to want to come to the New World - certainly not to work in plantations. Africa is historically underpopulated given its size. There'd be little appeal to travel very distantly far away with little chance of getting back home.

How would they even get to the New World? The Africans don't have their own boats to transport them. Given the high incidence of death for European sailors in African waters from malaria and other tropical diseases, why would they sail there for simple transport of Africans when there is so little profit in it?

If there is no slave trade, then very few Africans make it over prior to the 20th century.

I suspect if chattel slavery was banned, involuntary indentured servitude would still happen, with Africans being forced into it, but having enough legal rights to be released after a term.
 
The profits of those crops (i.e. the return to capital) were extremely high, but was that because revenue was higher than crops like wheat or was it just because they stole the return to labour due to slavery? Because if the return to capital plus return to labour wasn't that much higher than other crops, then America will have nearly as much wealth, just spread more evenly. After all the Midwest was not a poor place.

The profits of those crops, especially tobacco, were simply much higher than wheat or any other "standard" food crop. Rice was a food crop too, but during this era it was a premium one, and capable of fetching high prices. Indigo attracted British government subsidies, since it was a militarily useful product (uniform dye), and because it could usually be grown in rotation with rice, making even greater profits.

I can't remember if wheat was exported to Britain at all during the colonial era (possibly to parts of the Caribbean, which did import food.). If it was, though, it had to compete both with local production and imports from elsewhere in Europe. It simply couldn't command the same premium prices. It could be profitably grown, but the return on capital from tobacco, rice and indigo was much, much larger.

Wheat would become more viable later, in the nineteenth century, when reduced transportation costs and population growth in Europe made it easier to return a decent profit exporting wheat.
 
I'm still not seeing Africans coming to the Americas in any real numbers until the 20th century. Without the slave trade, there's no reason for ships to land in most of Africa except as waystations on the way to the Indies (which naturally precludes transporting people to America). Even during the 19th/20th centuries the African colonies were mostly money-losers, and the profitable goods they did provide (e.g. rubber) wouldn't have been nearly as valuable in the 16th/17th centuries. The only real reasons to go would be ivory (which can't support as much of a trade, and is mostly in the wrong place) and missionaries (who are less unlikely to be willing or able to recruit large numbers of would-be emigrants).

Unless the Africans build their own ships (and leaving aside technological/cultural issues, why would they build ships just to ship their own people overseas?), they aren't getting to the New World.

Plantation owners are going to have to find some other way to get labor (possibly supplementing indentured servants with prisoners and sharecroppers, much like the OTL post-Reconstruction South, and with more hacienda-like exploitation of the natives).

Internal African politics will also be heavily affected, as many of the early modern kingdoms (e.g. the Oyo Empire) funded themselves through the slave trade, while the inflow of European goods (especially firearms) upset the balance of power by strengthening coastal nations (with ready access to guns) at the expense of inland states (who lacked easy access to European weaponry).
 

TinyTartar

Banned
The idea that the Irish were seen as lower than Africans is just absolute nonsense. They weren't even forced into chattel slavery in our timeline.

That is not at all true. Cromwell's campaign in Ireland purposefully depopulated most of the island with a boundary set up at the Shannon River to be the boundary between where Irish Catholics could live and the rest of the Ireland that was divvied up among soldiers of the New Model Army and land speculators.

But thousands of Irish were killed in the campaign, and those not killed were frequently deported to Barbados or Virginia to act as slaves. The Irish absolutely were subjected to chattel slavery.
 
Plantation owners are going to have to find some other way to get labor (possibly supplementing indentured servants with prisoners and sharecroppers, much like the OTL post-Reconstruction South, and with more hacienda-like exploitation of the natives).

A hacienda style system wouldn't be sustainable. The Spanish got lucky in the places they colonized had the most sophisticated native societies with tons of people. Running a hacienda system in the colonial U.S. would burn through the native populations at a horrific rate.
 
A hacienda style system wouldn't be sustainable. The Spanish got lucky in the places they colonized had the most sophisticated native societies with tons of people. Running a hacienda system in the colonial U.S. would burn through the native populations at a horrific rate.
Oh sure, the system would probably crash and burn eventually, but it could last long enough to get things started. A system doesn't have to be sustainable in the long term to be established; look at OTL for evidence of that. It's not like the East Coast was entirely empty of natives, especially before the settlers started pushing them out of the best lands.
 
Oh sure, the system would probably crash and burn eventually, but it could last long enough to get things started. A system doesn't have to be sustainable in the long term to be established; look at OTL for evidence of that. It's not like the East Coast was entirely empty of natives, especially before the settlers started pushing them out of the best lands.

The indigenous population of the future United States was always much lower than that of Mexico, even before the European disease epidemics that ravaged it. The better analogy is with Hispaniola, where the island became so depopulated that African slaves were being imported only 10 years after Columbus's arrival.
 
African indentured servitude in North America was an odd beast.

In the very early days, there was no slavery - just indentured servitude. But blacks had to serve their lifetime (99 years, iirc), while whites served 7.

Still, if that had been kept, then all children born would have been free, and the vast bulk of the black population would have been free in a few generations.

The other thing was that I rather doubt that that servitude was 'voluntary'. I suspect they were 'sold' on African shores, but I don't know that.

Have some judge insist that English law holds in North America, and that indenture never becomes slavery.
 
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