Different slaves in the Americas besides Africans

I imagine It'd be like breaking in a horse really. They'd be Too independent and High strung so they'd run more often and do so successfully because they know the land. Also they'd be harder to find because nomads can just leave in the middle of the night if it gets to tough where they are.

Do you realize how creepy it is to compare an ethnic group to an animal?

Incidentally, Europeans were the nomads traveling thousands of miles. Indians were the settlers living on land they'd been on for millenia. Try reading books that were written after 1950.

But yes, the greater ease of escape is the main reason Indians couldn't be used as much as Africans were used as slaves. The enslavement of Indians was very common in the southeast, but they were nearly all shipped off to the Caribbean.
 
Aside from the disease factor, why didn't the Europeans ever try enslaving the indigenous peoples of the Americas through chattel slavery?

Hmm... Aside from the lack of rockets, why didn't Spain conquer the moon in the 1500s....

The Europeans (especially the spanish) did enslave the Caribbean islanders and they died like flies. Mostly due to disease, partly due to the fact their life wasn't worth living anymore. With that example, it was easier to import Africans. Also, later, the Church, especially the friars, pushed hard to prevent native enslavement as they wanted to convert them. To oversimplify.
 
Could the Iberians have tried to enslave Jews and Moors?

Also, why weren't white slaves used besides the indentured servitude system falling apart after Bacon's Rebellion? Is it because white people sunburn too easily?

I haven't read this yet but it's probably helpful.

I think that it is very improbable. It was not legal to enslave a crown's vassal, and the spanish moors and jews where vassals of the spanish and portuguese crowns. You must find some way to break the feudal contract without legal consequences, and probably the only way to do that is expeling them from the kingdom, as was IOTL (and even in that way there was unrest among a part of non-jew or moor population). Of course, you could find some way to cheat the law, but since the moors and jews were originally in Iberia and not in the other extreme of the world, it's more difficult to do that. They should be enslaved once they are in the Americas.

I think that the key piece here is that the african slaves were more easy to acquire than others. The african slaves market existed before the european expansion, it had been well profited by the different states in the Maghreb and also Iberia in the Middle Age, and was one of the main sources of income for the triangle Tombuktu-Gao-Djenné with the gold, the ivory and some spices that they exchanged for salt and manufactured goods. The portugese expansion in the african coasts changed the center of that transaharian trade to the atlantic coast, but the market was there before them and was one of the region's atractives for the Europeans. The need of workforce in the Americas, obviously, intregated that market in the atlantic circuit and, sadly, expanded it. So, if you have a market that can provide you the slaves that you need and that is yet established, you don't need to look for new sources of slaves.

As Carlton-beach says, there was a two-way street enslaving in the Mediterranean, but most of them where war prissioners or took in coastal raids and piracy actions, so there wasn't a permanent flow of slaves and not in the needed number. And often they didn't need to sell them, but only wait to someone from the other shore paying the ramsom. They were also valuable in the galleys, the dorsal spine of the mediterranean fleets at the time.
 
Okay, so no Iberian non-Christians, and not a lot of Amerindians.

So what about white people? Either restive populations (Irish), or if you go further back and have something like Empty America that takes place in a more technologically-accelerated Middle Ages, pagan whites (Cumans)? Okay, so the Cumans are Turkic, but my point is an enslaved people who are not black. This would likely have very different racial relation development in the future.
 
Okay, I've been doing research into the topic for Raptor of Spain for a while and here's what I've found: generally native slaves worked well enough for the Iberians at the beginning. But. Eventually mosquitoes baring African diseases made it over into the new world (ex. malaria) and the natives died like flies. Northern Euros were also susceptible. Southern Euros had more resistance as did the north Africans but neither population ever evolved the sickle-cell mutation as a defense because it was not prevalent enough in southern Europe. Thus, sub-saharan African slaves proved to be the hardiest by far in the new world once the diseases got there. Other slaves died more quickly.

From hardiest to weakest in S.American, Carribean and southeast US:
1. Sub-Saharan Africans
2. North Africans/Southern Europeans (Iberians, Sicilians, South Italians)
3. Europeans
4. Amerindian populations

Obviously the farther north you go the better chances you have to use non-sub-saharan slaves but drawbacks to natives have already been pointed out. In any TL where the Iberians spend time in the new world by sailing ship, there are going to be African diseases and there is going to be a selection for sub-Saharan populations as the choice of exploitable workers. Maybe you can fix it by expanding the Brazilian-Portuguese endgame but I don't know how likely that is. Note: the research I looked it focused on Sugar plantations since those were the early ones.

I am a bit despairing of finding away around this in my own TL.
 
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NothingNow

Banned
Do you realize how creepy it is to compare an ethnic group to an animal?

Incidentally, Europeans were the nomads traveling thousands of miles. Indians were the settlers living on land they'd been on for millenia. Try reading books that were written after 1950.

But yes, the greater ease of escape is the main reason Indians couldn't be used as much as Africans were used as slaves. The enslavement of Indians was very common in the southeast, but they were nearly all shipped off to the Caribbean.

Yes, Yes I do. I was thinking in general terms about the Issue. And I know the Whole thing with Pre-contact Indian societies. Post-Contact a lot of tribes Became Semi-nomadic. So I made a few Generalizations, Big whoop!
Besides A fair amount of the Time When a Tribe or band found Pressures to great they'd Up and Leave for Greener pastures Slavers would bea good example of such a Pressure. The Tuscarora and the proto-Seminole tribes both fled to avoid pressures, and I could keep coming up with examples but I don't want to argue with you today.
 
I am guessing one problemn with white slaves would be that if some escaped from a plantation they could easily blend in with the locals upon reaching the next larger settlement. Whereas escaped African slaves can be identified on sight as Africans. It is also much easier to rationalize them as subhuman, etc if they look very different.

BINGO. Those are the real comparative advantages that the slaves brought over the European indentureds, and indeed over ancient-style local slavery.
 
Didn't some states allow for Indians to be enslaved?

Arizona and New Mexico territories still had enslavement of Indians after the Civil War, on a small scale as late as the 1900s. California's truancy laws allowed de facto enslavement of any Indian. If you could get a judge to declare the Indian you'd enslaved "truant" (no matter the age) legally he was yours. Most were adults.

In some northern states, the legal end of Indian slavery didn't come until as late as the 1840s.
 
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