Why Slaves?
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Amistad
NewCliches — 18 years ago(October 04, 2007 12:48 PM)
There is a thread already discussing why the plantations in the Americas desired to import black workers.
I would like to ask a slightly different question: why did they import enslaved Africans rather than free ones? After the UK banned the slave trade in 1807, their colonies could no longer import slaves and started importing indentured workers from India. (They would be required to work for someone for a few years to repay the costs of their passage, but they were legally free. Many white colonists arrived in America in the same way.)
They did not import Africans in the same way, although West Africa was much closer. Why not?
Why could they get free workers from India, but not Africa? -
Skye_Reynolds — 18 years ago(October 04, 2007 05:13 PM)
Bigotry, laziness, greed
They wanted to make a one time purchase and never have to worry about payment again.
"Attempted murder? Now honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel Prize for attempted chemistry?" -
NewCliches — 18 years ago(October 06, 2007 07:43 AM)
Slaves were not cheap labour. It was taken for granted, during the height of the trade, that you could hire a labourer in Britain for subsistence wages (it is mentioned in The Wealth of Nations, for example), and for only very slightly more in America (otherwise extra immigration from Britain would have cut the cost of labour in America to its level in the UK).
Even a slave has to be paid subsistence wages, in cash or in kind. Plus the cost of guarding him, paying for his initial enslavement (slave raiders were rarely charitable enough to give their product away for free), etc.
But if you did not like a free labourer in Britain, you fired him and hired someone you liked better. Also for subsistence wages.
With a slave, all you could do was torture him, and hope he started behaving better before you did any significant damage to your property.
Slaves were therefore harder to discipline precisely because you had an investment in them.
Slaves were therefore valuable in Jamaica, Brazil, South Carolina etc, only because they could not get many free immigrants. They would be valueless back home, which is why hardly a single slave ever saw European soil.
So why did no free Africans move to the Americas, given that plenty of free Indians were prepared to do so? -
pbl1 — 17 years ago(May 17, 2008 09:04 AM)
plantation owners tried indians as well. they did not have the stamina and ability to work continuously in the sun that the africans had.
as for the other question, obviously a slave costs less than an free laborer/employee (although there is a larger start-up cost).
What the $%*& is a Chinese Downhill?!? -
tgrdavid — 16 years ago(September 11, 2009 10:54 AM)
thats simply not true the indians did not make good slaves because it was to easy for them to escape they could simply make it back to their tribe or another indian tribe, but where would a black slave go? he has to make it all the way to the northern states. and bringing slaves from africa was done away with because slaves have children who then become slaves so there is no need to import slaves because the children are raised up to be the new slaves. the amistad slave ship was illegal and it was importing slaves to cuba not the united states, after the slaves took over the ship it sailed to new york but that was never the intended destination
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Norm_uk — 16 years ago(September 18, 2009 12:44 PM)
tgrdavid:
The reference to Indians is people from Indianot native American Indians.
Indians (from India) are generally physically weaker than Africans and couldn't handle the hard labour on the plantations are well as Africans. When the slaves were freed though Indians were a much cheaper option.
Even today Indians (and other people from the Indian subcontinent) are used as cheap labourplaces like Dubai are built on the backs of poor Indians who are paid penuts but will work because they have nothing back home and have families to support.
N.
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful" -
NewCliches — 14 years ago(December 13, 2011 11:00 AM)
The obvious retort is that free Indians did.
And I might point out that even before slavery was abolished in the Caribbean, most of its free people were themselves black or mixed race. Free whites were such a tiny minority that they had been outnumbered by freed slaves and their descendents for a long long time.
And yet, those free black people stayed in the Caribbean. Very few of them emigrated. So it cannot have been as bad a place to be as you seem to think, as long as you were a
free
black person.
After all, the free white people had always been so heavily outnumbered that they had to maintain the loyalty of the free black people.
"The most racist societies in the world" were, and always had been, in the American South, where white people made up the majority of the population and were secure enough to indulge in luxuries like classical racism. -
Robbmonster — 16 years ago(August 12, 2009 12:03 PM)
I know this is a serious subject, but I just had to say
But why male models???
"It's just a movie" is no excuse for treating us like idiots!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwRqc0KSkJ0 -
rightwing_redcoat — 15 years ago(June 01, 2010 07:59 PM)
One important thing to remember is the natural slave population increase that occurred in America. Slavery in the Caribbean under the British or French (while it existed) was far more brutal, and so new slaves needed to be imported constantly to keep the population up. Now, just be clear, I am in no way defending slavery, but in America, the slavery was not as harsh, and so slaves lived longer, and had more children. America actually banned the importation of slaves in 1808, and it turned out that importing them was unnecessary, as the population of slaves actually had an exponential increase. By 1860, there were almost 4 million slaves in America, whereas only about 650,000 were actually imported to the USA from Africa legally.
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julianamonti — 15 years ago(July 01, 2010 01:47 AM)
I don't know about United States but I can tell you about Brazil, since I am brazilian.
The natives in Brazil did not obey or take any of the europeans teachings, they would rather die instead of being slaves, that is they culture and that is what they did, they didn't bow once for any european or whatever. They preferred to sacrifice themselves and die in pain as free men. The brazilian indians would receive visitors with joy but they wouldn't let them rule things, until nowadays they can be hostile, there are recent cases of journalists who tried to take pictures in the natives reservation and got beaten until death, I think they inheritated the bad feeling of the white men.
Why the africans accepted? In my opinion they were too much nice to the newcomers and I think they didn't see that coming, since in my view it isn't in their culture actions such harm and slave people.
The africans and natives of the countries involved were treated like animals, but for me the real animals were the europeans who raped the latin america and africa. -
davidwile — 13 years ago(January 01, 2013 07:33 PM)
Hey folks,
Bringing people from Africa to the Americas to serve as slaves was quite an expensive enterprise. North America had an abundance of Native Americans who could be subjugated for a lot less cost than what it took to bring Africans here. In the eyes of the ruling white population, Native Americans really were not looked upon with any more favor than Africans, so this begs the question as to why Native Americans were not used for slave labor instead of Africans.
I suspect the basic reason more costly Africans were used instead of Native Americans was largely due to the type of work that was expected of the slave labor. The Americas in the time of slavery were mostly agrarian cultures, and this was especially true of the southern colonies and the Caribbean where plantation life both large and small were the norm. The Africans used for slaves came from cultures that were also agrarian in nature rather than hunter-gatherers. Other than initial language difficulties, African slaves were very adept at performing agrarian tasks. Native Americans, on the other hand, were not so agrarian by nature. Those in the East who were adept at agrarian life were already pushed out of the land. So many of the remaining Native Americans were largely hunter-gatherers who were basically nomadic and not very adept at an agrarian life.
In short, Native Americans did not serve the intended purpose of slaveowners as did Africans at the time. Slaveowners found Africans better suited for their agrarian needs than Native Americans and were willing to pay the high cost of obtaining the African slaves.
Best wishes,
Dave Wile -
dannieboy20906 — 10 years ago(June 10, 2015 01:47 PM)
Dave Wile;
It was pointed out by another poster in another thread on this board, but apparently you didn't read it.
An attempt was made to enslave Native Americans or American Indians, but it failed for the obvious reason that they can escape and go home. They know how to live off the land and navigate cross-country to rejoin their tribes.
Slaves imported from Africa cannot return home because three thousand miles is a heckuva lot of water to swim. Subsequent generations cannot blend in with the local population and must make it all the way to Canada to get free. In the meantime, there is no support network to help them. Near the time of the beginning of the Civil War the Underground Railroad was making strides in moving escaping slaves up to Canada, but it was a dangerous task.