Slavery and the New World (1500–1800)

Disease (smallpox, measles) and forced labour under encomienda killed up to 90% of some indigenous populations by 1600.

They died quickly in tropical climates, cost money to transport, and gained freedom after their contract ended — colonists wanted permanent labour.

A Spanish royal contract giving a person, company, or country the exclusive right to supply enslaved Africans to Spain's American colonies.

Portugal, using its West African trading forts (like Elmina) to supply enslaved people directly to Spanish America.

The Treaty of Utrecht, ending the War of the Spanish Succession, transferred the asiento to Britain's South Sea Company.

European goods shipped to West Africa bought enslaved people; enslaved people shipped to the Americas produced sugar/tobacco; sugar/tobacco shipped to Europe.

It produced around 40% of Europe's sugar and 60% of its coffee using roughly 500,000 enslaved Africans — one colony rivaling national economies.

That a child's status (enslaved or free) followed the mother's status, making slavery hereditary and permanent.

Sugar colonies (Brazil, British/French West Indies) imported the most enslaved Africans and had the highest death rates, because sugar labour was the deadliest and most demanding work.

A race-based hierarchy: enslaved Africans at the bottom, free people of colour in a middle layer (larger in Brazil/French colonies), white colonists on top.

Portuguese traders had already been buying and selling enslaved Africans along the West African coast since the 1440s, decades before Columbus reached the Americas.

Europeans built ideas of racial hierarchy to justify enslaving Africans specifically, turning an economic solution into a permanent, race-based system.

The act of enslaved people escaping to form independent, often hidden communities, such as maroons in Jamaica or quilombos in Brazil.

Working slowly, breaking tools, feigning illness (also: sabotage, cultural retention, truancy).

A man named Jemmy, leading roughly 20 enslaved men initially, growing to 60–100 as they marched.

A 1733 Spanish royal decree promised freedom to enslaved people who escaped from British colonies and reached Florida.

South Carolina's Negro Act (1740) — it banned slave literacy, restricted assembly, and tightened supervision of enslaved people.

About 20 White colonists and over 40 enslaved rebels were killed the same day the militia responded.

The first known written protest against slavery in British North America, written by Pennsylvania Quakers, arguing slavery violated the Golden Rule.

John Woolman — travelled colonies urging Quakers to free slaves, wrote 'Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes' (1754). Anthony Benezet — founded a school for Black children, wrote widely-read anti-slavery pamphlets.

Quaker theology held every person has an 'inner light' (direct connection to God), making all humans spiritually equal — hard to reconcile with owning slaves.

Enslaved resistance was direct, immediate, and risked violent punishment (e.g. Stono Rebellion). Religious opposition was indirect, argued through writing/preaching, and risked social ostracism rather than violence (e.g. Germantown Petition).

1500–1800 — avoid drifting into 19th-century abolition acts (1807, 1833) or the Haitian Revolution (1791), which belong to later topics.

Treat enslaved people as active historical agents who shaped colonial law and society through resistance, not as passive victims of the slave system.