To: sea_urchin who wrote (23131 ) 5/19/2005 3:22:34 AM From: GUSTAVE JAEGER Read Replies (1) | Respond to Re: I'm curious to know what jobs there are that "blacks want to do"? Other than being politicians -- or priests. The aboriginal race had at first been employed in the mines there, but this kind of labour was found so fatal to them that Las Casas, Bishop of Chiapa, the celebrated protector of the Indians, although at a later period he disapproved of slavery, urged Charles V to substitute African slaves as a stronger race. Accordingly, the emperor, in 1517, authorized a large importation of negroes. Sir John Hawkins was the first Englishman who engaged in the traffic. Others of his countrymen soon followed his example on an extensive scale. England is said to have taken, between 1680 and 1700, no fewer than 300,000 slaves from Africa, and between 1700 and 1786 Jamaica alone absorbed 610,000. A Dutch ship brought from the Guinea Coast to Jamestown, Virginia, a cargo of twenty negroes in 1620; this was the beginning of slavery in the English colonies of America. An English company obtained the monopoly of supplying negro slaves to the Spanish colonies for thirty years; the contract was annulled by Spain in 1739, and England thereupon declared war on Spain. The number of slaves annually exported from Africa amounted, at the end of the eighteenth century to 74,000. Between 1680 and 1786 there were 2,130,000 negro slaves brought into the British colonies of America, including the West Indies. Altogether it is estimated that probably 12,000,000 slaves were landed in North and South America from the beginning to the end of the slave-trade. An equal number is supposed to have perished in the African slave raids and on their way to America. The slave-trade was usually attended with extreme cruelty; the ships which transported the slaves from Africa to America were overcrowded to such an extent that a large proportion died on the passage. The treatment of the slave after his arrival depended much on the character of his master; restraints, however, were imposed by law in the various settlements to protect slaves from injury.newadvent.org Slavery fueled capitalist profits Indians were dying out too quickly to be useful laborers, settlers turned to the transatlantic slave trade. Settlers reaped huge profits from African slaves who were imported to provide labor to maintain the colonies. Plantation slavery soon spread throughout the Americas, providing agricultural production for the colonizers at very little cost.socialismandliberation.org
