New World slave societies Essay

Coercion and abuse experienced by enslaved people in New World slave societies have tended to focus on violence. This is how it should be because experiencing or witnessing violence was indeed an everyday part of life for slaves. Violence inflicted by slave holders on enslaved people did not take place in a vacuum. It was also meet with and often proceeded by abusive words. Yet while debates around negotiation, slave resistance and paternalism focus in detail on the cultural and discursive context of these relationships, discussions of violence tend to home in on their purely physical aspects. I will be discussing the context of violence in a society undergoing the transition from slavery to a post slave society in the West Indies. Abusive language was sometimes used in place of physical punishment and served as a substitute for personal violence in situations where physical punishment was not allowed. A period known as the apprenticeship period in Jamaica, 1834-38 slaveholders lost the legal right to directly punish their un-free workers so instead used abusive language. But fear is fear whether it is felt physically or verbally the threat was still present. The people of the West Indies today are mainly of African decent. Important minorities are East Indians, mainly Trinidad, Chinese and Europeans of British, French, Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese. There are also many people of mixed blood and racial and cultural mixtures that makes the West Indies one of the more cosmopolitan areas of the world. The most important industry in the past and in the present day is the growing of sugar cane. Other crops include citrus fruit, bananas, spices, coca, coffee, tobacco and coconuts. All of these are agricultural and very labor intensive. The British colonialization of the West Indies brought slavery into the social context. Toussaint L’ouverture led a successful revolt in Haiti. The efforts of Englishmen like William Wilberforce helped bring an end to the slave trade to the New World and eventually led to the emancipation of slaves in British colonies. When European countries began their overseas explorations and colonization in the 15th century, the institution of slavery experienced a revolution. The discovery of the West Indies opened a new era. In every colony prosperity depended upon the production of some article which could be profitably exported, such as coffee, sugar and indigo. These crops called for large scale operations and cheap labor. Wage laborers were not available and it was necessary to resort to some type of compulsion to secure workers. The Indian appeared to be the obvious answer, utilized the institutions of tributary labor and repartimiento, the granting of land along with the Indians living on it. The Indians proved unsuitable for forced labor. They died off rapidly under oppression and even resorted to mass suicide and infanticide. Their number declined to the point of extinction. The Europeans turned to the African as a solution to their labor problems. The African was not unknown to Europeans prior to the 15th century, but there were very few Africans in Europe. The Portuguese exploring the Atlantic coast of Africa brought back two African slaves and subsequent expeditions resulted in the purchase or capture of other slaves. At this time Portugal faced a manpower shortage and African slaves proved to be the solution to its problems. By 1460, 700 to 800 were being imported annually. Spain soon followed the example of Portugal and adopted the importation of African slaves. It was not surprising that the colonists in the New World should have thought of the African slave when they needed labor.