1450 -1750 - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

1450 -1750

Coerced LaborSlide2

Historical examples of Slavery

Ancient Greco-Roman World

Southeast Asia

Muslim World

Black Sea Trade Network

Sub-Saharan AfricaSlide3

Common Features

Status for slave holder

Outward sign of social inequality

Most often productive capacity – agricultural servitude, some cases domestic servitudeAs a result of debt or prisoners of war – overtime tradition (degree of permanence varied)Trade networks made slaves a profitable commodity

Gender roles and ratios a reflection of slavery’s purpose Slide4

Non-Slave Coerced Labor

Serfdom

Corvee

American

Mit’a

SystemSlide5

Common Features

Reciprocal in Nature

Based on cultural tradition, precedence and political order

Like slavery, outward sign of social inequalities & productive capacity,

butSlide6

BASELINE @ 1450

Slave / non-slave

Productive capacity – Labor , hard work

Valuable for productivity

Valuable as commodity

Social inequality

Motive: need/purpose

Locally developed &orchestratedSlide7

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS AFTER 1450

THAT PROVIDE HISTORICAL UNDERSTANDING OF THE CHANGES TO COERCIVE LABOR…

Big Ideas

….Global trade network

Transatlantic exchange – west coast of Africa

Plantation Complex Economy – mines/monoculture

More Specific…Portugal – around Africa Sugar Plantations (Cyprus, Atlantic Islands, Americas)Great Dying of AmerindiansRole of Interior AfricaSlide8

COERCED LABOR 1750

Still a sign of status, outward social inequality and economic production…

Race as dominating factor

Plantation Complex predominant form for enslavement

Profits from Trade as significant as monoculture product

Global Institutionalized NetworkSlide9

Philip Curtain

Using Statistics to develop historical understanding:

The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census

Slide10

Est. Slave Imports to the new WorldSlide11
Slide12
Slide13

Slavery: A Comparative Perspective

North America

natural reproduction

equal

sex ratio, a high birthrate, and a predominantly American-born population.only about 1/3rd of the population was enslaved

Direct control by landowners and managersGreater disparity in slave ownership (1000s– 1)Two-category system of race

Latin AmericaDeath rate 1/3rd higherlower

proportion of female slaves, a much lower birthrate, and a higher proportion of recent arrivals from Africa

80 to 90

%of

the

population

Absentee landowners utilized free black

managers

and mulattos

as

intermediaries

intricate system of racial classification

emerged

more tolerant of racial mixingSlide14
Slide15

Curtain’s African Slave trade

Impact on Africa and Role of Africans

Distribution of Slave Populations in the Americas

Role of Sugar Plantation ComplexSlide16

Philip Curtain,

Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex

The feudal class was a military class not a group of agricultural estate managers. Agricultural production above the family level was organized through the village, but no one managed village agriculture in detail. Villagers, whether serf or free, worked the soil according to a system embedded in tradition and sanctioned by custom that had the force of law.

The lord of the manor was around somewhere, and normally had certain rights to the labor of the villagers and to the product of the land. He also held rights to a set of customary payments. But these rights were always limited, and they did not include the right to organize agricultural production as he saw fit…..

The point here is that the lord of the manor did not own the land. He was not free to use the land as he saw fit. All he owned was a set of customary rights.Slide17

Discuss the change and continuity of plantation agriculture in

Latin

America between the

mid 1400s to 1750.

Baseline: No integration of Hemispheres

large-scale agriculture among the Aztecs and Incasmajority of people are

peasants mit'a system in Inca; tribute empireSlide18

Global Context: Think Big!

Rise

of the

West

ReconquistaProtestant Reformationspread of ChristianityEuropean competition for control of global trade (Portuguese trading empire

)Mercantilism / capitalism Treaty of Tordesillas

Columbian exchangeSlide19

Latin America…

Fall of empires to

Spanish

superior weapons/horses; dissatisfaction of groups

decimation of population; some flee to rural areas to maintain traditional farming methods

initial focus on mining, encomienda system (and Christianity)Batolome

de las Casas (Tears of the Indians); Black Legend concern

by monarch about power of

landholders-

New Laws

of the Indies

difficult

to enforce; revolt by some

encomenderos

plantation

monoculture; cash crops--sugar (rum and molasses) ; export economy; triangular trade

; African

Slaves

miscegenation-

-dominated by people of European descent/some elevation to mestizo/mulatto

class

alternative

systems-

repartimiento

/

mit’a system; peonage system (haciendas)Slide20

Plantation Economy

Large capital investment

Extensive labor force-Slave

labor

Encomienda

– Native American population too low

African Slave LaborIntensive labor at multiple levels of production– harvest, sugar mill, molasses

Monoculture export

Capitalist

enterprise – Profits to produce capital

Consider again Curtain’s Plantation segmentSlide21

End Point

large-scale

plantation agriculture (sugar

) social hierarchy based on race

exploitation of AmerindiansAfrican race-based Slavery

coercive labor still in placebeginning to question validity of the

system of slaverySlide22

Thesis…

Significant changes occurred in Latin

America between 1450 and 1750. The age

of discovery ushered in an era of European

domination that resulted in the destruction

of existing Amerindian civilizations and

dramatic transformations in the economic

landscape.

While agriculture continued to

play an important role for a majority of the population who often toiled for the benefit of others, monoculture plantations worked by exploited indigenous people along with imported slaves became the norm

.