slavery essay titles

slavery essay titles

The Impact of Slavery on Society

1. Introduction

Most importantly, the paper aims to provide an insight into how the processes set in train by colonial slavery have shaped social classes over time. In other words, it is a substantial contribution to the debate over the divergent trends in income disparities between the third world and the developed world and within the third world itself. The focus on Latin America and the Caribbean is in part because the entire region between Mexico and Tierra del Fuego confronted a common institutional problem, and was deeply influenced by the Spanish and Portuguese who implemented common processes and strategies but in different ways. In fact, these differences in implementation may well be a principal cause of the divergent trends in income inequality between the two regions. But the Caribbean also serves as a useful point of comparison with the USA, because the societies of the USA and the Anglophone Caribbean have a deep linkage, the Caribbean being the birthplace of African slavery in the English colonies, and the principal source of outside wealth for many of the founding fathers, several of whom were slaveholders. This then led to the immigration of former Caribbean slaves and their descendants into the USA in the twentieth century.

2. Historical Background

Causes of the Civil War Slavery is often cited as the cause of the Civil War. As a political matter, it did not seem particularly important even at the time of the war. The North fought the Civil War for other reasons; the South began the war for independence and only later injected the issue of slavery as the war’s purpose after it became apparent that the North would fight the war to the end in order to prevent the South from seceding. The changing character of the war and the aims of the war on the part of the North also made it apparent that the issue of slavery did become a war aim, even if it was not THE war aim from the beginning. Furthermore, significant political and economic changes in the North in the early 1800s led to opposition to slavery on moral grounds, as well as for economic reasons. This decades-long transition in the North’s view towards slavery as ill-suited to a modernizing society was not matched in the South, where the ancient institution was an integral part of society. Differences between the North and South in economy, society, and political structure had been the causes of tension leading up to the war, and the issue of slavery was bound to be mixed into these conflicts. In that sense, it can be said that the issue of slavery was a cause of the Civil War.

Background: Slavery in the United States For centuries, the American colonies and the United States of America had varying degrees of success in providing an equal society for persons of African descent. Although various movements to end slavery had a measure of success, the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s was the climax of the struggle to provide racial equality for African-Americans. An end to discrimination and the social elevation of the status of African-Americans would be a clear recognition of blacks’ equal status as American citizens.

3. Effects of Slavery on Economy

Finally, slavery had impeded economic development in the South in a more abstract way by harming the culture of entrepreneurship. This was because the upper class planters who had amassed a significant amount of capital could crowd the market with slave labour, increasing profitability. Because of this situation, the entry barrier to ownership of land and start-up of a small farm was very high. This is in contrast to the North, where one could develop skill in a trade and sell goods as a self-employed craftsman. In this situation, one could quickly make enough money to buy land and become an egalitarian farmer. The history of slavery and caste system in the South may have discouraged the further large-scale immigration of Europeans and Asians to the region, who were responsible for driving much of the abundance of land ownership and entrepreneurship in the rest of the nation. This lack of diversity is reflected in Southern culture where people of English or Scots-Irish descent are accorded “native” status while more recent immigrants or the descendants of immigrants from other regions are not. This has been an issue in the modern United States, where many government aid and relief programs have been based on the assumption that all whites are native to the US, becoming a source of some economic frustration for Southern whites and blacks. While this is a complex aspect of the overall issue, what is clear is that in regard to the rest of the nation or the world, the South has not been a major source of innovation in industry and small business.

Self-sufficient farmers were no great concern to the business interests that controlled Southern economy. As a result, many Southerners moved from agricultural work to owning and managing farms, plantations or large plots of land. This change in culture led to different practices of farming during which time the rest of the nation was undergoing modernization. These plantation owners searched for crop which would bring them the most money for the least amount of work and would be successful in an international market. This led to the “cash crop” culture which defined Southern farming. Cotton was the most popular cash crop, but other crops such as tobacco, sugar and rice were grown. This was because of advances in manufacturing textiles and other goods, the demand for raw cotton provided the most profitable market during the 1800s. Large scale cultivation of sugar and cotton was particularly taxing on the land, and soon exhausted the soil and did not provide economic stability to the farmers growing them. This reliance on a few cash crops and the use of slave labour made the South a region of very low economic diversity. When other regions began to industrialize, the South had much less capital available to them for investment in industry. By 1860, shortly before the Civil War, the number of Northern industrial workers had surpassed the number of Southern agricultural workers, and the South’s investment in industry was still less than 10% of the nation’s total. This lack of industrial development was a primary issue in the South’s loss of the Civil War, as the North was easily able to outproduce them in terms of war materials.

Agriculture was the principal occupation of Southern states before the Civil War. There were approximately 5.5 million slaves in the South, and black slaves made up 32% of the Southern population. In comparison, only 1.25 million white families lived in the South. Despite the number of whites in the region, due to enslavement of blacks, the majority of the work was done by blacks. Slavery was an important factor in the idea of the yeoman farmer – one who worked his own land – being less common in the South than in the North.

4. Social and Cultural Consequences

By the time the triangular trade was abolished, the entire political, economic, and social structure of Western Africa had been transformed. In many regions, wars were fought to fulfill the Europeans’ insatiable demand for captives. Well before the half-century mark, virtually all of West Africa was in the grip of “permanent crisis.” Rebellions and wars, some involving whole societies, some only a few disaffected segments of a population, were the planet’s first reactions against white domination. Never before had so many people, in such far-flung parts of the globe, entertained the same rebellious thoughts and plotted the same insurrections at the same time. The history of these efforts is one of the most heroic chapters in the annals of Africa and the world. It is estimated that by 1850, the number of slaves who had died in Africa before even leaving the continent for the New World far exceeded the numbers who would make it to North America during the two centuries of its notorious slave trade. “There can be no more sobering instance of the human condition than to know that the great despair and bitterness of African, Caribbean, or West Indian life has impelled countless students to say ‘YES’ to the opportunity which will temporarily exile them in a society which is completely and irrevocably alien.” For the victims, there was at every opportunity the death option. This African voice was a screech in the ears of their new masters, for from the plantation fields of the New World to Haiti, they constantly found themselves being hunted down by the desperate who would rather die than live a life of bondage. Often they fled, and many died with the full knowledge that the unknown world beyond the next ridge would be preferable to the hell of slavery and the chance that they might find a way to erase the stigma of their servile condition. Step by step, the slaves cut a new path in history, for their flight was geographical. The runaways were the first men. They changed their sleep patterns, defense mechanisms, culture, language, and religion. Abandoned by the societies from which they came, and onto whose shores they were suddenly thrust, they exuded the first fumes of their pregnant rebellions. Their lives in the wilderness, and against the marshals and militias who sought to return them to servitude, were a prolongation of this escape from a European system of enslavement, a search for its undoing.

5. Conclusion

The transatlantic slave trade radically impaired Africa’s potential to develop economically and maintain its social and political stability. The ‘triangular’ transatlantic slave trade was an economic system of trade adopted by European merchants. During the transatlantic slave trade, Europe created a trade system where the main commodity that was being traded was African slaves. The trade was termed ‘triangular’ because its route of movement formed the shape of a triangle. Its path began to travel across the Atlantic from Europe to Africa with a cargo full of manufactured goods. These manufactured goods were then traded for African slaves. The African slaves were then transported across the Atlantic to work as free labor on plantations that produced sugar, tobacco, cotton, indigo, rice, and coffee. The colonies in the new world would provide a large source of trade for the Americas that included raw materials and produce. This trade would then provide resources for America to repay Europe for the goods that were brought from Europe to the Americas. It was evident that the ‘triangular’ transatlantic slave trade was a basis for the colonies and the rich nations in today’s society. Past events have shown that indeed the transatlantic slave trade was a considerable step in the effort to attain a colonial system also the push for many modern-day programs. The effects of the ‘triangular’ trade system produced large empires and also cocoa and coffee, which are still leading exports of some nations in the modern world. This mentality is continued although it has been modified throughout recent history. Europe still trades its produce for foreign labor at a cheaper price than that of their homeland. The transatlantic slave trade of the 16th and 17th centuries was a failure in the ‘disguise of an act for better England’s future.’ It was indeed an economic failure. During the trade’s earlier years, Great Britain engaged in the system participation in the trade was an uncertain investment. A group of merchants petitioned and successfully provided a subsidy to be paid out of customs revenues for the transportation of English goods to Africa for slaves. Then adding another bounty as encouragement to take still more goods to the island for sale. There still remained a multitude of expenses to cover the cost of the terminus slave purchase. These two factors caused damage to England’s economy and fell short of any substantial proposed increase in the export of English goods taxes or the price of goods would have caused the colony to import fewer English goods and more from their European competitors. The transportation of a slave required no expense to the English government thus making the colonies in the new world the receiver of the capital investment and hardships that were undergone by the desolate African. Peculiarly, England was the only nation to make reparation for its participation in the slave trade. At the height of debt incurred, England was the only country to bring up the subject of abolition and provide compensation, which controlled because the slave trade nearly caused internal strife between the government and the large group of English abolitionists at that time. The failure of the economic system based on trading a man for his labor against his will was proved when most slave merchants upon the success of many plantations and lands developed in the Americas attempted to bring an end supply more slaves for extensive growth of industries that were having people work for low wages. The failure of the economic system was proved that the price of a man’s work was worth more than the expenses of cheap labor. This would lead to the near future, which is the more humane contractual agreement that a race of any colors or nationality would not have to chain and lose freedom given by God, to work for low wages and undesirable working conditions.