Speaking of slavery means evoking distant periods of history where human beings served as simple merchandise and property of other richer and more powerful people, who through a simple transaction bought, as if it were a piece of furniture, the life of the slave. Slavery can remember ancient Greece, Rome, the Ottomans and many other peoples who used the subjugation of the population to create an effective socioeconomic system with an expiration date. Because the slave systems, with their own contradictions and limits, end up falling, more strongly when great empires settle on them.
However, something that seems old and obsolete to us, that profoundly attacks human morals and ethics, enjoyed until recently an important validity in one of the countries that now postulates itself as the watchdog of the new world order: the United States of America. In a period when Europe was breaking away from that old institution due to the progressive consolidation of the capitalist system and the industrial revolution, in a part of North America the trade of black people was reaffirmed, with no more rights than those that an object, a simple property of the slave owner who, protected by the Constitution of 1787, defended his right to have slaves. The advantages offered by the use of cheap labor motivated the southern United States to consolidate this system until, after the Civil War of 1861-1865, it fell apart due to the defeat of the Confederacy against the Union.
About the United States we have a battery of articles, you can read about its origins here, here and here. Also about whether independence was a real revolution.
ORIGINS OF SLAVERY
The American slave system has its origins in the british colonization of the territories north of the Rio Grande. Spain and Portugal, the main powers of the 16th century, had settled mainly to the south of the east, where gold was thought to be more abundant. Great Britain, wishing to colonize spaces far from the two main colonial empires, decided to settle on the coasts of North America, where the Spanish and Portuguese presence was minimal. The creation of the so-called thirteen colonies corresponded to a strategic interest of mutual trade with the metropolis: these territories would export cheap raw materials to the English industry, which would manufacture products and return them ready to sell to their colonies and other territories, thus obtaining great profits. economic.
The initial thirteen colonies they were Virginia, Maryland, New England, Plymouth, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Connecticut, and Carolina. Of these, Virginia was one of the most notable thanks to the introduction of tobacco cultivation, as the colonizers soon realized the impossibility of surviving by looking for gold in a region where it was not abundant. And just like in Virginia, in many other colonized territories agriculture had to be developed and mineral extraction put aside, given the little benefit that this supposed. Maldwyn A. Jones highlights the fact that the colonies were able to survive thanks to the aid of the English companies, first, and the British crown, later. These aids materialized in supplies and reinforcements, but also with the offer of land to cultivate, as was done since 1618, when a land concession system was created to grant 20 hectares of land “to each person who imported a settler or servant to the colony» (Jones, 1996: 13).
Therefore, the participation of the English crown was essential for the development of the colonies and their subsequent consolidation. Gradually they were reaching great quotas of power in their capacity as exporters of raw materials, until the War of Independence (1775-1783) led to the creation of the United States of America from the thirteen colonies. It is from this moment that the new country made an economic transition that was not based exclusively on the collection of raw materials, but also on the establishment of a powerful industry for the transformation of the resources obtained. The north, with a cold climate and poorer quality land, began a continuous industrialization that would extend throughout the 19th century; the south, due to a mild climate, with temperatures similar to the Mediterranean, focused on agriculture and the primary sector. It is observed here the preamble of the slave systemborn already in the 17th century but with little notable growth until the end of the 18th century.
Slavery had a very pronounced development in the United States due to the economic needs of the new member states. The war against the British, the bad harvests, the economic protectionism of the English metropolis and the attack of the native tribes greatly reduced the workforce available to work the fields and proto-industry. Because we must remember that tribes settled in the occupied territories that, far from assimilating with the colonizers, confronted them in a fight to defend what they considered their home. These shortages forced the colonies to import slaves from Africaa continent from which Europeans had been extracting slaves for centuries and which would become the key to obtaining cheap and efficient labor for the Southern fields.
From the 17th century slaves began to be exported in large quantities. The data reflects a rapid increase in this phenomenon: in 1625 Virginia, one of the main slave states, had 23 slaves. Barely a hundred years later that figure had risen to 26,559 black slaves (History). As can be seen in table 1, the economic growth of the United States was paralleled by an intensification of the importation of slaves. Crops such as tobacco, corn and wheat, carried out extensively, required an abundant number of people to work the fields. Due to this, the slave trade would enjoy health during the 17th and 18th centuries. The historian Howard Zinn described the mobilization of slaves from Africa to the United States as “death marches”: the African population was transported from all parts of the continent to the coast, where after a hard journey in which up to two of them could die every five people were shipped and piled in the so-called slave ships, where they only had cubicles 80 centimeters wide by 120 centimeters long to lie down. The slaves were chained in the cellars and the sanitary conditions were painful, since they had no place to expel their excrement other than the ground itself. Suicides were common and deaths numerous, since the warehouses used to flood and drown the tied slaves (1999: 32).
Despite that, the profits were astronomical. Javier Maestro points out that the transoceanic slave route «brought to American lands around fifteen million blacks in such inhuman conditions that it is estimated that 20% already died in a journey of about two months due to illness, hunger, suicide or severe punishments for rebellion» (2009: 55). The media did not care if the result was positive. The domination of African empires provided an almost unlimited source of labor. Quite unlike the native tribes of North America, who offered a strong resistance due to the high organization of their leaders and an intense cultural identity, the black slaves were brought from different parts of the continent, with different languages that made communication between them impossible. If to this is added his transfer to a new unknown country, an easy subjugation to the white man is obtained. And it is that since the first imports of slaves in 1637 began to develop a whole system of subjugation of the black population. A legislative corpus, together with the different sociocultural practices, was reducing the capacity of organization of the slaves until reducing them to simple objects owned by the settlers.
THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION AND CONSOLIDATION OF SLAVERY
The first laws on slavery date back to the end of the 17th century. The Virginia Slave Laws of the 1660s mark the gestation of a legal system that will develop over the next several years. In one of the texts of these laws, dated 1662, it is established that the children born will have the consideration that the mother has and that, in addition, a fine must be paid if a Christian fornicates with a black (Sam Houston State University, 2009 ). What is being done is to bind future generations of slaves, since ethnic mixing is prevented and, in addition, children are destined to be slaves for the rest of their days. Contrary to what other colonizers did, such as the Spanish, who joined with the conquered peoples, the settlers of the thirteen colonies, and later Americans, will stand out for mixing only among themselves.
The Fundamental Constitutions of John Locke and Anthony Ashley Cooper of March 1, 1669 provide a stronger legal basis with which to justify slavery. Already in the introduction (Yale Law School, 2008) the following objectives are defined: ensure the good development of the government, defend the interests of the king, avoid the creation of a numerous democracy and ensure and perpetuate what is established among the elites to enable a system hereditary power. In reality, the necessary legislation was being established to order the colonial social structure, consolidate a hereditary aristocracy and introduce the concept of slavery.
Later, in section one hundred and seven, the authors refer to the concept of natural law as legitimization of domination over the black population. At the end of the paragraph it is specified “but no slave will be exempt from that civil dominion that his owner has over him, and he will be in all things in the same state and condition as before.” That is to say, the slave is reduced to a simple merchandise, property of the owner. This idea is consolidated three sections later when it is stated that “any free man in Carolina can have absolute power and authority over his black slaves, whatever opinions and religions he may have.” It is observed, therefore, that the Fundamental Constitutions they represent the legalization of slavery and the beginning of a new era in the still British colonies.
The legalization of slavery It was a notable increase in the slave trade. In just twenty years – between 1680 and 1700 – the figure had increased from 3,000 slaves to 16,390, which little by little began to represent a problem for the white masters, mainly because the fear of a social revolution always haunted their heads. The colonial wars that raged in North America during the 17th and 18th centuries only intensified that fear. For this reason, a complex system of subjugation of the black population which consisted of continuous torture…