US Slavery
When slavery was first practiced in the Americas during the early colonial period, it was purely for economic use. The use of slaves in sugar, tabbaco, and cotton plantations brought a great deal of profit and thus slavery was implemented into the whole system where there was harsh agriculture. These regions were located within the equator, where the climate was warm and apt for agriculture. However, as time past industrialization started influenzing the non-agricultural regions of Americas. Hence, two distinct types of economies emerged as well as the consequent friction between the two. Those who remained dependent on agriculture needed slavery as an economic factor; but those who were industrialized did not, thus they had no reason not to oppose slavery as a moral issue. (In the United States there was contrast between North being industrialized and South being based on agriculture). Those who politically opposed slave-owners or slavery-adherents found it practical to use slavery as an excuse to reproach (besmirch) them, not because they felt anything incorrect about slavery itself. (Political leaders favored slaveowners inorder to obtain support such as in Peru, Venezuela, etc). Nonetheless, religion cannot be accounted
The rising tide of nationalism caused some Latin Americans to question dreary racial concepts. To accept the European doctrines, they finally realized, would condemn Latin America perpetually to a secondary position.(10) The nationalists concluded that the doctrines were simply another means devised by the Europeans to humiliate and subjugate Latin America. In due course, the Latin Americans rejected the foriegn racist doctrines, and in doing so they took a major step toward freeing themselves from Europeans cultural domination. At that time attitudes toward the Latin Americans of African descent also underwent change.(11) As the first step, it was necessary to end slavery. The Spanish-speaking republics abolished it between 1821 and 1854. On many plantations, especially those in the Old South of Virginia and Maryland, this argument had a certain plausibility. Southern whites were quick to contrast the "happy" lot of their "servants" with that of the overworked northern wage slaves, including sweated women and stunted children.(27) Thus, ironically, both the North and the South supported their cause on slavery with religion. This also happened elsewhere in the Americas such as Venezuela and Puerto Rico, where slavery was similarly crucial to the economy. The abolition of slavery in the Americas occured upon fits and starts. Slavery was an institution entrenched both in economic life and in the social fabric of essentially hierarchical societies. The commodities produced by slave labor, particularly sugar, cotton, and coffee, were crucial to the exopanding network of transatlantic trade.(1) In Brazil and Cuba slaveholding was also widespread in the cities and in some food-producing regions. Thus while the ideological transformations accompanying the growth of capitalism in Great Britain set the stage for a general critique of chattel slavery and championing of "free labor", it took more than a changing intellectual climate to dislodge the institution.(2) Abolitionism took on its greatest force when it coincided with economic change and domestic social upheaval, and particularly when it became an element in the defining of new nations or new colonial relationships. (3) The inhumanity of the "peculiar institution" gradually caused antislavery societies to sprout forth in the United States. The first stirrings of the abolistionist sentiment occured at the time of the Revolution, especially among Quakers.(19) Because of the wide-spread loathing of blacks, some of the earliest abolistionist efforts focused on transporting the blacks bodily back to Africa. The American Colonization Society was founded for this purpose in 1817, and in 1822 the Republic of Liberia was established for former slaves.(20) In the 1830's the abolitionist movement took on new energy and momentum, mounting to
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1892
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)
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