Paul:

Your argument about the absence of slavery before the mid-1630s and its
development or "evolution" after that requires us to believe two things
that are improbable:

1) that all Africans brought into the colony, even though they crossed the
Atlantic as part of a *slave* trade, had their status automatically
upgraded to "indentured servant" (i.e., servant with a contract specifying
a limited term of service) upon entering Virginia--why?

2) and that a momentous change took place between 1619 and the mid-1630s
to reverse this upgrading--namely that all African servants and future
African in-migrants were to be slaves, not servants any more--why? What
happened during this period of time to warrant or explain such a major
shift? Africans were a tiny percentage of the population in the 1630s as
well as the 1610s-20s; tobacco was being grown from the 1610s on. Why
would a group treated as servants for a couple of decades be turned into
slaves?

I would argue that the Africans were seen as different, from the beginning
(usually termed "Negro," often lacked surnames). Though some "Atlantic
creole" types negotiated better arrangements for themselves, those lacking
such skills were left in the "default" status of servants for life (or
servants until further notice...), which was more or less the equivalent of
slavery. I think you exagerrate the English distaste for slavery (slavery for
others, I mean). They were certainly familiar with the institution by 1619,
given what was going on in the Iberian colonies of America and along the west
African coast.



Douglas Deal
Professor of History
State University of New York at Oswego
Oswego, NY 13126
[log in to unmask]
(315)-312-3441




On Mon, 4 Sep 2006, Paul Finkelman wrote:

> Part of the reason is that slavery requires all sorts of institutional
> support -- probate courts to insure the intergenerational transmission
> of propertry; rules about the children of slaves and their status; rules
> on what happens when they runaway; etc.  Slavery can evolve (as it did
> in VA) without all of these things in place but it takes time to do that
> and in the 1620s there is no evidence of this; moreover, to the extent
> that slavery is racial in Va. there are no clear rules on race -- blacks
> in VA testify against whites, intermarry with whites, etc.  Moreover,
> the British, unlike their Roman law neighbors, have no heritage of
> slavery or traditions of enslaving people or any rules and laws to
> govern slavery.  We don't see any evidence of slaveholding until the
> mid-1630s and nothing significant until about 1640 and even that is
> pretty slim.
>
> Paul Finkelman
>
> Paul Finkelman
> President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law
>     and Public Policy
> Albany Law School
> 80 New Scotland Avenue
> Albany, New York   12208-3494
>
> 518-445-3386
> [log in to unmask]
>>>> [log in to unmask] 09/04/06 7:58 PM >>>
> Paul et al.:
>
> How do you (or we) *know* these first Africans in Virginia were
> indentured
> servants, not slaves? It does seem clear that some became free after a
> period of years, but none of these cases is well documented for those
> first years in the colony. Did any ship leave the African coast between
> 1500 and 1800 with a cargo of free, voluntary African migrants who had
> signed contracts to be servants in some American colony? The Africans
> taken by the "Treasurer" and "White Lion" off the slaver "San Juan
> Bautista" in 1619 had been enslaved in Angola to be delivered in Vera
> Cruz. Are we to imagine that the Dutch and English ships that captured
> these Africans before they reached Vera Cruz were in fact engaged in
> liberating them from slavery by unloading them in Virginia? The absence
> of
> a slave code early in the history of the colony does not mean a
> slave-like
> status could not have existed for Africans (e.g., servitude for terms of
> indeterminate length). My sense, after working through thousands of
> pages
> of Virginia county court records from the 1630s to 1700 and beyond is
> that
> much happened de facto that was not authorized de jure. The biggest
> problem about the early years from 1619 to, say, the 1650s is the
> paucity
> of conclusive evidence. Neither you nor I, nor Morgan, nor Breen and
> Innes
> have found enough evidence to state with certainty that the first "20
> and
> odd" Africans to arrive were all "indentured servants" or "slaves" or
> something else. I would speculate the "default" status to have been
> slavery but can offer only a mass of circumstantial evidence to support
> that speculation.
>
> The Post story is correct in emphasizing the relative newness of a) the
> connection with the "San Juan Bautista", and b) the details on the
> Angolan
> background of these first "slaves" in Virginia. The books by Morgan and
> Breen and Innes had neither of these.
>
> Douglas Deal
> Professor of History
> State University of New York at Oswego
> Oswego, NY 13126
> [log in to unmask]
> (315)-312-3441
>
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