Indentured Servitude To Slavery

1512 Words7 Pages

o African slavery developed in the Chesapeake colonies due to a demand of labor in regions with agricultural economies. As tobacco prices dropped and indentured servants became unfavorable due to a growing number of impoverished freedmen, slaves became the optimal choice and replaced indentured servitude due to the struggling economy. Slaves could endure hard labor and work for long hours, unlike the indentured servants who could not survive in rice paddies with malaria-ridden mosquitoes. Indentured servants were too expensive to maintain and import while slaves, racism made slavery possible. The gradual change from indentured servitude to slavery introduced ideas of racism and the social class gap between whites and blacks eventually leading …show more content…

James II was a Catholic and had two Anglican daughters which the rest of England was okay with. However, the wife of James II bore a son who reigned as a Catholic, Englishmen and women were full of shock. Political and religious asked William and Mary to oust James II and they did so, with small Dutch army, they marched to James II. The Glorious Revolution had shown the right of the people to change their form of government if the government did not protect their civil rights. It also helped create a limited monarchy which then was followed by the English Bill of …show more content…

More specifically, mercantilism stated that a nation’s exports should be higher than its imports. The British brought these policies together to form Navigation Acts for the colonies to follow such as exporting items like indigo, hemp and tobacco exclusively to Britain and where they are exported to. At first, the Navigation Acts made the colonists content because with the new regulations, colonists were able to import British goods such as tea and dishes, however, as time went on, British rule later tightened regulations using the colonies for its own economic advantage. Britain exploited the colonies by imposing a rule that colonial exports and imported goods would only be controlled by British merchants. Britain was able to profit off the colonial raw goods by setting fixed prices on crops sold by planters, forcing all planters to abide to fixed rates which they could have sold for more. Britain also set fixed prices for imported goods like tea and chinaware for merchants to buy in the colonies in which British could have easily marked up prices for profit, since none of the products were sold or produced in the colonies. Mercantilism and Navigation Acts helped establish several major transatlantic ports in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Charles Town and also started a tense relationship between the British and the colonists

Open Document