The Rise of Plantation Economies
Plantation Slavery
Slavery life on the Plantation
Tobacco cultivation
The increase of tobacco growers in Virginia and surrounding areas led to an increase in labor needs, which led to the first transport of slaves from Africa to the plantations of America.
plantation
This image is a photographic illustration of the relationship between the master and their slaves on a plantation. The slave children are forced to work while the Masters children get to run and play around the slave children. The Masters oversees is scanning the surroundings in the direction of the boy slave. The image provides the viewer a glance at the equilibrium of power on a plantation, and it reveals how slave children were forced to work just as hard and as long as their seniors.
family on the plantation
children on plantation
Scene on a Cotton Plantation
In this image it mainly depicts the slave behind the overseers. The master seems to be sporting a look that is unlike many of the other images on that certain web page. There is no smile or overcompensating look on his face, rather he is looking at the slaves with a look of sadness, as if he feels sorry for the poor slaves. Even though the other overseer is sitting down, the whip remains in the crook of his arm, to enforce the idea the he is in charge even though he could be kind at heart. Even though hatred was a huge part of the slave age, there were those special people who looked out for their brother from another island.
Cotton
Cotton, in the Coast and Fields of South Carolina
This Image is what would be anticipated the relationships on a slave plantation. This image has the slaves excavating in the fields while being barefoot. The women seem to lay the seed and the men unearth the field. The slaves work together in the field, the configuration displayed can help express how slavery on the plantations took place. Not caring about the inhuman conditions which often caused mortality of the slaves.
Mules
The increase in the mule population from Sao Paulo provided neighboring farmers the ability to expand farther into new areas, which made the need for new workers, in others words more slaves.
Mules were important to the growing internal transportation system, as it raised in the interior of Sao Paulo, which began to amplify in population through the eighteenth century, providing surrounding farmers with markets requiring substantial labor inputs. Causing the increase in slavery to surrounding farmers.
Sugar
Increased production of sugar meant a need for large free labor source. Once the French Caribbean Colonies were controlled by large sugar plantations most of the population were African slaves. Unlike the Spanish Caribbean there were no native population to enslave. Acquiring legal freedom was almost impossible. There weren’t any laws allowing ones eventual freedom, unlike the indentured white slave of the past. The image is titled, Working in Sugar Cane Fields, 19th cent, there are slaves and Master’s on the plantation watching over the labor in process. Sugar cane plantations were the engine of the slave trade that brought millions of African slaves to the Americas beginning in the 16th century. The history of the nations in the Caribbean, the Southern United States, and most of South Africa were fashioned by sugar plantations and the revenue of cash crop were extremely meaningful
Sugar
The Portuguese were extremely skilled at building and sailing ships. Their keen navigational skills led them further into the Atlantic which began the discovery in conquering of small islands such as Maderia and San Tome. These small Islands became the first African slave ran sugar plantations. The Portuguese had little interest in the African interior, they did however establish many trading factors along the coast of the Indian Ocean. These new post were opened up mainly for trading slaves, gold, ivory and other product.
Conclusions
Bibliography
Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1979. Print.
Bergad, Laird W. The Comparative Histories of Slavery In Brazil, Cuba, and United States. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. Print.
Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Web. Jan.-Feb. 2015/2016.
Fleischner, Jennifer. Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly: The Remarkable Story of the Friendship between a First Lady and a Former Slave. New York: Broadway, 2003. Print.
Klein, Herbert S., and Ben Vinson. African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean. New York: Oxford UP, 2007. Print.
Harper's New Monthly Magazine (1853-54), vol. 8, p. 456. (Copy in Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library)