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The origins of slavery in the colonial United States are complex and there are several theories that have been proposed to explain the trade. It was largely tied to European colonies' need for labor, especially plantation agricultural labor in their Caribbean sugar colonies operated by Great Britain, France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic. Most slaves who were brought to the Thirteen British colonies which later became the Eastern seaboard of the United States were imported from the Caribbean, not directly from Africa. They arrived in the Caribbean predominantly as a result of the Atlantic slave trade. Although slavery of indigenous peoples also occurred in the North American colonies, by comparison of scale it was less important. Slave status for Africans usually became hereditary.〔(Oxford Journals )〕〔(Los Angeles Times )〕 ==Background== Although they knew about Spanish and Portuguese slave trading, the British did not conceive of using slave labor in the Americas until the 17th century.〔Wood, ''Origins of American Slavery'' (1997), p. 21. "Yet those in high places who advocated the overseas expansion of England did not propose that West Africans could, should, or would be enslaved by the English in the Americas. Indeed, West Africans scarcely figured at all in the sixteenth-century English agenda for the New World."〕 British travelers were fascinated by the dark-skinned people they found in West Africa, and sought to create mythologies that situated these new human beings in their view of the cosmos.〔Wood, ''Origins of American Slavery'' (1997), p. 23. "More than anything else it was the blackness of West Africans that at once fascinated and repelled English commentators. The negative connotations that the English had long attached to the color black were to deeply prejudice their assessment of West Africans."〕 The first Africans to arrive in England came voluntarily with John Lok (an ancestor of the famous philosopher John Locke) in 1555. Lok intended to teach them English in order to facilitate trading of material goods.〔Wood, ''Origins of American Slavery'' (1997), p. 26. "It seems that these men were the first West Africans to set foot in England, and their arrival marked the beginning of a black British population. The men in question had come to England willingly. Lok's sole motive was to facilitate English trading links with West Africa. He intended that these five men should be taught English, and something about English commercial practices, and then returned home to act as intermediaries between the English and their prospective West African trading partners."〕 This model gave way to a slave trade initiated by John Hawkins, who captured 300 Africans and sold them to the Spanish.〔Wood, ''Origins of American Slavery'' (1997), p. 27.〕 Blacks in England were subordinate but did not have the legal status of chattel slaves.〔Wood, ''Origins of American Slavery'' (1997), p. 28.〕 In 1607, England established Jamestown as its first permanent colony on the North American continent.〔(New York Times )〕 Tobacco became the chief crop of the colony, due to the efforts of John Rolfe in 1611. Once it became clear that tobacco was going to drive the Jamestown colony, more labor was needed. The British aristocracy needed to find a labor force to work on its plantations in the Americas. The major possibilities were indentured servants from Britain, native Americans, and West Africans.〔Wood, ''Origins of American Slavery'' (1997), p. 18.〕 During this time in the Caribbean, Barbados became an English Colony in 1624 and Jamaica in 1655. These and other Caribbean colonies became the center of wealth and the focus of the slave trade for the growing English empire. Towards indigenous Americans, the English entertained two lines of thought simultaneously. Because these people were lighter skinned, they were seen as more European and therefore as candidates for civilization. At the same time, because they were occupying the land desired by the colonial powers, they were from the beginning, targets of a potential military campaign.〔Wood, ''Origins of American Slavery'' (1997), pp. 34–39.〕 At first, indentured servants were used as the needed labor.〔(Frontier Resources )〕 These servants provided up to seven years of service in exchange for having their trip to Jamestown paid for by someone in Jamestown. Once the seven years was over, the indentured servant was free to live in Jamestown as a regular citizen. However, colonists began to see indentured servants as too costly, and in 1619, Dutch traders brought the first African slaves to Jamestown, who nonetheless were in North America at first generally treated as indentured servants.〔(Africanaonline )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Slavery in the colonial United States」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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