The Legacy Events Index

Chattel Slavery

The coastal exploration of Africa and the invasion of North and South America by Europeans in the 15th century, and the colonization of the Americas during the next three centuries, provided the impetus for the modern slave trade. European nations opted to meet growing labor needs by importing slaves. The Portuguese began the practice in 1444; by 1460, they were annually importing 700 to 800 slaves to Portugal from trading posts and forts established on the African coast. These were African people captured by other Africans and transported to the western coast of Africa. Spain soon followed. Throughout the 15th century, Arab traders in northern Africa shipped African people taken from central Africa to markets in Arabia, Iran, and India. With the rise of the slave trade to the Americas, wars over the control of African commerce became more intense. During the four centuries of the slave trade, millions of Africans fell victim to this traffic in human lives. Most were captured by other Africans and exchanged for various consumer goods, and participation in the capture and trade of slaves played a role in the rise of several African kingdoms. In North America, the first African slaves landed at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. The number of slaves imported was small at first, and it did not seem necessary to define their legal status. Statutory recognition of slavery, however, occurred in Massachusetts in 1641, in Connecticut in 1650, and in Virginia in 1661; these statutes mainly concerned fugitive slaves. England entered the slave trade in the latter half of the 16th century, and France, Holland, Denmark, and the American colonies themselves subsequently entered the trade as competitors.

With the development of the plantation system in the southern colonies in the latter half of the 17th century, the number of Africans imported as agricultural slave laborers increased greatly, and several northern coastal cities became centers of the slave traffic. Generally, in the northern colonies, slaves were used as domestics and in trade; in the Middle Atlantic colonies they were used more in agriculture; and in the southern colonies, where plantation agriculture was the primary occupation, almost all slaves were used to work the plantations. Brutal treatment such as mutilation, branding, chaining, and murder were regulated or prohibited by law, but instances of cruelty were common before the 19th century. Denmark was the first European country to abolish the slave trade, in 1792. Britain followed in 1807, and the United States followed in 1808. At the Congress of Vienna in 1814, Britain exerted its influence to induce other foreign powers to adopt a similar policy, and eventually nearly all the states of Europe passed laws or entered into treaties prohibiting the traffic. The French emancipated their slaves in 1848. The Dutch slaves had freedom conferred on them in 1863. Most of the new republics of South America provided for the emancipation of slaves at the time of their establishment. In Brazil slavery was not abolished until 1888. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, abolishing slavery throughout the United States, was ratified in 1865. In 1951 a United Nations committee on slavery reported that the practice of slavery was declining rapidly, with only a vestige of slavery remaining in a few areas of the world.

Click here for more information from Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2001.

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