Transcript Coerced Labor - HISTORY APPRECIATION

COERCED LABOR
1450 -1750
HISTORICAL EXAMPLES OF SLAVERY
Ancient Greco-Roman
World
Southeast Asia
Muslim World
Sub-Saharan Africa
Black Sea Trade
Network
COMMON FEATURES
• Status for slave holder
• Outward sign of social inequality
• Most often productive capacity – agricultural
servitude, some cases domestic servitude
• As a result of debt or prisoners of war – overtime
tradition (degree of permanence varied)
• Trade networks made slaves a profitable
commodity
• Gender roles and ratios a reflection of slavery’s
purpose
NON-SLAVE COERCED LABOR
Serfdom
American Mit’a
System
Corvee
COMMON FEATURES
Like slavery, outward
sign of social
inequalities &
productive capacity,
but
• Reciprocal in
Nature
• Based on
cultural
tradition,
precedence
and political
order
BASELINE @ 1450
Slave / non-slave
Productive capacity – Labor , hard work
Valuable for productivity
Valuable as commodity
Social inequality
Motive: need/purpose
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS AFTER 1450
THAT PROVIDE
HISTORICAL
UNDERSTANDING OF
THE CHANGES TO
COERCIVE LABOR…
Big Ideas….Global trade network
Transatlantic exchange – west
coast of Africa
Plantation Complex Economy –
mines/monoculture
More Specific…Portugal – around
Africa
Sugar Plantations (Cyprus, Atlantic
Islands, Americas)
Great Dying of Amerindians
Role of Interior Africa
COERCED LABOR 1750
Still a sign of status,
outward social
inequality and
economic
production…
• Race as dominating factor
• Plantation Complex
predominant form for
enslavement
• Profits from Trade as
significant as monoculture
product
Global Institutionalized
Network
PHILIP CURTAIN
USING STATISTICS TO DEVELOP HISTORICAL
UNDERSTANDING: THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE: A CENSUS
EST. SLAVE IMPORTS TO THE NEW WORLD
SLAVERY: A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
North America
Latin America
• natural reproduction
• equal sex ratio, a high birthrate,
and a predominantly
American-born population.
• only about 1/3rd of the
population was enslaved
• Direct control by landowners
and managers
• Greater disparity in slave
ownership (1000s– 1)
• Two-category system of race
• Death rate 1/3rd higher
• lower proportion of female
slaves, a much lower birthrate,
and a higher proportion of
recent arrivals from Africa
• 80 to 90 %of the population
• Absentee landowners utilized
free black managers and
mulattos as intermediaries
• intricate system of racial
classification emerged
• more tolerant of racial mixing
CURTAIN’S AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE
• Impact on Africa and Role of Africans
• Distribution of Slave Populations in the
Americas
• Role of Sugar Plantation Complex
PHILIP CURTAIN, RISE AND FALL OF
THE PLANTATION COMPLEX
The feudal class was a military class not a group of agricultural estate
managers. Agricultural production above the family level was organized
through the village, but no one managed village agriculture in detail.
Villagers, whether serf or free, worked the soil according to a system
embedded in tradition and sanctioned by custom that had the force of
law.
The lord of the manor was around somewhere, and normally had certain
rights to the labor of the villagers and to the product of the land. He also
held rights to a set of customary payments. But these rights were always
limited, and they did not include the right to organize agricultural
production as he saw fit…..
The point here is that the lord of the manor did not own the land. He was
not free to use the land as he saw fit. All he owned was a set of
customary rights.
Discuss the change and continuity of plantation
agriculture in Latin America between the
mid 1400s to 1750.
Baseline:
 No integration of Hemispheres
 large-scale agriculture among the
Aztecs and Incas
 majority of people are peasants
• mit'a system in Inca; tribute empire
GLOBAL CONTEXT: THINK BIG!
Rise of the West
Reconquista
Protestant Reformation
spread of Christianity
European competition for control of global
trade (Portuguese trading empire)
Mercantilism / capitalism
Treaty of Tordesillas
Columbian exchange
LATIN AMERICA…
Fall of empires to Spanish
superior weapons/horses; dissatisfaction of groups
decimation of population; some flee to rural areas to maintain
traditional farming methods
initial focus on mining, encomienda system (and Christianity)
Batolome de las Casas (Tears of the Indians); Black Legend
concern by monarch about power of landholders- New Laws of the
Indies difficult to enforce; revolt by some encomenderos
plantation monoculture; cash crops--sugar (rum and molasses) ; export
economy; triangular trade; African Slaves
miscegenation--dominated by people of European descent/some
elevation to mestizo/mulatto class
alternative systems- repartimiento/mit’a system; peonage system
(haciendas)
PLANTATION ECONOMY
 Large capital investment
 Extensive labor force-Slave labor
 Encomienda – Native American population
too low
 African Slave Labor
 Intensive labor at multiple levels of
production– harvest, sugar mill, molasses
 Monoculture export
 Capitalist enterprise – Profits to produce
capital
Consider again Curtain’s
Plantation segment
END POINT
 large-scale plantation agriculture
(sugar)
 social hierarchy based on race
 exploitation of Amerindians
 African race-based Slavery
 coercive labor still in place
 beginning to question validity of the
system of slavery
THESIS…
Significant changes occurred in Latin
America between 1450 and 1750. The age
of discovery ushered in an era of European
domination that resulted in the destruction
of existing Amerindian civilizations and
dramatic transformations in the economic
landscape. While agriculture continued to
play an important role for a majority of the population
who often toiled for the benefit of others, monoculture
plantations worked by exploited indigenous people
along with imported slaves became the norm .