Transcript coercive labor systems


Read the passage and take notes on the
following slide
“Cotton culture was almost the an afterthought in the development of the
South’s agricultural economy. The old colonial staples had been
tobacco, rice, and indigo; and at the end of the Revolution only a few
planters raised the long-staple sea-island cotton, which was limited
largely to the Carolina coast. So long as this situation existed, thoughtful
Southerners, Washington and Jefferson among them, regarded slavery as
an evil which could and would be swept away eventually. As a French
visitor wrote, “they are constantly talking about abolishing slavery, and of
contriving some other means of cultivating their estates.”
Then, in 1793, a Connecticut Yankee named Eli Whitney altered irrevocably
the South’s economy and its attitude toward slavery. His invention of a
gin that separated the lint from the seeds of the upland, short-staple
cotton gave immediate commercial value to that variety, and overnight
cotton was being sown and harvested on an unprecedented scale. As
the world’s textile mills gobbled up everything they could produce,
planters looked westward for new land, to the black prairies of Alabama
and the loess soil of Mississippi. At the same time the value of black slaves
to work the crop skyrocketed.
As long as virgin acreage was available there was no need, men thought,
to practice careful tillage, and soon the eastern fields were worn out and
eroded. By 1834 the Western states led in the production of cotton; by
1850 this area was the world’s greatest cotton-growing region. Cotton
was king—or so it seemed.”
From: Bruce Catton: Picture History of the Civil War, 1960., p. 29
From the passage on the previous slide,
write 5 lines of notes, with no line going
over 10 words.
-

Slave:
› a person who is the property of and wholly
subject to another; a bond servant

Origin:
› English word slave derives from Old French and
Medieval Latin from the medieval word for the
Slavic people of Central and Eastern Europe
› Earliest written records = the Code of
Hammurabi (c.1700 b.c.e.)
 Indentured Servant:
› placed under contract to work for
another over a period of time
 included redemptioners, victims of
religious or political persecution, persons
kidnapped for the purpose, convicts,
and paupers

Serf:
› person in a condition of servitude, required to
render services to a lord, commonly attached to
the lord's land and transferred with it from one
owner to another

Found in:
› England
› France
› Medieval Europe
“Concerning the trade on this Coast, we notified your Highness that nowadays the natives
no longer occupy themselves with the search for gold, but rather make war on each
other in order to furnish slaves. . . The Gold Coast has changed into a complete Slave
Coast.” William De La Palma, Director, Dutch West India Co., September 5, 1705
The history of the European seaborne slave trade with Africa goes back 50 years prior to
Columbus' initial voyage to the Americas. It began with the Portuguese, who went to
West Africa in search of gold. The first Europeans to come to Africa's West Coast to
trade were funded by Prince Henry, the famous Portuguese patron, who hoped to
bring riches to Portugal. The purpose of the exploration: to expand European
geographic knowledge, to find the source of prized African gold, and to locate a
possible sea route to valuable Asian spices.
In 1441, for the first time, Portuguese sailors obtained gold dust from traders on the western
coast of Africa. The following year, Portuguese explorers returned from Africa with
more gold dust and another cargo: ten Africans. Forty years after that first human
cargo traveled to Portugal, Portuguese sailors gained permission from a local African
leader to build a trading outpost and storehouse on Africa's Guinea coast. It was near
a region that had been mined for gold for many years and was called Elmina, which
means "the mine" in Portuguese. Although originally built for trade in gold and ivory
and other resources, Elmina was the first of many trading posts built by Europeans
along Africa's western coast that would also come to export slaves.
The well-armed fort provided a secure harbor for Portuguese (and later Dutch and English)
ships. Africans were either captured in warring raids or kidnapped and taken to the
port by African slave traders. There they were exchanged for iron, guns, gunpowder,
mirrors, knives, cloth, and beads brought by boat from Europe.
When Europeans arrived along the West African coast, slavery already existed on the
continent. However, in his book The African Slave Trade, Basil Davidson points out that
slavery in Africa and the brutal form of slavery that would develop in the Americas
were vastly different. African slavery was more akin to European serfdom --the
condition of most Europeans in the 15th century. In the Ashanti Kingdom of West
Africa, for example, slaves could marry, own property and even own slaves. And
slavery ended after a certain number of years of servitude. Most importantly, African
slavery was never passed from one generation to another, and it lacked the racist
notion that whites were masters and blacks were slaves.
By the start of the 16th century, almost 200,000 Africans had been transported to Europe
and islands in the Atlantic. But after the voyages of Columbus, slave traders found
another market for slaves: New World plantations. In Spanish Caribbean islands and
Portuguese Brazil by the mid 1500s, colonists had turned to the quick and highly
profitable cultivation of sugar, a crop that required constant attention and exhausting
labor. They tried to recruit native Americans, but many died from diseases brought by
Europeans, such as smallpox, diphtheria, and tuberculosis. And the Indians who
survived wanted no part of the work, often fleeing to the countryside they knew so
well. European colonists found an answer to their pressing labor shortage by importing
enslaved workers from Africa.
By 1619, more than a century and a half after the Portuguese first traded slaves on the
African coast, European ships had brought a million Africans to colonies and
plantations in the Americas and force them to labor as slaves. Trade through the West
African forts continued for nearly three hundred years. The Europeans made more
than 54,000 voyages to trade in human beings and sent at least ten to twelve million
Africans to the Americas.
From http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1narr1.html That Terrible Transformation, PBS.org
Find 5 topic sentences that would be most
significant.
Combining Passage 1 and 2, what would be
a good thesis statement regarding
Coercive labor systems?
-
Make a chart denoting the similarities
and differences between slavery,
serfdom, and indentured servitude?
 How does the concept of African slave
trade (i.e. Africans trading Africans) defy
definition?


Manorialism:
› vesting of legal and economic power in a
lord, supported economically from his own
direct landholding and from the obligatory
contributions of a legally subject part of the
peasant population under his jurisdiction

Medieval Europe, originated from the
Roman Empire

Colonial American
› could not marry without the permission of
their owner, were subject to physical
punishment, and saw their obligation to
labor enforced by the courts. To ensure
uninterrupted work by the female servants,
the law lengthened the term of their
indenture if they became pregnant. But
unlike slaves, servants could look forward to
a release from bondage

Universal:
› Spain, Portugal, American Colonies, etc.
› Under most forms of governments
 Democracy, monarchy, etc.
› Race related:
 African American
 Mixed bloods
 Indians
 Religious captives
Alexander II Liberator April 29, 1818 – March 13, 1881
Abolishing serfdom and reforms in Russia
Alexander now began to think of bringing an end to serfdom – an immense task
advocated by many liberal intellectuals but fiercely opposed by landowners.
But he pushed ahead with the reform and in 1861 Russia became one of the
last countries in Europe to shake off serfdom.
The emancipation law itself was an enormously long document of nearly 400
pages. Trying to balance the interests of both the proprietors and the
peasants, it stated that Russia’s 22 million serfs were now free but didn’t make
them land owners. Instead, they had to buy or rent the land from their former
masters. In the end, few were pleased. For the nobles, the step was
unwelcome, for the peasants the long-awaited freedom brought
disappointment. The land was often priced higher than its real value and
millions found themselves in hopeless poverty and debt.
Still, the change spurred other innovations – education and judicial reforms
followed, an elaborate scheme of local self-government in large towns and
rural districts was set up. The economy was boosted, railway construction
boomed, trade soared, banks and factories sprang up across the country.
But together with political openness the Empire saw the rise of the nationalistic
movements. In 1863 the so-called January Uprising flared up in Poland. It was
suppressed after eighteen months of fighting, thousands of Poles were executed
or deported to Siberia, many estates were confiscated and a much tighter
Russian control over Poland was imposed.
Untimely assassination
Alexander’s reforms were drawing more and more criticism. For some his extraordinary
efforts to change his country were too much while others believed he didn’t go
far enough. Alexander became a victim of numerous murder plots – one
dramatic assassination attempt followed another.
In February 1880 Alexander announced that he was considering granting the Russian
people a constitution. But the plan never went ahead. On March 13, 1881 the
Tsar’s carriage was bombed in the streets of St. Petersburg by members of a
revolutionary organization People’s Will. He emerged shaken but unhurt and
wanted to see the site of the explosion and check on the wounded Cossacks that
accompanied him. As he made his way over, another terrorist threw his bomb.
Fatally wounded, Alexander died an hour later.
A reformer, a warrior, a diplomat and a man of tragic fate, Alexander II has gone
down into history as the Liberator Tsar.
From: http://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/the-romanov-dynasty/alexander-iiliberator/?gclid=CMLl7vGIzakCFcV_5QodoUU8NA Prominent Russians: Alexander
II Liberator
What similarities and differences can you
draw when looking at the Emancipation
Proclamation (Lincoln) and the
Emancipation Manifesto (Alexander II)?
What other comparisons can you make
regarding these two leaders?
What conclusion can you draw regarding
the abolition of coercive labor systems?
What form of Coercive Labor System
goes with Manorialism?
 With the mit’a system?
 With the Islamic Slave Trade?
 With the Coolies?
 With the Sugar Plantations in the
Caribbean?

›
›
›
›
›
Dictionary.com
Wikipedia.com
The American Heritage Picture History of The Civil War, Bruce Catton, 1960.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1narr1.html That Terrible Transformation,
PBS.org
http://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/the-romanov-dynasty/alexander-iiliberator/?gclid=CMLl7vGIzakCFcV_5QodoUU8NA Alexander II Liberator,
Russiapedia.rt.com