Slavery –  Its History and Effects on American Economy

In 1619, a Portuguese ship moved crosswise the Atlantic Ocean. This ship was filled with African slaves. The men, women and children, mostly from the kingdoms of Ndongo and Kongo, suffered the terrible journey. Almost half of the prisoners had died when the ship was grabbed by two English bandit ship. The remaining Africans were taken to Point Comfort, a port near Jamestown. Jamestown is the capital of the English colony of Virginia. The Africans were most likely put to work in the tobacco fields that had been setup in the area.

Forced labor was not an uncommon practice. Africans and Europeans had been trading goods and people throughout the Mediterranean for centuries. But enslavement was not based on race. The trans-Atlantic slave trade began in early 15th century. This type of oppression introduced a system of inborn slavery. People who were slaved were not treated as human beings. They were treated as cargoes to be bought, traded and exploited. Though people of African community were present in North America as early as the 1500s. Some of them were free while the others were slaves. The public sale of African people set the period for what would become slavery in the U.S.A.

There are a large number of good or bad consequences of slavery on American economy. Slavery was economically beneficial for those people who owned slaves. Slave owners did not have to pay their workforce. But the slave owners had to pay for:

• Purchase slaves
• Feed slaves
• Providing houses to the slaves
• Providing clothes to the slaves

But all this money was yet much less than reasonable wages of the people working for them. A common person thinks this setup was not good for slaves because they did not get any salary. Moreover, they did not have fixed working hours. Some scholars think that economic conditions of slaves could not be better if they were freed because conditions of American working class were not much better. In general, we can say that slavery had some positive as well as negative effects on American society. The South America could not make procedural and business-related development as did the North America until slavery was banned. Most of the scholars say that this was a drawback for American nation as a whole. This is another effect on American economy. However, in the run-up to the Civil War, the South was producing a lot of raw materials to be used in manufacturing thanks to the hard work of the slaves who did the vast majority of the labor in producing crops such as cotton and tobacco. Similarly, a large number of effects on American economy can be discussed.