Colonial Immigration and Slavery

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Colonial Immigration and Slavery
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Objectives

• Explain how European immigration to the colonies
  changed between the late 1600s and 1700s.
• Analyze the development of slavery in the
  colonies.
• Describe the experience of enslaved Africans in
  the colonies.

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Terms and People

• indentured servants poor immigrants who paid
  for passage to the colonies by agreeing to work
  for four to seven years
• triangular trade three-part voyage that brought
  enslaved Africans to America
• Middle Passage route across the Atlantic in
  which enslaved Africans were carried in brutal
  conditions
• Phillis Wheatley first African American to
  publish a book of poems

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Which major groups of immigrants came to
Britains American colonies in the 1700s?
In the 1700s, great numbers of Europeans from
Germany and Scotland immigrated to the
colonies. These newcomers reshaped American
colonial society.
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Immigrants from many backgrounds brought
diversity to the colonies.Many immigrants from
England came as indentured servants. They agreed
to work for four to seven years to pay for their
passage.
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New groups immigrated in the 1700s
Scots and Scotch-Irish Germans



Became the largest immigrant group
Became the second largest immigrant group
Motivated by poverty and easy legal access as
part of Great Britain
Motivated by war, taxes and religious persecution
Worked as merchants in the tobacco trade and
farmed from Pennsylvania to the Carolinas
Mostly settled and farmed in Pennsylvania
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Diversity in the colonies meant that

• No group was large enough to impose their beliefs
  on other groups.
• People realized that when they got along,
  everyone benefited.

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Colonists used slaves as a source of labor.

• Farmers, particularly in southern colonies,
  needed a work force to grow labor-intensive crops
  of tobacco, rice, and indigo.
• Virginia passed a law decreeing that any servant,
  not a Christian in their native land, was to be
  enslaved.
• Traders began to purchase slaves from African
  merchants and transport them to the colonies to
  sell to plantation owners.

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• Africans were taken by force from West African
  countries to the colonies and Europe.

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By the mid-1700s, the triangular trade was
well-established.

• Manufactured goods were traded for captured
  Africans.
• Slave traders carried Africans across the
  Atlantic in the Middle Passage.
• Enslaved Africans were sold to colonists for raw
  materials.
• Traders took raw materials to England to be
  turned into manufactured goods.

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During the Middle Passage, Africans were shackled
together into small spaces below a ships deck.
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Slavery in the Southern Colonies was cruel.
Enslaved Africans worked 12 hours a day, 6 days a
week, in fields, growing labor-intensive crops.
Most enslaved Africans were given limited
clothing and food and lived in crude huts on
plantations.
Enslaved Africans were closely supervised by
white overseers who often whipped those who
resisted being enslaved.

• Slave labor represented a small minority of the
  workforce in New England and in the Middle
  Colonies.
• They worked as farmhands, sailors, dockworkers,
  and house servants.

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Africans reacted to enslavement by
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After he gained his freedom, Olaudah Equiano
wrote a widely read book about his enslavement.
Some freed slaves spoke out against slavery.
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Enslaved Africans contributed to the development
of a new American culture.

• They modified African instruments and music, and
  created new musical traditions. The banjo is a
  modified African instrument.
• Phillis Wheatley became the first African
  American poet to publish a book of poems in
  America.