Virginia and the Negro

Virginia and the Negro [African] in the 17th Century and Established the Standard for Slavery in the USA

"Negroes [Africans] first appeared in Virginia in August 1619, transported aboard a Dutch frigate, not as slaves but as indentured servants. These twenty Negroes, three of whom were women, bound themselves as indentured servants, to work for masters for a specified length of time in return for their passage across the Atlantic. For the next seventy-five years, indentured servitude by both Negroes [African] - and whites provided a satisfactory solution to the need for a labor supply.

By 1691, this situation had undergone a dramatic change and it became customary to hold black indentured servants past their term of service. A variety of factors contributed to this change in status for Black indentured servants. The supply of free labor decreased while their costs went up. Britain began to take control of the lucrative African and Caribbean slave trade so that there were larger numbers of Negroes [Africans] from those countries for export to America. By the mid 1660s, Virginia law recognized the word “slave” as referring to an existing class, thus creating a legal basis for slavery. At the same time, the small yeoman holdings were superseded by plantations, dependent upon crops like tobacco and strategically situated along the major rivers leading to the Atlantic. This in turn led to a greater demand for an agricultural labor force."

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