Slavery the Enslavement of People by Their

Slavery

The enslavement of people by their fellow humans is a practice known to humanity for several millennia. Yet, the fact that it dwelled and flourished until it took continental proportions in the modern world is still one of the black spots on the conscience of the former colonial powers.

The discovery and exploration of the new world was soon followed by the exploitation of its sources. The Americas were offering the Portuguese and Spanish explorers huge opportunities to start new businesses, but it also demanded a tremendous amount of labor. The Europeans were already accustomed to the practice of slavery in their conquered territories in Africa. The vast lands in the Caribbean and in South America, soon after Columbus' discovery of the New World, became a huge source of wealth for those who could afford to hire servants and work the land. The big companies interested in investing in the production of sugar cane were facing a dilemma related to finding the most profitable way of starting mass production. The aborigine population the colonists found there were not suitable for that kind of hard labor because of their weakness to the new diseases the Europeans brought along. Thus, the cheapest and most profitable way to find the necessary working force became the import of slaves from Africa.

At be beginning of the seventeenth century, after having landed in the territory they called Virginia, after their virgin queen, the English established their first colony in North America. They followed the example of the Spanish and Portuguese settlers before them and brought in slaves from Africa to work in the fields of tobacco and cotton. While the use of slaves underwent a period of decline towards the end of the seventeenth century in Spanish America, it flourished in the English, Dutch and French North American colonies (The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas, David Eltis, p. 26).

The institution of slavery helped build America and the history of this country would be completely different without its practice. The land owners and the big companies that benefited from the buying and selling of their products became richer and afforded to buy more and more slaves from the African traders.

The North American colonists discovered the new alcoholic drink made of sugar cane molasses, the rum, and towards the second half of the seventeenth century started producing it themselves. The slave importers offered the cheap alcoholic drink to their African slave trader counterparts and thus the business of trading slaves became even more profitable than before (A History of the World in Six Glasses, Standage T.).

The young American people that freed itself from the yoke of the British tyranny continued to practice another form of tyranny, slavery, treating other human beings, the African-Americans, as their own property and not as their compatriots. The noble principles of the American Revolution and their fundament were applicable only for the free people of this country. "Slavery had created a hellish existence for the half million Africans caught in its grip and posed an ethical dilemma for liberal philosophers attempting to explain a slaveholders' revolution for freedom" (Slavery and the Making of America, Horton & Horton, p. 8).