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BOB — University of Nebraska Press / Page 264 / / The Transatlantic Slave Trade / James A. Rawley 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [First Page] [264], (1) Lines: 0 to 17 ——— 5.0pt PgVar ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [264], (1) 13. americans enter the slave trade The Atlantic slave trade was two centuries old before it became consequential in North America, yet at the same time it strongly influenced the colonial American economy. Its influence was profound throughout the eighteenth century, and, through laying the foundations of a biracial society, would continue to mold the American polity for the indefinite future. There existed three major colonial economic regions, and each in its fashion heavily depended upon slave labor. From Maryland on south where the colonies produced staples for export, black slaves became the essential labor force and the staples became the keystone of American colonial commerce. The middle colonies found that the trade underpinned their livelihood in exporting breadstuffs to the slave labor of the West Indies. And the New England colonies made their living in both providing supplies and foodstuffs, including fish, and in conducting a carrying trade, to the slave societies of the West Indies. The slave trade and its consequences helped to shape imperial policy toward the colonies; shape American agricultural development, patterns of trade, mechanisms of credit, currency, and marketing; shape the evolution of social structure and the growth of political discontent in the colonies. The American colonies were among the first political bodies to abolish the slave trade, and the American republic at its birth secured authority to abolish the trade at the end of twenty years. The trade and its influences were vigorous forces in the growth of the American colonies and the early Republic. In this chapter we shall essay an overview of these matters. The Americans themselves did not significantly participate in the carrying trade before the second third of the eighteenth century. In succeeding chapters we shall examine the Americans as carriers. America affords us an opportunity to consider a slaveimporting region that was also a slave carrier. The North American mainland was not the only base within the British empire for colonial slave traders; traders existed in the West Indies,but they are a little known and scantily studied group. Primary in directing the Atlantic slave trade to North America was the devel- BOB — University of Nebraska Press / Page 265 / / The Transatlantic Slave Trade / James A. Rawley 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [265], (2) Lines: 17 to 25 ——— 0.0pt PgVar ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [265], (2) opment of the tobacco industry. In the Chesapeake Bay colonies of Maryland and Virginia and in the eighteenth century in a portion of North Carolina, tobacco became the backbone of the economy. American tobacco imported by England rose from 2,500 pounds in 1616 to a peak of 105 million pounds in 1771. The cultivation and curing of tobacco required a monotonous series of manual tasks extending over a long part of a year. The cultivation of rice in the eighteenth century in the moist lowlands stretching from the lower Cape Fear River in North Carolina through Georgia, but concentrating in South Carolina, also shaped the course of the Atlantic slave trade. Labor tasks in growing rice were more arduous, no less numerous, and perhaps more technical than in growing tobacco. Wet lands had to be prepared, often beginning with the clearing of trees, followed by making banks, ditches, and sluices for control of water. Seeding, flooding, draining, hoeing, drying, weeding, and repeating many of these tasks—all preceded the tasks of the harvest: cutting,sheaving,carrying to the mill where pounding,winnowing, screening, and finally packing in barrels completed the work. American exports of rice in the colonial period soared from 10,407 pounds in 1698 to a high of 83,708,625 in 1770. Sales advertisements in South Carolina often referred to freshly imported slaves’ familiarity with the cultivation of rice, and many slaves came from a portion of the Guinea Coast described as the Rice Coast.1 It has been suggested...

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