AMSCO 2.6 Slavery in the British Colonies Notes

Overview

AMSCO Topic 2.6, "Slavery in the British Colonies" (AMSCO p. 59-62), explains how a demand for cheap plantation labor in the British colonies led colonists to replace indentured servitude with the permanent, hereditary enslavement of Africans, and how enslaved people resisted that system. This chapter sits in Period 2 (1607-1754) and connects directly to the trade networks covered in AMSCO 2.4 Transatlantic Trade. The big causal chain to remember: cash crops created a labor shortage, indentured servitude failed to fill it, and colonial legislatures wrote laws that turned slavery into a race-based, lifelong, inherited status.

Timeline of Slavery in the British Colonies (Image Courtesy of Risha)

Demand for Labor in the British Colonies

The core problem: tobacco was hugely profitable in Maryland and Virginia, but nobody could find enough workers. Land was easy to get (colonists took it or traded for it from American Indians), but the colonial population grew slowly because of disease, food shortages, and warfare. Landowners tried several fixes before turning to slavery.

• American Indian labor failed because Native Americans knew the land and could escape too easily.
• The supply of indentured servants was too small to meet demand.

Indentured Servants

Indentured servants were the Virginia Company's first answer. Early Virginia colonists were too poor to buy enslaved Africans the way West Indian sugar planters did, so they imported workers from the British Isles under contract instead.

• A master paid for the servant's passage to America.
• In exchange, the servant worked for a set period, usually four to seven years, for room and board.
• During the contract, servants were under the absolute rule of their masters.
• At the end, they gained freedom and could work for wages or get their own land.

The catch for landowners: this labor was temporary. Every servant who finished a contract had to be replaced.

Headright System

Virginia also tried to attract immigrants with free land. The colony offered 50 acres to each immigrant who paid for his own passage, and 50 acres to any plantation owner who paid for an immigrant's passage. Wealthy planters could stack headrights by sponsoring lots of passages, which helped concentrate land in fewer hands.

The Institution of Slavery

Slavery in the British colonies did not start as the lifelong, race-based system it became. In 1619, an English ship serving the Dutch government sold about 25 Black Africans to Virginia as indentured servants. These first Africans were not in life bondage, and their children were born free.

That changed fast. By the end of the 1660s, the Virginia House of Burgesses had passed laws keeping Africans and their children in permanent bondage. By the early 18th century, both the enslaved population and the laws controlling it had expanded dramatically.

Where Enslaved People Lived and Worked

Every British colony had at least some enslaved laborers, but the regional pattern matters for the exam:

• New England had the fewest, since small farms needed little extra labor.
• The Middle Colonies had more, especially in port cities, where African Americans worked loading and unloading ships and as sailors.
• The southern colonies had the most, working on plantations. By 1750, half of Virginia's population and two-thirds of South Carolina's population were enslaved.
• The West Indian sugar islands held the highest numbers of all British colonies. About 95 percent of enslaved Africans were delivered to the West Indies or Brazil; less than 5 percent went to British North America.

Don't let the regional split fool you into thinking slavery was only a southern institution. The transatlantic slave trade was financed and conducted largely by people in the northern colonies, so the North profited from slavery even where few enslaved people lived.

Why Demand for Enslaved Labor Increased

Three factors explain why slavery grew, especially in the South:

• Reduced migration: Rising wages in England shrank the supply of immigrants willing to come to the colonies as servants.
• A dependable workforce: Large plantation owners were rattled by the political demands of small farmers and indentured servants, and especially by the disorder of Bacon's Rebellion. Enslaved labor looked like a permanent workforce totally under their control.
• Low-cost labor: As tobacco prices fell, rice and indigo became the most profitable crops. These crops required huge land areas and many inexpensive, relatively unskilled field hands.

This growing demand fueled the active, profitable, and ruthless triangular trade across the Atlantic.

Slave Laws and the Creation of a Racial System

As enslaved populations grew, White colonists passed laws making slavery lifelong, hereditary, and explicitly racial. Know these landmarks:

• 1641: Massachusetts became the first colony to recognize the enslavement of "lawful" captives.
• 1661: Virginia enacted legislation that children automatically inherited their mother's enslaved status for life. This is the legal birth of hereditary slavery.
• 1664: Maryland declared that baptism did not change an enslaved person's status, overturning the English rule that baptized Christians could not be enslaved. Maryland also banned White women from marrying African American men.

These laws created what the AP course calls chattel slavery, a system treating enslaved people as property rather than persons, defined in perpetuity by race. As slavery became common, Whites increasingly regarded all Black people as inferior. Racism and slavery developed together, each reinforcing the other, and both became integral parts of colonial society.

Resistance to Slavery

Enslaved Africans resisted slavery through both covert (everyday, hidden) and overt (direct, open) means, even though resistance carried brutal punishment.

Covert resistance preserved identity and community:

• Maintaining family ties, even though owners could break up families by selling a husband, wife, or child at any time
• Keeping elements of African religious practices even while adopting Christianity
• Using songs and storytelling to pass down traditions and customs

Overt resistance directly disrupted the system:

• Hunger strikes
• Breaking tools
• Refusing to work
• Fleeing, even knowing capture and harsh punishment were likely

Owners' fear of resistance shows up in the historical record: colonies kept passing new, stricter laws to control enslaved people. That ongoing legal crackdown is itself evidence of how persistent resistance was. The chapter opens with Phillis Wheatley's 1774 line that "in every human Breast, God has implanted a Principle, which we call Love of Freedom," a useful quote for essays on how enslaved and free Black people articulated resistance.

Key Terms to Know

Practice and Next Steps

For the College Board's framing of this topic, review the Topic 2.6 Slavery in the British Colonies study guide, then continue to AMSCO 2.7 Colonial Society and Culture to see how slavery shaped the broader colonial social order. The full set of chapter summaries lives on the APUSH AMSCO notes page.

To check yourself, run a few Period 2 questions in guided practice and brush up on definitions with the APUSH key terms glossary. Causation questions about why slavery replaced indentured servitude are a classic Unit 2 setup, so make sure you can explain all three demand factors without looking.