Tragic aspects of European expansion and race-based slavery in the Americas

Slavery in the Americas

For most of the Middle Ages slavery was not only widespread in Europe, it involved a variety of races. Unlike later in the Americas, slavery had never been based strictly on race, and as a result, slaves were Whites, Muslims, and every other conceivable race. However, the discovery of the New World by Columbus transformed the very nature of slavery in the world. As Europeans scrambled to colonize the Americas, they needed a supply of human labor to exploit the natural resources and newly developing agriculture. While at first they simply enslaved the indigenous peoples, due to the influx of new diseases and the mortality rate associated with forced labor, the Native Americans died at an appalling rate. To replace the dwindling supply of cheap human labor, the Europeans turned to Africa and the Africans that could be procured there. As the Europeans continued to colonize the New World, they also captured more and more Africans to use as slave labor. By the beginning of the 18th century, African slavery had become the predominant form of slavery in the Americas.

It has been estimated that there were about 50 million indigenous peoples living in the Americas in 1492. (McKay, 2011, p.476) As the Spanish colonized the New World they conquered and enslaved the native population, establishing the "encomienda system." This system allowed the Spanish to force the indigenous population into slavery in exchange for providing room and board. But because of the horrendous conditions imposed on the Native Americans, the native population "…declined from roughly 50 million in 1492 to around 9 million by 1700." (McKay, p. 478) But as the indigenous population was decimated, European colonization increased; and the Europeans needed to increase their labor force as well. In response, the Europeans began to import slaves from Africa.

Slavery had always been part of European culture, but it was never race-based. This all changed when the Europeans began to conquer and colonize the New World. European diseases, to which the indigenous Americans had no immunity, spread throughout the Americas, decimating the population. In addition to the devastation caused by diseases, the nature of forced labor also took its toll on the native peoples. When the fall of Constantinople caused a disruption in the slave trade from the East, the Europeans started to look to sub-Saharan Africa for their slaves. This source of slaves became even more important when the Portuguese began to explore down the coast of Africa. And as the Spanish colonized the Americas, setting up their "encomienda system" for the running of plantations (i.e. sugar, tobacco, etc.), their need for slave labor increased. But after the Europeans, particularly the Spanish, had devastated the indigenous American population through disease and slavery, Africa then became the prime source of slaves for the Americas.