Slavery made a huge change in United States of America. It started around 16th to 18th century and made America a well developed country. In our present time, slavery is illegal and committed many human rights violation. But slavery in 17th century is far different from today because it is very lawful and it is mainly the source of unfree labor in United States. The huge change of social and political aspects in America is due to migration of African slaves.
Slaves were very important those days. They made several impacts in economy of America. In fact, a slave in that time is very expensive. They were being sold from one person to another like a property and they can profit with it. Since most of the slaves came from Southern Africa, the slaves were taken in West Indies and traded for molasses. These molasses is then taken to New England and refined to become rum. These rums are traded for slaves. Triangle trade system made slave traders richer in every step of the process. This serves as the source of slaves in America which is being used to propagate agricultural land and produce cotton. During the early times, they badly needed this trading system because none of the country is self-dependent, they only depend on others to produce goods which they don’t have. This process is very successful because the goods that can’t be produce by some countries can already be traded. This trade lasts for three hundred years until many counties made it illegal. This is the reason why there are millions of African men and women living in the North and South America right now.
Since America has very huge land area than another country, it is their problem how they can maintain such land. They require workers to watch their land and to make it more productive. As their answer to their problems, they buy slaves that came from the triangle trade system. These slaves were the one who were going to take the remaining jobs and probably the hardest. Due to this, they can utilize every single land area of America to become more productive. This makes the America the most profitable country during that time. But they want to produce more to achieve greater profit. They notice that every race has its own specialty of work. They decided to separate the races in different works which they specialize in. The Native American and other slaves were notice that they are good in industrial jobs. They were taken to the North because the climate and soil in there is not appropriate in agricultural purposes. The African slaves who specialize in agricultural aspect were taken to the South because the climate and the soil are very efficient for agriculture.
Another factor of economic impact and made America important to the world is the production of cotton. Because of this, the citizen of the South is encouraged that a separate independent Confederacy is possible. They already control the one of the most important material during that time. Cotton is needed, not only by England for their textile industries, but also by more developed countries like France and Germany. And so, it is a great factor in terms of economics and political power.
As we all know, United States of America is vast country is well known for its industrial development. Those times, Native American and other slaves work on factories. They learned that they will gain more profit if you were skilled in factory works. So, more slaves make themselves skilled in factory works. This makes a huge improvement in America because more man power means greater production of goods. It greatly helps the economy of the country. This is the reason why the African slaves are separated from Native American and other slaves.
Due to the success of slavery in the south, they say that it is the main factor of the development of the country and a practical necessity. The people of the North contradict it and they want to abolish it. This issue grew and led to civil war wherein many black slaves run away from their masters to areas under federal control. This war results to the declaration of the freedom of all slaves in United States of America
References
Stanley L. Engerman, SLAVERY (2003) Retrieve on August 15, 2007 from http://www.economics.ucr.edu/papers/papers03/03-12.pdf
people’s media company (2007) Retrieves on August 15, 2007 from http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/93541/african_slavery_economic_basis_and.html
Horton, James Oliver, Ph.D., historian on the economic impact of slavery, Retrieve on August 15, 2007 from http://www.wqln.org/SafeHarbor/Film/InterviewTranscripts/Horton/EconomicImpact.htm
people’s media company (2007) Retrieve on August 15, 2007, from http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/89834/the_economic_impacts_of_african_slavery.html
