A Contemporary View of the Development of Atlantic Chattel Slavery
Looking at slavery, from the reasoned perspective of a New World entrepreneur, requires the thought of transitioning what one considered the property of slave labor into the economy of the new Americas. This transition required identifying what this new product was, how it would be handled and treated, and how best to govern its use within this new society. This process was a disadvantage to the slaves because they were inevitably stripped of their dignity and assigned them to a class of non-entity.
The Atlantic Slave Trade sprouted in the 15th century and lasted until the 19th century. There was a need for labor in the New World, due to the vast amount of land and goods that needed to be efficiently produced. There was a transaction of slaves between the west coast port of Africa and countries in Europe like Spain and Portugal; from there the slaves were then transported and sold to the countries of North America, South America, and the Caribbean Islands (natives were captured by their African brethren, and were then transported by boat).
Varying on the size of the boat, 300-500 slaves were packaged and imported on these slave boats. It is estimated that two-thirds survived the boat ride under unbearable conditions. They were packaged into cubicles measuring three a half square feet of space. Conditions were horrible for the slaves bringing a lot of them to starvation and jumping overboard as a way out of the fate awaiting them. Their value, in the estimation of the delivers, was viewed only as the package by which they were being handled.
As this new product was transitioning into the culture of the Americas along the Atlantic seaboard, increasingly there had to be a definition between indentured servant and the slave. The indentured servant (could have been black or white) was someone who contracted for a specific amount of time to provide labor or service and then would be granted...