Slavery in the British colonies

Slavery formed a cornerstone of the British Empire in the 18th century. Every colony had enslaved people, from the southern rice plantations in Charles Town, South Carolina, to the northern wharves of Boston.

Slavery was more than a labor system; it also influenced every aspect of colonial thought and culture. The uneven relationship it engendered gave white colonists an exaggerated sense of their own status. English liberty gained greater meaning and coherence for white people when they contrasted their status to that of the unfree class of enslaved black people in British America.

African slavery provided white colonists with a shared racial bond and identity.

The transport of enslaved people to the American colonies accelerated in the second half of the 17th century. In 1660, English monarch Charles II created the Royal African Company to trade in enslaved people and African goods. His brother, James II, led the company before ascending the throne.

Under both these kings, the Royal African Company enjoyed a monopoly to transport enslaved people to the English colonies. Between 1672 and 1713, the company bought 125,000 captives on the African coast, losing 20 percent of them to death on the Middle Passage—the journey from the African coast to the Americas.

The Royal African Company’s monopoly ended in 1689. After that date, many more English merchants engaged in the slave trade, greatly increasing the number of enslaved people being transported. Africans who survived the brutal Middle Passage usually arrived in the West Indies, often in Barbados. From there, they were transported to the mainland English colonies on company ships.

While merchants in London, Bristol, and Liverpool lined their pockets, Africans trafficked by the company endured a nightmare of misery, privation, and dislocation.

Enslaved people strove to adapt to their new lives by forming new communities among themselves, often adhering to traditional African customs and healing techniques. The development of families and communities was an important response to the trauma of being enslaved. Other enslaved people dealt with the trauma of their situation by actively resisting their condition—whether by defying their owners or running away.

People who escaped enslavement formed what were called maroon communities; these communities successfully resisted recapture and formed their own autonomous groups. The most prominent maroon communities controlled an interior area of Jamaica, keeping the British away.

Enslaved people everywhere resisted their exploitation and attempted to gain freedom. They fully understood that rebellions would bring about massive retaliation from white people and therefore had little chance of success. Even so, rebellions occurred frequently.

One notable uprising that became known as the Stono Rebellion took place in South Carolina in September 1739. A literate enslaved man named Jemmy led a large group of enslaved people in an armed insurrection against white colonists, killing several before militia stopped them. The militia suppressed the rebellion after a battle in which both enslaved people and militiamen were killed; the remaining enslaved people were executed or sold to the West Indies.

Jemmy is believed to have been taken from the Kingdom of Kongo, an area where the Portuguese had introduced Catholicism. Other enslaved people in South Carolina may have had a similar background. If so, this common background may have made it easier for Jemmy to communicate with the other enslaved people, enabling them to work together to resist their enslavement even though slaveholders labored to keep enslaved people from forging such communities.

In the wake of the Stono Rebellion, South Carolina passed a new slave code in 1740 called An Act for the Better Ordering and Governing of Negroes and Other Slaves in the Province, also known as the Negro Act of 1740. This law imposed new limits on enslaved people’s behavior, prohibiting them from assembling, growing their own food, learning to write, and traveling freely.

Eighteenth-century New York City contained many different ethnic groups, and conflicts among them created strain. In addition, one in five New Yorkers was enslaved, and tensions ran high between enslaved people and the free population, especially in the aftermath of the Stono Rebellion. These tensions burst forth in 1741.

That year, thirteen fires broke out in the city, one of which reduced the colony’s Fort George to ashes. Ever fearful of an uprising among enslaved New Yorkers, the city’s white population spread rumors that the fires were part of a massive slave revolt in which enslaved people would murder white people, burn the city, and take over the colony.

The Stono Rebellion was only a few years in the past, and throughout British America, fears of similar incidents were still fresh. Searching for solutions, and convinced enslaved people were the principal danger, nervous British authorities interrogated almost 200 enslaved people and accused them of conspiracy. Rumors that Roman Catholics had joined the suspected conspiracy and planned to murder Protestant inhabitants of the city only added to the general hysteria. Very quickly, 200 were arrested, including a large number of the city’s enslaved population.

After a quick series of trials at City Hall, known as the New York Conspiracy Trials of 1741, the government executed seventeen New Yorkers. Thirteen black men were publicly burned at the stake, while the others—including four whites—were hanged. Seventy enslaved people were sold to the West Indies.

Little evidence exists to prove that any conspiracy actually existed.

The events of 1741 in New York City illustrate the racial divide in British America, where panic among white colonists spurred great violence against and repression of the feared enslaved population.

Do you think slavery would have been as widely used in the British Empire if King Charles and King James had not benefitted financially from the Royal African Company? Why or why not?

Why do you think white colonists responded with such fear and paranoia to the possibility of a slave revolt, even in situations where there was no evidence of conspiracy?

Imagine you're an enslaved person on a ship crossing the Atlantic. What are you thinking and feeling? What do you imagine is in your future?