Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Slavery and colonization
- 2 The Old World background of slavery in the Americas
- 3 Slavery and lagging capitalism in the Spanish and Portuguese American empires, 1492–1713
- 4 The Dutch and the making of the second Atlantic system
- 5 Precolonial western Africa and the Atlantic economy
- 6 A marginal institution on the margin of the Atlantic system: The Portuguese southern Atlantic slave trade in the eighteenth century
- 7 The apprenticeship of colonization
- 8 Exports and the growth of the British economy from the Glorious Revolution to the Peace of Amiens
- 9 The slave and colonial trade in France just before the Revolution
- 10 Slavery, trade, and economic growth in eighteenth-century New England
- 11 Economic aspects of the growth of slavery in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake
- 12 Credit in the slave trade and plantation economies
- Index
11 - Economic aspects of the growth of slavery in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Slavery and colonization
- 2 The Old World background of slavery in the Americas
- 3 Slavery and lagging capitalism in the Spanish and Portuguese American empires, 1492–1713
- 4 The Dutch and the making of the second Atlantic system
- 5 Precolonial western Africa and the Atlantic economy
- 6 A marginal institution on the margin of the Atlantic system: The Portuguese southern Atlantic slave trade in the eighteenth century
- 7 The apprenticeship of colonization
- 8 Exports and the growth of the British economy from the Glorious Revolution to the Peace of Amiens
- 9 The slave and colonial trade in France just before the Revolution
- 10 Slavery, trade, and economic growth in eighteenth-century New England
- 11 Economic aspects of the growth of slavery in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake
- 12 Credit in the slave trade and plantation economies
- Index
Summary
THE 169 years that elapsed between the establishment of the first successful English settlement in North America and the declaration by the American settlers of their independence from Great Britain witnessed many dramatic changes and momentous developments in the colonies that stretched from the Chesapeake Bay to the South. The harsh demographic regime of the early settlements, which caused negative rates of natural increase in the Chesapeake during much of the seventeenth century, was transformed over time, eventually producing rapid population growth in the southern colonies and life expectancies as great as those of the English population of the day. Material life in the early southern colonies was meager; even well-to-do planters in the mid-seventeenth century lived in crude wooden houses with plain furnishings and few luxuries. However, the next century was quite different; their counterparts in the late eighteenth century lived in elegant brick houses and enjoyed such luxuries as imported furniture and tableware. From a position of support for the English monarchy in the early colonial period, the elite of the southern colonies in the late eighteenth century produced a group of men – Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, Madison, and others – who became the leaders of the American republican movement that opposed the monarchy. And these were only a few of the more prominent elements of the process by which a few struggling colonial settlements evolved into the wealthiest region of what would be a powerful new nation.
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- Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System , pp. 265 - 292Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991
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