What were the differences between Barbados and Virginias use of slaves?

The power relationships we consider here are categorically different from others in this section. Africans did not come to North America on their own initiative to pursue their own goals. Their status from the outset was subordinate at best, enslaved at worst. There was no peer-to-peer negotiation or warfare as occurred between Europeans and Native Americans and among European rivals in the hemisphere. No traditions or laws were transported from the mother country to be respected or re-interpreted by colonial authorities, as was true in varying degrees for European settlers. Any power Africans would gain in North America would derive from their response to utter powerlessness.

In this section we will focus on enslaved Africans in the English colonies, where the number of slaves varied widely by region. In 1700, 78% of the inhabitants in the English West Indies were slaves, compared to 13% in Virginia and 2% in New England.* The correlation of percentage with the power struggle in each region is apparent in these readings.

• BARBADOS: SLAVES & MASTERS. In 1627 the first Englishmen landed on the uninhabited Caribbean island of Barbados. Twenty years later Richard Ligon arrived on the island, purchased half of a sugar plantation with colleagues, and remained for three years, writing A True & Exact History after his return to England. In separate sections he describes the masters, servants, and slaves of the island (and the few Indians, usually brought as slaves from other islands). In addition to his interpretations of the physical and cultural characteristics of the "Negroes," he offers personal experiences to illustrate the master-slave relationships that had evolved on Barbados.
  [Richard Ligon, The True & Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes, 1657]


• BARBADOS: SLAVE CONSPIRACY. By 1685 there were four times as many Africans as Europeans on the island of Barbados, and the white masters understood the power-in-numbers of their enslaved Africans. Fear of slave rebellion took hold of the masters, who stayed vigilant for rumors of rebellion and who rewarded slaves who revealed conspiracies or refused to join the uprisings (as described by Ligon in True & Exact History). Three slave rebellions were planned in the 1600s; one in 1649 was quickly suppressed and a second in 1675 was discovered before its implementation. In 1692 the third planned rebellion was discovered hours before the scheduled uprising. In this brief broadside published in London three months later, the "barbarous and bloody plot" is described as well as the conspirators' plans for "a Governour and Government of their own" and the brutal punishments devised to deter future rebellion.
  [A Brief, but most True Relation of the late Barbarous and Bloody Plot of the Negro's in the Island of Barbados on Friday the 21. of October, 1692, broadside, 1693]


• PENNSYLVANIA: ANTI-SLAVERY PETITION. The prospect of slave rebellion appears again in this petition, but this time as a challenge to one's conscience: "Have these poor negroes not as much right to fight for their freedom as you have to keep them slaves?" Written in 1688 by four German colonists in Pennsylvania (including Mennonites and Quakers), the petition was distributed to several congregations but did not incite a larger anti-slavery campaign at the time, when even William Penn and other Pennsylvania Quakers owned slaves. (In 1700 ten percent of Philadelphia residents owned slaves, primarily to work in urban manufactures.) Quaker opposition to slavery would appear later, in the 1700s, when a core argument of this petition was resurrected: "Is there any that would be done or handled at this manner? viz., to be sold or made a slave for all the time of his life?"
  [Petition in opposition to slavery by four men of Germantown, Pennsylvania, 18 February 1688]


• VIRGINIA SERVANTS AND SLAVES. The marked transition in the Chesapeake colonies from servant to slave labor occurred in these last years of the seventeenth century. Virginia's slave population grew from 150 in 1640, to nearly 3,000 in 1680, and by 1700 to 13,000—one sixth of the colony's population. The transition occurred primarily for two reasons: (1) the supply of indentured servants dropped as England offered more economic opportunities for its poor; and (2) the wealthy planters feared the power of the lower classes in their midst, namely the white backwoods farmers, the white indentured servants, and the black servants and slaves. White-black coalitions were an ever-present threat to the planters—Bacon's Rebellion of 1676 had made that clear (see #5: Colonial Rebellion). As the slave population increased, so did the legal controls on slaves' behavior and power, culminating in the extensive law of 1705. Also appearing in 1705 was a justification of servitude and slavery written by a Virginia planter to rebut criticism from England. "Because I have heard how strangely cruel, and severe [slavery and servitude are] presented in some parts of England," writes Robert Beverley, "I can't forbear affirming that the work of their servants and slaves is no other than what every common Freeman does." Explaining the 1705 law, Beverley cites clauses that buttress his argument and judiciously omits others, which you can identify in the excerpts included here and in the full text of the statute (see Supplemental Links).
  [Robert Beverley, Jr., "Of the Slaves and Servants in Virginia," in The History and Present State of Virginia, 1705; and An Act concerning Servants and Slaves, Virginia, 1705]