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MODULE 2.6 Slavery in the British Colonies 115

discovery hath bin made) and it is supposed the Gold comes most from places,
at the head of this River. . . .
These sample pages are distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
The Slaves they [purchased] are sent, for a Supply of Servants, to all His
[Majesty’s] American Plantations which cannot subsist without them. The Gold
and Elephants’ Teeth, and other Commodities, which are procured in Africa, are all
brought into England. The Gold is always coined in His [Majesty’s] Mint. And the
Copyright (c) 2024 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
Elephants Teeth, and all other goods, which the Company receives, either from
Africa or the Plantations, in returne for their Negros, are always sold publicly.”
Strictly for use with its products. NOT FOR REDISTRIBUTION.
Questions for Analysis
1. Identify the goods the Royal African Company acquired along the coast of West Africa.
2. Describe a cause stated in this charter for the founding of the Royal African Company.
3. Explain how this document reveals the developments that led to the founding of the
Royal African Company.

REVIEW

■ How did the transatlantic slave trade affect the societies of both British
North America and West Africa?

The Rise of Slavery Reshapes

Southern Colonial Society

Societies with cash-crop plantation economies that relied in part on enslaved labor
during the mid-seventeenth century transformed into societies shaped by slavery itself
during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Southern Carolina was,
from the start, heavily influenced by the economies of the British West Indies, and
developed from its founding as a slave society. Enslaved labor allowed plantation owners
to expand cultivation of cash crops like tobacco, rice, and indigo, which promised high
profits for planters as well as merchants.
These developments made southern elites more dependent on the global market
and limited opportunities for poorer white people and all Black people, both free and
enslaved. They also ensured that American Indians and many white colonists were
pushed farther west as planters sought more land for their ventures.
In the 1660s, Virginia legislators followed a model established in Barbados by passing
laws legalizing human bondage and codifying a slave society (see Module 2.2). A series of
laws passed by the House of Burgesses during this time transformed the colony into a
society almost completely reliant on a system of chattel slavery in which enslavement
was defined as a distinct status based on racial identity and passed on through future
generations. The enactment of these slave codes was driven largely by the desires for prof-
its through a more numerous and controlled labor force, which neither the population of
enslaved American Indians nor that of indentured servants was large enough to fill.
As time went on, these laws became harsher. For example, one law granted slaveholders
the right to kill enslaved people who defied their authority. In 1680 it was declared illegal for
“any negro or other slave to carry or arme himself with any club, staffe, gunn, sword, or any
other weapon of defence or offence.” Nor could enslaved people leave slaveholders’ premises
without a certificate of permission, a legally enforced document that regulated an enslaved
person’s movements. By the late seventeenth century, an enslaved mother passed on her legal
status to her children, and it was illegal to free enslaved people even if they had converted to
Christianity, thereby establishing enslavement as hereditary and racial.

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