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MODULE 2.3a The Regions of British Colonies 79

By 1660, Barbados had become the first English colony with a Black majority
population. Twenty years later, there were seventeen enslaved people for every
These sample pages are distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
white indentured servant on Barbados. The growth of slavery on the island
depended almost wholly on imports from Africa, because enslaved people in
Barbados died faster than they could reproduce themselves. As an effect of high
death rates, brutal working conditions, and the massive imports of ever-increas-
Copyright (c) 2024 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
ing numbers of enslaved workers, Barbados systematized its slave code, defining
enslaved Africans as chattel — that is, as mere property more akin to livestock
Strictly for use with its products. NOT FOR REDISTRIBUTION.
than to human beings. The booming sugar industry spurred the development of
plantation slavery and gave rise in turn to the slave codes that legally enforced
slavery in the British West Indies.

REVIEW

■ How did the seventeenth-century Atlantic economy influence that of the
West Indies?

The British West Indies Influence

South Carolina

In return for their help in securing his rule after returning from exile and taking back
the throne in 1660, and in hopes of creating financially rewarding colonies, Charles
II granted the extensive lands that became the states of North and South Carolina
to eight English nobles. Likewise, during the seventeenth century, planters from Bar-
bados began to relocate to the Carolinas because of greater opportunities to acquire
additional lands there.
In what is now South Carolina, English planters with West Indies connections
quickly came to shape and dominate seventeenth-century society. They created a main-
land version of Barbados by introducing enslaved Africans as laborers and carving out
plantations. Early South Carolina plantations produced the labor-intensive cash crop
of rice, which was then exported to the British West Indies, where it was used to feed
enslaved Africans working on sugar plantations. Later in the century, South Carolina
planters began themselves to produce sugar for export.
By the late seventeenth century, the enslaved labor needed to produce sugar and
rice in South Carolina was controlled by a small, but enormously wealthy class of land-
holders who oversaw the politics and economy of the colony. The city of Charleston was
one of the main ports receiving enslaved Africans by the early 1700s. The same trade
in human cargo that brought misery to millions of Africans generated huge profits for
traders, investors, and plantation owners and helped turn American seaport cities, like
Charleston, into centers of culture and consumption. The necessity for a large labor
force also created a population of enslaved Africans that by the early eighteenth cen-
tury outnumbered white settlers in the colony.

REVIEW

■ How did the economy of the West Indies affect the economy that
developed in South Carolina during the late 1600s?

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