Slavery in North America and Britain

Whose history was preserved?

Many older histories of slavery concentrated on the laws, institutions and actions of white people in Europe and North America. That emphasis left the experiences, ideas and agency of enslaved Africans and their descendants incompletely documented.

Later scholarship has worked to recover how enslaved people retained and adapted African knowledge, formed communities, resisted exploitation and shaped abolitionist thought. Gaps remain because many records were produced by governments, merchants and enslavers rather than by the people subjected to slavery.

The expansion of racialized slavery

From the early 16th century, captive Africans were transported to Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America and South America. European colonization also relied on the forced labor of Indigenous people and on European indentured servants, who worked for a fixed term in exchange for passage across the Atlantic.

A small number of Africans arrived in England's North American colonies by 1619. As plantation agriculture expanded during the 17th century and fewer Europeans entered indenture, colonial economies increasingly relied on enslaved African labor. Laws gradually made slavery hereditary and tied it to African ancestry, creating a durable system of racialized bondage.

Transport and daily life

The Atlantic crossing occurred under confined, unsanitary and coercive conditions, and many captives died during transportation. Survivors were bought and sold and compelled to labor. The system exposed families to separation and denied people control over movement, work, education and religious practice.

Slavery also existed in colonial Canada. One documented 1734 case involved Marie-Josèphe Angélique, an enslaved Black woman in Montréal who was accused of setting a fire while facing sale and separation. She was convicted and executed after proceedings that historians continue to examine critically.

Resistance by enslaved people

Enslaved people resisted in many ways. Everyday resistance included slowing work, preserving cultural practices, damaging equipment, taking supplies and escaping temporarily or permanently. Communities also created networks of mutual support and passed knowledge across generations.

Organized conspiracies and uprisings occurred throughout the period. Their aims, scale and organization differed by place and time. Significant events included resistance in Virginia in 1663, New York in 1712, Stono in South Carolina in 1739, Richmond in 1800, near New Orleans in 1811, Charleston in 1822 and Southampton County in 1831. The 1859 raid at Harpers Ferry belongs to the later antebellum struggle over slavery.

• 1730s–1760sSome uprisings drew strongly on African community organization and spiritual traditions.
• 1760s–1800sResistance networks became more cautious as colonial surveillance and punishment intensified.
• 1800s–1840sSome planned actions involved skilled workers, free Black communities and wider communication networks.

Religion, liberty and contradiction

Colonial churches debated whether enslaved people should receive Christian instruction. In Virginia, Anglican leaders supported instruction, while some enslavers resisted education or conversion because they feared challenges to the institution. Colonial law ultimately separated Christian baptism from civil freedom, allowing Christian enslavers to continue holding baptized people in bondage.

Thomas Jefferson articulated influential arguments about liberty while enslaving people throughout his life. His writings acknowledged the danger and injustice surrounding slavery but rejected general emancipation within the United States. He supported colonization proposals that sought to relocate free Black people outside the country. This contradiction illustrates how declarations of rights were often restricted by race in early American political thought.

Abolition gains momentum

A broad movement against the slave trade developed in Britain during the 18th century, when British merchants and ships played a central role in Atlantic trafficking. Enslaved and formerly enslaved people, Black writers and organizers, religious groups and other campaigners challenged both the trade and slavery itself.

In the 1772 Somerset case, Lord Mansfield ruled that an enslaved man could not be forcibly removed from England and sent abroad for sale. The judgment did not abolish slavery throughout the British Empire, but it became an important legal and public milestone.

The 1781 Zong case intensified public attention after the ship's crew deliberately caused the deaths of more than one hundred enslaved Africans and the owners pursued an insurance claim. The resulting litigation treated the dispute as a question of property insurance rather than homicide, exposing the dehumanizing legal framework of the trade. Abolitionists used the case to build public opposition.

• 1772The Somerset decision restricted the forced removal of an enslaved person from England.
• 1783Proceedings concerning the Zong became a major focus of abolitionist campaigning.
• 1787The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was established, and William Wilberforce became a prominent parliamentary advocate.
• 1788The Privy Council gathered evidence about the slave trade as parliamentary scrutiny increased.

These developments began a long political process; they did not immediately end slavery. Enslaved people's resistance, testimony and demands for freedom were fundamental to abolition across the Atlantic world.

References represented in the archive

The original essay drew on the following historical and reference works. External links are retained as archival citations and may no longer be available.

1. P. E. Lovejoy, The African Diaspora: Revisionist Interpretations of Ethnicity, Culture and Religion under Slavery, at H-Net.
2. Chronology on the History of Slavery and Racism, at Inner City.
3. C. L. Bennett, Black Resistance: Slavery in the United States, at Afro-American Almanac.
4. Slavery in the United States, Encarta Concise Encyclopedia, formerly at Encarta.
5. Lloyd Duhaime, Montreal Hangs a Slave (1734), at Canadian legal history.
6. Michael Mullin, Africa in America: Slave Acculturation and Resistance in the American South and the British Caribbean, 1736–1831, University of Illinois Press, 1995.
7. Thomas Jefferson, material on slavery from Notes on the State of Virginia, archived at American history resources.
8. Duncan Clarke, History of American Slavery, PRC Publishing, 1998.