The idea that military victors had the right to enslave defeated opponents was commonly held in ancient Greece and Rome.
The increasing demand for imported labor in the American colonies turned the slave trade into a large-scale and highly lucrative business.
Only a small fraction of the enslaved Africans brought to the New World ended up in British North America, with the vast majority of slaves sent to the Caribbean sugar colonies.
In the North American colonies, the importation of African slaves was directed mainly southward, where extensive tobacco, rice, and cotton plantation economies demanded extensive labor forces for cultivation; this created the Southern slave institution in the United States.
Poor working conditions, disease, and malnutrition contributed to the high mortality rate among slaves in the Americas.
Forms of slave resistance ranged from slow labor paces to violent rebellion. Slavery formed a cornerstone of the British Empire in the 18th century. Every colony had slaves, from the southern rice plantations in Charles Town, South Carolina, to the northern wharves of Boston. Slavery was more than a labor system; it also influenced every aspect of colonial thought and culture. The uneven relationship it engendered gave white colonists an exaggerated sense of their own status. English liberty gained greater meaning and coherence for whites when they contrasted their status to that of the unfree class of black slaves in British America. African slavery provided whites in the colonies with a shared racial bond and identity.
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