Slave Societies in the Americas

Africans and their descendants were enslaved in every country of the Americas, from Canada to Chile. The experiences in slavery and freedom for Africans and African Americans, broadly defined here as the descendants of slaves brought from Africa to anywhere in the New World, varied considerably. Several factors shaped their experiences: the nature of slave regimes in different economic regions, patterns of manumission (individual slaves gaining their freedom), the nature of abolition (the ending of the institution of slavery), and the proportion of the local population they represented.

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Slaves Sold South from Richmond, 1853This scene was painted by a British artist, based on scenes he witnessed in the U.S. South twenty years after slavery was abolished in the British Empire. Being “sold south,” as this image depicts, was a terrifying fate. In addition to having their families ripped apart, those who were sold were sent to plantations where the labor regimes were famously harsh. Note the ways in which the artist depicts not only the slave families but also the white, mixed, and free black traders. (After the Sale: Slaves Going South from Richmond, 1853 [oil on canvas], by Eyre Crowe [1824–1910]/© Chicago History Museum, U.S.A./The Bridgeman Art Library)> PICTURING THE PASTANALYZING THE IMAGE: How are images of families used in this depiction of slavery? How are whites and free blacks represented?CONNECTIONS: Can you think of other examples of art with social or political messages? How would this painting compare in its effectiveness?

The settlement of Africans as slaves was the most intense in areas that relied on plantation agriculture. Plantations were an unusual kind of farming: they were typically enormous tracts of land dedicated to cultivating a single crop on a scale so great that plantation regions usually supplied distant global markets. The massive scale of this kind of agriculture, along with the practice of importing African labor to sustain it, originated in the sugar region of northeastern Brazil under the Portuguese. African slaves played many other roles as well. From Buenos Aires to Boston, slavery was also widespread in port cities, fed by easy access to the slave trade and the demand for street laborers such as porters. And across the Americas, slaves — especially slave women — were forced into domestic service, a role that added sexual abuse to the miseries that slaves endured.