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Establishment of Peru and Mexico
By this time, these two viceroyalties were well established but struggling. Native labor had run out and working the silver mines became gradually more difficult as slave labor was scarce. This is a significant time because the need for a slave trade was becoming more evident and apparent, and the economic implications would be heavy if Spain could not continually increase their profits from these places in the New World. This is the beginning of extreme demand for slaves. -
Slaves Imported Into Jamestown
In this year, the first African slaves were imported into the Jamestown, Virginia colony. Economically, this was a positive thing for the colonists because it allowed the struggling colony to begin to prosper economically. The slave labor allowed for the large tobacco plantations to have a greater agricultural output, supporting the mercantilist system set up by Great Britain. -
Slavery Becomes Hereditary
Courts in the colonies passed a law in this year that declared the condition of a child born to an African mother would depend on the condition of the mother, meaning that if the mother was a slave so would be the child. This created a sense of social immobility for slave families, as newer generations could not escape the bonds of their ancestry. However, economically this guaranteed a continuous influx of slave labor for slaveowners, stimulating economic production. -
Bacon's Rebellion
This is the most famous slave revolt that took place in the American colonies, led by Nathaniel Bacon. Although easily put down by the colonies, this demonstrated a shift socially in the slave trade and the existence of the institution of slavery. Slave revolts were becoming more frequent and powerful, foreshadowing the long and grueling journey toward the ending of slavery with the US Civil War and the eventual fight for civil rights. -
End of the Kongo Wars
In this year, the sixty year period of the Kongo wars came to an end. These wars allowed for the rapid development of the slave trade, as European slave traders took advantage of the discord in Africa and exploited the warring states for slave labor. Socially, this further developed some of the widely held discriminatory beliefs about races, Europeans believing themselves to be superior to the Africans they were taking advantage of. -
Abolishing of the Slave Trade
With Great Britain's ban on the slave trade, the United States could no longer import slaves from Africa. The largest economic implication of this was the loss of revenue from the actual trade itself, but the use of slaves within the colonies continued for quite some time after this point. The social implication of the racial hierarchy remained. Demographic collapse has occurred in Africa.
