Defining Characteristic 3:

Slavery was motivated by money and business, but the practice was justified using science and religion.

Introduction

From the first two characteristics of slavery, we learned how the European empires and independent American states enslaved millions of people of African descent. The system said that enslaved people had a lower social status because of their race, and they were considered property.

The third defining characteristic of the systems of slavery used in the Americas shows a contradiction. Countries such as Britain, France, Brazil, and the United States were proud supporters of freedom and liberty, yet they all used and profited from slavery. How could they support freedom, yet justify slavery? What really motivated their willingness to enslave other human beings?

Today’s world supports access to equal rights, so it is difficult to understand a time when laws were put in place to ensure social inequality. (That’s not a typo; inequality was the goal.) To understand how human beings came to be legally defined as property, we have to make a distinction between motivations and justifications. The motivations for slavery are the reasons why people wanted to use slavery in the first place. The justifications are the beliefs that were used to legalize and maintain this horrible and unfair form of labor.

What were the motivations for using enslaved labor?

The use of enslaved labor in the Americas was about money. Its sole purpose was to generate wealth for people at the top of the racial hierarchy. This came at the expense of the freedom of those people at the bottom of the racial hierarchy. In this period, wealth was created by selling goods for a profit. For example, if it costs $10 to make a product and you sell the product for $30, you make a profit of $20.

Labor was one major cost of making a product. Forcing men, women, and children of African descent to work for no money helped Europeans spend less on labor. They could force the enslaved to work as many hours as possible. As a result, European business owners made a bigger profit. The enslaved were forced to work in various settings, including cotton plantations, mines, and homes throughout the Americas.

Regardless of the kind of labor, the relationship between the enslaved people and the person for whom they worked was not employer and employee. They were treated extremely unfairly. Their relationship was legally defined as a relationship between “owner” and “property.” The enslaved could not ask for a fair wage or seek other work opportunities. Only those who legally owned enslaved people had the power to determine their labor conditions.

Slavery ended in the Americas throughout the nineteenth century, but today we can still see evidence of all the personal wealth it generated. Most of the profits made from the use of enslaved labor on sugar, coffee, and cocoa plantations in the Caribbean, for example, were sent back to countries in Europe. These funds were sometimes used to start other businesses. Other times the funds were spent on maintaining luxurious lifestyles.

Below, the top photo shows the luxurious Harewood House in Leeds. Today, it is still celebrated as one of the “Treasure Houses of England.” It was built in the mid-eighteenth century by members of the very wealthy Lascelles family, who had earned profits using slave labor on the sugar plantations in the Caribbean. Compare this image to the artist William Clark’s 1823 painting below. It shows enslaved men, women, and children at work on a sugar plantation on the Caribbean island of Antigua. Consider how these images show two extremes of wealth and poverty, yet they represented the same system of slavery.

What were the justifications for using enslaved labor?

The motivations for using enslaved labor were about making money—that part was simple. But the justifications for a labor system based on racial inequality were often explained in very different terms. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, enslavement tended to be justified in religious terms. Supporters of slavery argued that slavery existed in the Bible, or that it was God’s plan that Africans be enslaved.

It was not until the eighteenth century that people began using science to explain ideas about race. However, it’s clear that these scientific arguments were built on racial biases. People argued that science proved how people of African descent lacked intelligence and had a natural need to live under the control of white people. Some doctors even argued that freedom was damaging to the mental health of the enslaved. None of these claims had any evidence, and scientific research has proven them wrong.

Conclusions

Slavery is illegal in these societies today, and later in this course we will explore how it became illegal.¹ It is important to remember, however, that we still deal with the consequences of slavery in the present day. What are some ways in which the effects of slavery continue today? How do the justifications for slavery continue on in racist ideas and language?

In the present day, it is important to understand and reflect on the historical relationship between racism and economic opportunities. Today, there are often racial differences between rich and poor communities. In what ways are the economic situations of rich or poor communities a consequence of slavery? A deeper and more accurate understanding of this troubling past allows for a better understanding of the present. It can help us develop solutions to the social problems and challenges we face today.