well and welcome back to heimlich history now if you're just joining us we've been going through unit 2 of the ap us history curriculum which is all about the british colonies in north america you know history isn't all puppies and rainbows so we got to talk about one of the nasty sides of british colonization in this video namely the causes and effects of slavery in the various british colonial regions so if you're ready i'm ready let's get to it now in previous videos for this unit we've talked about the atlantic slave trade which was responsible for transporting something like 3 million captive africans to the british colonies in north america and the caribbean i've also talked about the horrors of the middle passage in which these captive africans were packed into the holes of ships so densely that there was scarcely any room for them to breathe and in those conditions about half a million died during transport but now we need to turn our attention to how this institution of slavery shaped the societies in which it flourished now you might be thinking that we're only going to talk about the south in this video but in thinking that you'd be wrong all of the british colonies participated in and benefited from the african slave trade and one of the significant reasons for the explosion of demand for enslaved laborers from africa is the combination of the increased demand for colonial agricultural goods combined with the shortage of indentured servants to perform said agricultural labor now you might recall that we talked about bacon's rebellion in 1676 in which disgruntled and dentured servants allied with enslaved african people in the uprising against the colonial governor of virginia and this rebellion made most of the white elites twitchy about further uprisings and alliances among these two groups and therefore they decided to rely more fully on african slavery than indentured servitude okay that being the case let's look at how the population of these enslaved africans was distributed along the british colonies up in new england their farms were in general smaller and they held fewer enslaved africans by comparison they also worked in agricultural estates in the middle colonies like new york and new jersey although a larger portion of their enslaved laborers worked as household servants now all the major port cities like new york city held significant numbers of enslaved people who worked as sea men and dock workers in blacksmiths for example moving a little further south to the chesapeake and southern colonies they held far more enslaved people which they needed for their emerging plantation system if you go further south into the british west indies the greatest portion of african laborers ended up there so just a view of visual here relatively few enslaved people here comparatively more hear a butt load and hear a metric butt load so it's easier to remember the further south you go on the map the more they relied on enslaved labor okay so that's where slavery existed and established itself now let's shift and talk about how the nature of slavery changed in the british colonies now the term for this kind of race-based slavery is called chattel slavery and the word chattel just means property these enslaved people were on the accounting of those who owned them on the level of a farm tool or a domesticated animal now i know that sounds awful but this is how they justified holding other people in bondage now since the british west indies were the leaders in the slave trade their practices influenced how the institution was carried out elsewhere especially in the southern colonies and perhaps their most notable influence was in the establishment of harsh slave laws in virginia for example they followed the example of barbados enacted these laws which did the following they legally defined african laborers as chattel additionally slavery was made a perpetual institution that was passed from one generation to the next and as time went on these laws became harsher and harsher for example in the later part of the 17th century virginian plantation owners were granted the legal right to kill his enslaved laborers if they defied his authority and then in 1680 a law was added to make it illegal for any black person to possess any weapons of any kind nor could they legally leave the plantation without formal permission from the slave owner and furthermore these slave laws because they established this firm line of demarcation between the white and the black races made any interracial relationships illegal so all that to say it got really bad for the enslaved laborers who were sold into the possession of plantation owners but if that's where we left it i wouldn't be telling you the whole story in that case the enslaved africans would just be the victims of a race-based system of labor and then we would pity them but one of the most encouraging movements in the retelling of this history lately has been the emphasis on slave resistance now as you might expect even if you were never taught it these africans who were captured and sold into such harsh conditions didn't just resign themselves to this new reality so it's going to be very important for you to know that these enslaved people actually found ways to resist this dehumanizing institution and they did this both covertly and overly among the covert means of resistance some of the enslaved people secretly practiced cultural customs from their homeland and then additionally others maintained their belief systems and spoke their native languages and kept their naming practices from home and still others slowed the pace of work by breaking tools and damaging crops but these kinds of resistance were the least of the worries of the plantation owners what they worried about most was the overt rebellion among slaves and this was particularly worrisome where the black population was in the majority as it was in the british west indies but in 1739 these fears actually became a reality in south carolina in an event known as the stono rebellion a small group of enslaved men stole weapons from a store and then proceeded to kill the white owners of that store and as they marched along the stono river more enslaved men joined them burning plantations to the ground and killing more white folks along the way they had grown about 50 strong when the white militia finally overtook and confronted them and in short order the rebellion was squashed and most of the rebellious slaves were either killed in battle or hanged later now despite their defeat it's important to know that such events directly challenged the common narrative of plantation owners who understood themselves as the benevolent caretakers of lesser beings they often told themselves that it was the merciful thing to do to bring such beings under their care and events like the stono rebellion were proof however that the enslaved people did not agree alright that's what you need to know about unit 2 topic 6 of the ap us history curriculum now you might want to go ahead and click here and grab a view packet for a push which will help you get an a in your class and a 5 on your exam in math if you want these videos to keep coming then go ahead and subscribe and let me know i'm laurel