I read it, but didn't really 'get it'. Is he saying that Black slaves were in America before 1600, or that they accompanied the Jamestown settlers? He seems to imply that traders came to Jamestown with slaves and bartered to trade them...or something like that, I guess?
It seemed to me to be just so much erudite circumlocution very much lacking in stating distinct facts or direct statements.
@240B There were slaves in the so-called New World long before Jamestown. The natives were fond of enslaving each other,and there was slavery everywhere the Spanish went.
This is why it is always narrowed to down to "in the English-Speaking New World".
No,there were no slaves at Jamestown at first. There were indentured servants,though. Most came from England/Scotland/Ireland,but some came from the Carribean Islands. Don't ask me how they got free because I don't know.
There were however black INDENTURED servants at Jamestown. They were a part of the plan from day one because it is backbreaking,brutal work to clear forests using shovels and axes so you can plant cash crops. Without virtually free labor,and lots of it,the colony would have failed.
It was a BLACK former indentured servant named Johnson who had worked off his labor commitment and been given land to start his own farm that brought the first man into the English-Speaking New World and enslaved him. He brought a black man from one of the Caribbean Islands as an indentured servant,and when the man had worked off his obligation,refused to free him because he claimed the mans labor would never match the expenses of bringing him in,feeding,housing,and clothing him,and giving him medical care. He took this to the Colonial Court to prove his case,and won. Once he won he brought in other slaves,and had a successful tobacco farm that he later sold when he moved to Maryland to open a horse farm. He was a wealthy man raising race horses when he died.