Was the importation of African slaves to the Caribbean based in racism or purely on economic need? (MIC)

by longboardshayde

disclaimer this is for an essay, so obviously I don't expect anyone to be writing a paper for me in the comments, but I'm having some difficulty finding good sources on the topic.

The topic of my essay is to debate whether Caribbean plantation owners were importing slaves from Africa due to the fact that they thought of Africans as inferior and therefore ok to enslave, or if they simply just wanted cheap labor and didn't care where it came from, but over time they used racism to justify it.

If any knowledgeable people have some specific examples I could use to help get me started, or have recommendations on good Books or Journal articles on the subject I would be forever in your debt, as so far I've had a lot trouble finding material that specifically talks about this.

Thank you all!

sowser

Without giving away too much, I've put together a quick reading list that should help you get started and put you in a stronger position for finding further material on your own. Hope this helps!

Useful Books

  • Winthrop Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550 - 1812, The University of North Carolina Press, 1968. (If you can't get hold of this, try looking for The White Man's Burden - it's an abridged edition published in 1974)
  • Hilary Beckles, White Servitude and Black Slavery in Barbados, University of Tennesse Press, 1989.
  • Virginia Bernard, Slaves and Slaveholders in Bermuda, 1616 - 1782, University of Missouri Press, 1999 (esp. pp 49 - 93).
  • Karen Kuperman, Providence Island, 1630 - 1641: The Other Puritan Colony, Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Useful Articles

  • Hilary Beckles and Andrew Downes, "An Economic Formalization of the Origins of Black Slavery in the British West Indies, 1624 - 1645", Social and Economic Studies 34, no. 2 (1985): 1 - 25.
  • Hilary Beckles and Andrew Downes, "The Economics of Transition to the Black Labor System in Barbados, 1630 - 1680", The Americas 4, no. 3 (1995): 21 - 45.
  • Hilary Beckles, "Plantation Production and White "Proto-Slavery": White Indentured Servants and the Colonisation of the English West Indies, 1624 - 1645", The Americas 41, no. 3 (1985): 21 - 45.
  • Edward Rugemer, "The Development of Mastery and Race in the Comprehensive Slave Codes of the Greater Caribbean during the Seventeenth Century", The William and Mary Quarterly 70, no. 3 (2013): 429 - 458.
  • Alden Vaughan, "The Origins Debate: Slavery and Racism in Seventeenth-Century Virginia", The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 97, no. 3 (1989): 311 - 354. This article is a superb tracing of the scholarship about Virginia; a very useful starting point if you plan to make comparisons with continental North America.