The standard argument here was made by Eric Williams in Capitalism and Slavery way back in the 30s already. He argues that the New World, seen as it was as an endless expanse of free land (because Native peoples didn't count, obviously), offered anyone who was free (including laborers) the opportunity to pick up and start their own farm by moving slightly further into the interior. For this reason, free labor was unsustainable because you could not find enough people willing to work for someone else when they could just as easily work for themselves. This left only unfree labor as a way for large farming interests to succeed. Of the three groups available - Natives (usually as slaves), Europeans (as indentured servants), and Africans (as slaves) - Africans proved to be the most suitable because they could not simply blend in the the local environment easily (like the Natives could) because they were unfamiliar with the terrain, fauna, flora, local peoples, etc. Nor could Africans blend in easily in another settler colony with other Europeans, as indentured servants who ran away easily could. Africans had little recourse that other groups had and as such made the best stock of unfree labor. The belief that Africans were destined for slavery and wider white racism generally was then later created to explain this system.

Like I said, this is the basic standard argument from some time ago. I know this work is still quite influential (its still standard fair for graduate school classes), but I'm relatively certain that there have been updates and revisions to the argument in the intervening 80 years. I'll go ahead and page /u/ThucydidesWasAwesome, as he wrote a recent post specifically on Capitalism and Slavery that you might be interested in.

Hey, OP. Apologies for removing your post. It seemed like you were asking us to do your homework or someone else's. Another user pointed out that this was a screencapped image that has already done the rounds online.

I have restored your question and the replies. In the future definitely let us know context like this before you post so as to avoid further mix-ups.

I can also offer an answer to your question.

First and foremost, I'm rather confused as to why this question would be on a 5th grade social studies quiz. The classic 'answer' is pretty simple but it is something I didn't learn until college.

Now, to the meat of the question. One of the most influential answers to this is that given by Marx in Capital. He points out, in his short chapter on colonies in the Americas, that slaves were introduced due to the socio-economic realities of the Americas. Specifically, in England you had a surplus of population which would be herded into poorly paid jobs on other people's lands or as proletarians in the bigger cities. The inability of peasant holdings to provide for the needs of all the people who were being born forced them to seek work elsewhere. As no easy land was readily available, for squatting or for purchase at reasonable and accessible prices, they would have no choice.

In the Americas, however, barely settled or completely unsettled land was just a matter of moving West. Population density was also fairly low. So, as Marx points out, it wasn't a matter of importing the tools, Capital, and expertise needed to run a business (urban or rural) in England. They also needed to import the socio-economic relations (today we'd probably call them 'social structures') which obliged people to work for others at low pay.

In colonial era America, indentured servants were used at first and as the mainstay of labor for years. However, this had two main drawbacks. First, indentured servants were only under contract to work in very tough and demanding labor with little compensation for a few years. After that, they had rights to a grant of a plot of land of their own. This meant a need to constantly import new workers from abroad, train them, and deal with fluctuations in the number of people in England who wanted to immigrate under those circumstances. While the terms of their contracts could be and were abused, they were at least recognized as people and in principle guaranteed rights. This combination of basic rights (at least in principle) and relatively short periods of contracted service (as opposed to being property in perpetuity) were drawbacks from an economic point of view. Second, with how fast production was expanding, with new lands constantly being turned into plantations for ever growing markets back home, slaves were an important source of laborers to (first) supplement and (second) replace white indentured servants. The economic benefits of exploiting slaves ended up beating indentured servants. This was even more so in cases like Barbados or other British islands in the Caribbean, where land was far more limited and which, as a result, ran out of land to offer indentured servants once their periods of servitude were over. This took away a good part of the incentive to come as an indentured servant to begin with and helped contribute to the decline of servitude and rise of slavery in the Caribbean much faster than on the mainland.

Hope it helps.

Hello there. Unfortunately we have had to remove your question as it looks like it may be a homework question. A couple of things to keep in mind about this: Our rules DO permit people to ask for help with their homework, so long as they are seeking clarification or resources, rather than the answer itself. Also: Sometimes flairs can be reluctant to answer a question that looks like homework, because they don't want to be involved in plagiarism (and sadly, yes, there are those who plagiarize reddit comments).

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