edmund morgan's american slavery american freedom

Morgan then describes the economics of the Atlantic slave trade during the 17th century and explains how, over time, enslaved Africans became a cheaper labor source to Virginian planters than indentured servants from England, causing the population of poor whites to stop growing while the population of black enslaved workers grew proportionately larger. Morgan also suggests that rebel leader Nathaniel Bacon, in encouraging his followers' vengeful hatred of Indians-whatever their tribe and peaceableness-provided Virginia with its first instance of 'racism as a political strategy.'

Morgan then focuses on the conflict in 17th century Virginia between the self-serving governing oligarchy and the much larger populations of land-owning freemen, poor freemen, white indentured servants, and black slaves (the last, originally a very small percentage of the population) he shows how such uprisings as Bacon's Rebellion left the oligarchs worried about retaining power. Much of the book is a description of the problem of poverty in England during the 1600s, one of the solutions to which was to send the English poor (many of them shiftless troublemakers) over to the American colonies as indentured servants. Among voluminous other sources, Morgan employs the archives of Virginia's House of Burgesses, circa 1620 and beyond to explore this paradox and find an explanation for it. Synopsis Īmerican Slavery, American Freedom is Morgan's answer to the paradox which he himself formulates in the beginning of the book: that of Virginia being both the birthplace of the democratic republican United States and, at the same time, the largest slave-holding colony and later, state.

The work was first published in September 1975 through W W Norton & Co Inc and is considered to be one of Morgan's seminal works. American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia is a 1975 history text by American historian Edmund Morgan.

Edmund morgan's american slavery american freedom