Since the dawn of time, men have enslaved each other based on race, war, and “money.” Enslavement was a way to show superiority over peoples, demonstrate expert war strategies and tactics, or to pay off some sort of debt or ensure the economic prosperity of a group of people. In the centuries succeeding the Columbian discovery of the New World, major world powers began the race to imperialism. Because of this contest to colonize the New World, extensive trade networks were formed across the known world. Goods from the Africans went to the British colonies, and goods from the colonies went to the mainland to later be distributed across the globe. The goods traded varied from bourbon and rum to guns and bows and arrows to the item people wanted most: slaves. Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, nearly 10 million to 20 million Africans were enslaved and …show more content…
THESIS In the monograph, New England Bound, the main thesis is that, despite the myths modern Americans have heard about slavery, American slavery is no longer defined by the nineteenth century Southern colonies; slavery was just as important in the New England colonies’ building and economic prosperity. The history of slavery is much more complicated than what modern Americans have learned in school as enslaved people were a part of Northern industry far before “King Cotton” emerged in the South. Slaves in the New England colonies were not strictly defined by race; there were Indian slaves and African slaves laboring alongside English colonists in the beginnings of America. Warren challenges the traditional claim that institutionalized slavery was southern colony-centric by giving ample evidence that slavery was used before the southern colonies were even a thought. The very survival of Jamestown depended on the presence of slave societies in the West Indies. Furthermore, Warren proves that slavery was essential to the colonists’ survival