Can you imagine what the world would be like if slavery in America didn’t last nearly as long as it did? Think of how much quicker whites and blacks and races in between would have reached racial equality, and how much fewer racism there might be in the world, let alone America. While reading the three readings for this week, I was amazed at how much more fairly slaves were treated by the Dutch in the 17th century. In my opinion, they would have been freed a lot quicker under British rule, though before anything of the sort could happen, the British undid the progress when they captured the New Netherland and New Amsterdam colonies in 1664.
I was first of all amazed at how many more rights slaves in the New Netherland and New Amsterdam colonies had compared to what I originally thought. Of course, all slaves had too few rights for their lives to be considered fair, but the rights they were given under the Dutch West India Company made me feel as if they were closer to being considered “real” humans than they ever would be. For instance, slaves in these two colonies were given the same trial rights as white people- they could sue their owners, and, as Harris records, victories in court were not uncommon. They could also work for wages and own any property that wasn’t real estate or other slaves. They were also, for a time, trained to be skilled workers. Their rights in the court and their rights to even petition for their own freedom supports the notion that early slaves in the New Netherland and New Amsterdam colonies were a lot smarter and a lot more savvy of politics, law, negotiation, and culture than they would later become under British rule.
Christianity, for many years, was also an available avenue in helping slaves get their freedom, or at least half-freedom (yet another privilege for slaves: half-freedom, while it still made half-free slaves work and pay tribute to the Dutch West India Company, allowed them to own land and have a family and apprentice or indenture their still-slave children). European settlers in New Amsterdam and New Netherland justified slavery as a means to convert “heathen” African slaves to Christianity. Harris notes that once the slaves were converted, they would have been freed, but at that point, they were too reliant on their labor and didn’t. Nonetheless, annually, from 1635 to 1655, one to three black children were baptized in the Dutch Reformed Church, and Dutch Reformed ministers performed marriages between enslaved and free backs. Without a doubt, slaves saw the benefits of pledging their allegiance to Christianity and used their “Christianity” as a weapon in petitioning for their freedom. Unfortunately, Europeans suspected other motives behind their religious “dedication”, and stopped converting slaves in 1655.
Things took a turn for the worse when the British took over the New Amsterdam and New Netherland colonies and renamed them “New York” in 1664, for British rule of slaves was about to get much more brutal. The slave population increased faster than the white population between 1698 and 1738, at the same time that both prices of and demand for slaves was increasing. They believed in enslaving blacks regardless of Christian status, and in 1706 decreed that converting slaves did not equal freedom. Procreation among slaves was nearly impossible, as many households only had one slave. Slaves freed after 1712 could not buy land, and curfews, public punishments, and executions of slaves also increased dramatically. Harris notes that slaves committed a lot more theft and, and a lot more slaves ran away under British rule than under Dutch rule. Slave rebellions in the North are elaborated on at length in the “Black and White Manhattan” reading.
We are left with two very different styles of rule over slaves: the brutal, strict rule of the British, and the comparatively lax rule of the Dutch. The readings for this week certainly exposed the Northern colonies as not as “great” for slaves as it is generalized to be, for the same amount of unfairness existed for Northern slaves as it did for Southern slaves. The difference between the two halves is merely the labor style and quantity of slaves. Here are questions to consider:
1. Why do you think the British rule of slaves was so much more severe than the Dutch rule? What caused the Dutch’s comparative lenience?
2. Do you think that slavery would have ended sooner (in the North, at least) if the Dutch continued ruling the New York area and the British hadn’t taken over? How would the economy of America have been different?
12 Responses to Spark – Annmarie Errico, Week of 2/28/12