What was the institution of slavery like in England's Atlantic seaboard colonies?

Answer 1

Well one thing is the prevalence. In the Caribbean the vast majority of people were enslaved Africans. In British North America, even in the South, most people were white Europeans. Now in many of the heaviest slave districts, the slaves would outnumber the whites, and in South Carolina there were eventually more slaves than whites. But overall, whites still predominated. This numerical superiority gave the white population in North American more freedom to oppose the British homeland. The whites in the Caribbean colonies had many of the same grievances as North Americans in the 1760s and 1770s, but they were far more dependent on the British military to keep them safe from their slave majorities.

The other difference is crops grown. In the Caribbean, sugar dominated agricultural production. In British North America the big cash crop for slaves was tobacco. Slaves in the North generally served as supplemental labor for farms or as urban servants, but in the South the big moneymaker was tobacco.

And one of the big differences was supply and makeup of the slave populace. The Caribbean was really unhealthy for people and many slaves didn't live long once they got there, dying in a few years. So they constantly needed new supplies of slaves to keep up their workforce. If you look at the statistics for the Atlantic Slave Trade, most of the slaves imported went to either Brazil or the Caribbean. What this meant is that the slave population in the Caribbean was constantly being refreshed with new imports from Africa and was consequently a lot more African in culture. British North America was different. It had a healthier disease environment and so slaves weren't as likely to drop dead in a few years. This meant that slaves could live longer and start families. The slave population in British North America was unusual in that a lot of the increase in population was from "natural increase", ie births, rather than importation.

Answer 2

1. Main crop worked was tobacco.
2. Planters preferred European indentured servants up until the 1670s.
3. Early slaves were treated much like indentured servants.