Slavery refers to a situation whereby individuals are considered to be belongings and are merchandised. In the American history, slaves were used as workforce by the colonizers in their tobacco, cotton and other agricultural activities. The slaves were also used in development of economic actions such as construction of roads, railways, houses and fighting towers.
Due to the hardships and poor working conditions, the slaves had to find ways and means of survival. They created their own culture and the lifestyles. To start with, they built a very strong societal bound (Fletcher 2004). They started living as a community. They exchanged matrimony vows in an official manner and had kids.
Moreover, the slaves took up family practices. For example, they started using words such as uncle, sister etcetera to refer to people they lived with though not linked by blood. This kind of relationship helped them tighten there kinship ties and have a real sense of understanding amongst them.
Secondly, the slaves had another culture of worshiping. They put up religious conviction that seemed dissimilar to other types of Christianity that the colonizers wanted them to follow. They adopted their own modes of increasing their faith in prayers that mostly were believed to bring goodness in their misery life. The prayers helped them to see the right far end the tunnel in their doomed and darkness environment.
The slaves used the cold war to resist against their masters. For example, they used to act as if they were unwell at any time they had an opportunity so that do not work. They also worked very at a snail’s pace whenever got a chance especially when not supervised.
Despite of the colonizers harshness and harassment of the innocent creatures, the slaves tried to resist their rule in various ways. For instance, the slaves used to destroy their masters by poisoning them especially in food. They also would find an excuse of not working by damaging the operational instruments thus affecting their proper functioning.
The slaves cheated their masters by requesting for a moment to excrete their messed stomach hence run away (Barry 2008). They tricked their masters in other ways such as pretended to be unwell to run away from work. For example, the expectant mothers and girls took advantage of their conditions to stay absent from work.
The slaves acted as if they could not comprehend with the orders from their masters and loitered in work as a way of resisting. Moreover, the slaves resisted the extreme hardship and harassment from their masters by dancing and singing songs full of irony and criticism as a way of scorning them. They also used to disappear without their master’s knowledge and settle in forest and mountains where they tried to kill their masters in addition to committing infanticide and suicide.
As far as colonization was concerned, gender sensitivity was put into consideration. Women and men were treated differently. There were a lot of sexual category detailed divergences in slavery. The women did not trek to toil with men in muscular job categories especially those below the deck, instead they were accepted to travel a one forth of the deck in absence of shackles.
This made the women readily available for satisfying the sexual urge of the men carrying out their chore duties in the sea. The sailors badly treated the women and in fact less or no at all efforts were made to prevent them from the sexual harassment.
Women were taken to be items or rather goods and services in business language in sense that, the demand for them was different due to tastes and preferences. For instance, the women who could bear children had the highest demand. They were believed to give birth to a lot of children exclusive of difficulties (Fletcher 2004).
The merchants scrutinized the women closed to make sure that they get the right choice for themselves. The woman who could bear a child following each two years was well thought-out to be extra cost-effective than the most excellent male functioning on the ranch. This made her to have a high price than any other slave in the vicinity.
In real occurrence of the slavery world, men were taken to be more costly than women. Most of the women were used for labor and for sexual purposes for the male slaves. Women were used to do the household cores such as; cooking, seamstresses and cleaning. Men and women sometimes shared some obligations like home servants and becoming gardeners. The expectant women were well taken care of hence were not taken as slaves.
Men were kept beneath the deck. They had to be kept far from masters because men had more strength hence the colonizers feared them (Barry 2008). Men were valued in the market situation by their capacity to carry out duties in the farm rather than their fertility as it was the the case to women.
The men examination was carried out in the plantations where the most excellent job performer was considered to be most expensive. Men duties were different from women duties but in some cases they worked together for more production to be attained.
In conclusion, slavery remained a history to tell in America. The slaves improved to a great extent the economy of America by increasing the per capita income due to high production level. Some slaves remained in America, even after independence currently known as black Americans.
Works Cited
Barry, Tony. Forced Labor and Human Trafficking, Washington, DC: University Press, 2008. Print.
Fletcher, Stover. Hidden Slaves and Forced Labor in the United States, University of California, Berkeley: Free the Slaves and Human Rights Center, 2004. Print.