Slavery in British North America and the Caribbean Essay

Slavery in British North America and the Caribbean - Essay Example While slavery certainly had some significant economic factors, and which were vastly different in the north from the south, the fact remains that slavery was primarily an institution based on race and dehumanization rather than economics. Slavery in the northern and southern colonies were very different institutions, largely because of the divergent economic development that occurred in those areas. In the northern colonies, cash crops were not the staples of the economy, rather manufacturing and other early industrial practices reigned supreme. These are areas that were not especially suited to the practice of slavery, because they needed highly skilled, willing workers. In this economy slaves usually served either in service professions (maids and so forth) or else as assistants, but were not fundamental to the economy and could easily be changed into low-paid workers. In the south, on the other hand, much of the economy developed around a select group of cash crops, most importantly tobacco and cotton. These crops were both some of the most labor-intensive crops to develop – cotton especially took hundreds of hours to pick and process before the development of the cotton gin in the later 19th century. This m eant that the southern economy found slavery an especially useful convention, and began building itself more and more around having plentiful unpaid labor. The huge amount of slaves that were involved in the development of the southern colonies also meant that any attempt to move away from the practice of slavery would be especially costly – instead of a business having to pay one or two extra employees, they would have had to pay hundreds, and vastly improve working conditions. This meant that slavery became a much more prolific and important structure in the south than in the north.