George Mason Reason For Slavery

“Considering the natural lust for power so inherent in man, I fear the thirst of power will prevail to oppress the people” (Mason).

These words, spoken by George Mason at the Virginia Ratifying Convention of 1788, touch right at the core of the most troubling problem ever seen in the history of the United States. With this sentence Mason, perhaps unknowingly, points out the main incentive for the establishment of the institution of slavery: a lust for power. Slavery is not, as many people understandably believe, motivated by racial conceptions. In fact, slavery long predates racism. The reason for slavery can be found in economic motives, which have always driven European colonizers. As Eric Williams wrote in his famous study Capitalism and

Especially England, which was embroiled in a great struggle for power with Spain, felt great need to start their own colonization of the West. As the English writer and promoter of English colonization Richard Hakluyt the Younger wrote on the necessity of colonization: “this western voyage will yield onto us all the commodities of Europe, Africa and Asia as far as we were want to travel, and supply the wants of all are decayed trades.” From the beginning of the seventeenth century the English started settling on the east coast of what we now call the United States. In 1607 the first permanent English settlement, the Jamestown Colony, was established by the Virginia Company of London. It is shortly hereafter that the first form of slavery in United States came into existence: indentured

After the establishment of the first colonies the early English settlers had a lot of land but very few people to take care of it. The high mortality rates in Virginia made labor scarce and a valuable commodity. Thus, indentured servitude came into existence out of a need for cheap labor. The basic idea of indentured servitude was that people, mostly young men, signed away their freedom to work on a colony plantation for a fixed numbers of years in exchange for food, shelter and the possibility to own a piece of land at the end of their service (Olthof). Although there were some laws to protect the rights of the servants their circumstances of living were not ideal. Nevertheless the system of indentured servitude was able to attract a lot of workers, because the economic conditions back in England were very bad. Especially a large amount of young men emigrated to the Virginia area to volunteer as indentured servants in the hope of providing themselves with a better future (Olthof). As Richard Hakluyt described it this enterprise, which is the voyage to the west, will be “for the manifold employment of numbers of idle men.” Another part of servants was made up of prisoners and such people who were send to the colonies to work on the plantations. For colonial landowners and plantation owners the system of indentured