Slavery And Barbados Similarities

American colonial history is a strange period in time. There are main powers that fight for land and there are people that tried to get their land back. There are people that were enslave against their wills and force to do harsh labor until death. Later in American colonial period, beliefs become wild and spread like wildfire. All these events tied up to show that although life in Barbados differ from Massachusetts in term of beliefs, food, and labor, but there are similarities as well. Beliefs are part of someone’s culture, whether it is part or a religion or a tradition or a survival skill that passed down. In Barbados, the beliefs are mostly about the spiritual world. For example, according to Breslaw, Arawak tribe would worship

There were two types of labor, indentured servants and slavery. Indentured servants are bound by contract servants that worked two to seven years long in exchange for freedom dues, such as clothes, guns, and possibly land. They are skilled craftsmen, unmarried women, and orphaned children. Slavery is the opposite of indentured servants. The slaves are bound for life unless they escaped or received their freedom. Barbados, according to Breslaw, “the major source of labor in Barbados until the middle of seventeenth century was immigrant indentured servants from the British Isles, particularly England.” The planters did not choose the Native Americans for labor in the plantation because “the Indian death rate was so high following contact with Europeans and their passive resistance to labor demands.” The planters started to choose African slaves when they participated the Atlantic Slave Trade in 1640s. According to Breslaw, “African slaves were more valuable in the sugar fields, but were often suspected of conspiracies against the planters.” In Massachusetts, however, there are also indentured servants and slavery, but they are protected by the laws. According to Breslaw, the servants or slaves were “considered a part of a family and subject to a more general set of laws and obligations to the head of the household and the community.” The servants or slaves are protected under the laws as long as there are no wrong doings. The indentured servants and slaves in Massachusetts were treated as family members, “shared the table with masters and their families.” The similarities between Barbados and Massachusetts are labor in both locations are harsh. Another example is the women are more valued due to their skills and their endurance of the “hazards of disease and accident far better than their male counterparts.” The women servants and slaves were cheaper to purchase and some could adapt to