#VICTORIA 3 SLAVERY FREE#
The decline of slavery in British North Americaīy the late 1700s, attitudes to slavery among the free population of British North America were beginning to change. Historian Jim Hornby notes that such indentured servitude contracts were “the then‐standard rate” for freedom. On Prince Edward Island in 1796, an enslaved man named Dimbo Suckles was freed, but only on the condition that he work for his former master as an indentured servant for seven years, from 1796 until 1803. In British North America, if Black enslaved people were freed, they often still had to work as indentured servants for several years. The children of enslaved people also became property, making slavery intergenerational. In contrast, slavery defined humans as property and involved lifelong forced labour. At the end of their contracts, indentured servants were free to go, and sometimes received a payment of land and goods. Indentured servitude was cruel and exploitative, but was different from the slavery that was practiced in New France and British North America. Under the system of indentured servitude, individuals signed a contract committing perform unpaid labour for a set number of years in exchange for transport, shelter and food. Physical and sexual abuse was always a very real threat.įor many years, the practice of indentured servitude existed alongside slavery in what is now Canada. 5 Defiant or troublesome enslaved people were often severely punished. Most wills from the time treated enslaved people as nothing more than property, passing on ownership of human beings the same as they would furniture, cattle or land. The very nature of slavery meant that its victims were stripped of their basic human rights and exploited. This means that some of the worst traits of slavery in America, such as the employment of overseers and the horrible practice of forcing enslaved people to reproduce, did not happen in what is now Canada. It would be wrong, however, to suggest that enslaved people in British North America were well‐treated. Compared to the United States, enslaved people made up a much smaller proportion of the population in British North America. The territory was eventually renamed British North America, and Black enslaved people came to replace Indigenous enslaved people.
Slavery continued after the British conquest of New France in 1763. With this mentality, slavers denied the fundamental human rights of millions of African men and women. Slavers saw their trade from a purely economic standpoint and viewed enslaved people as just another set of “goods” they could transport and sell. In the Americas, the surviving enslaved people would be sold and then goods produced by slave labour would be carried back to Europe for sale. In Africa, they would exchange their goods for enslaved people and then transport them to the Americas, often in cramped and inhumane conditions. With the increasing use of African enslaved people in North America, a pattern of trade emerged that has since been called the “trade triangle.” European merchants would leave Europe for Africa, travelling in ships laden with goods. The transatlantic slave trade helped shape the presence and role of slavery in Canadian history. 2 The vast majority of them were Indigenous (often called Panis 3), but Black enslaved people were also present because of the transatlantic slave trade. When New France was conquered by the British in 1759, records revealed that approximately 3,600 enslaved people had lived in the settlement since its beginnings. Slavery was a common practice in the territory. The colony of New France, founded in the early 1600s, was the first major settlement in what is now Canada.
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