Slavery, Jamestown Colony, 1619

Landing Negroes at Jamestown from Dutch man-of-war, 1619. Slavery in Virginia dates to 1619, soon after the founding of Virginia as an English colony by the London Virginia Company. The company established a system to encourage colonists to transport indentured servants to the colony for labor; they received a certain amount of land for people whose passage they paid to Virginia. Africans first appeared in Virginia in 1619, brought by English privateers from a Spanish slave ship they had intercepted. Some laws regarding slavery of Africans were passed in the 17th century and codified into Virginia's first slave code in 1705. Among laws affecting slaves was one of 1662, which said that children born in the colony would take the social status of their mothers, regardless of who their fathers were. This was in contrast to English common law of the time, and resulted in generation after generation of enslaved persons, including mixed-race children and adults, some of whom were majority white

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1619 Chattel Colonists Cruel Cruelty Indentured Infamous Inhumane Inhumanity Jamestown Notorious Servants Seventeeth Transatlantic Triangular

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