Week 3 — Colonial Society & the Origins of Slavery

Why this matters

A future nurse reading a family medical history and a business student reading the fine print of a labor contract both meet this week's question: how did contracts and laws decide who was free, and what does the record of them leave out?

In plain language

This week is about who did the work in England's colonies, and how colonial law turned some of those workers into people held in slavery for life. An indentured servant worked for a set number of years under a contract and then went free. Hereditary racial slavery was different: colonial laws made it last for life, pass from mother to child, and attach to African descent. You will read the week's document, a plan of government for the colony of Carolina, and see what it gave to enslavers. You will also meet the Middle Passage — the forced crossing of the Atlantic that carried captive Africans to the Americas — and a wave of religious revivals in the colonies.

• Already covered: Week 1's four moves for reading a source, and Week 2's English colonies, from the First Charter of Virginia to the Mayflower Compact.
• This week: colonial labor, servitude, 1619, the Middle Passage, the laws of slavery, the Carolina frame, and the First Great Awakening.
• How they connect: you read this week's document with Week 1's four moves, in the colonies Week 2 put on the map.
• Where we're going next: Week 4, The Road to Revolution, begins a new unit.

Focus

How did England's colonies come to depend on bound labor, and how was slavery built into colonial law?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• [ ] tell indentured servitude from hereditary racial slavery
• [ ] state what the National Park Service reports about 1619, with its source
• [ ] source the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina and end in one plain sentence
• [ ] explain where the Middle Passage carried most captives

To-do

Plan your week

1. Read Chapter 3 (~50–60 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes).
3. Work the practice set (15–25 minutes).
4. Do the Primary Source Workshop (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment.
5. Take the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: ask of any status whether it ends and whether it passes to children.

You've got this

This week's history is heavy, and old legal language is hard. Take breaks, and ask your instructor if a step snags.

Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com