Slavery in Canada

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Slavery in Canada had been practiced for thousands of years by the First Nations , who traditionally took slaves from neighboring peoples, before the arrival of European colonial masters . Slavery in the narrower sense - as hereditary slavery, in which people are viewed as the private property of an individual - did not begin until the European colonization of Canada , shortly after the colonies were founded in the early 17th century. The majority of the slaves were used as domestic servants, but some were also used in field work. Some were of African descent and some were Native to Canada. For the latter, the name Panis was common, a corruption of the word Pawnee .

First Nations slavery

Among the slave-holding ethnic groups in what was later to become the national territory of Canada there were e.g. B. Fishing peoples like the Yurok , who lived along the Pacific coast, from present-day Alaska to California . Many of the northwest coast peoples, such as the Haida and Tlingit , were traditionally known as fierce warriors and slave traders who extended their forays into California. Slavery was hereditary, the slaves were considered prisoners of war . For some peoples of the Pacific Northwest , the slave percentage was a quarter of the population. An Englishman, John R. Jewitt , who was captured alive in 1802, provides a detailed account of life in slavery in his memoir and also confirms the large number of slaves that were held at the time.

Under French rule

The first documented slave purchase occurred in New France in 1628 in the province now known as Québec . The subject of the trade was a boy from Madagascar who was named Olivier Le Jeune. New France residents received slaves as gifts from their allies among the indigenous peoples. Many of these slaves were prisoners taken in campaigns against the Fox Indian settlements ; the Fox were a traditional rival to the Miami and the Algonquin allies .

Since the early 18th century, an increasing number of Africans came to New France, mostly as slaves of the French aristocracy. When the British conquered the colony in 1760, there were more than 1,000 slaves in Quebec. Native slaves were more numerous and easier to obtain in New France, but were considered less valuable. Native slaves died on average at 18, African slaves at 25.

Under British rule

Slavery continued in Canada after the British victory. The Peace of Paris of 1763 explicitly stated that the status of all slaves would remain the same as under French rule: “The Negroes and Panis of both sexes remain, as slaves, in the possession of the French and Canadians to whom they belong; they can keep them in their service in the colony or sell them ” . The Quebec Act of 1774, which reinstated French civil law in the colony, reaffirmed the colonists' right to own, buy and sell slaves.

The British brought printing presses to the colony, on which the first Canadian newspapers were printed. In these, advertisements often appeared when slaves were for sale or had run away. Historians have learned from these advertisements that slaves were often bilingual, typically employed as domestic servants, farm workers, or trained labor, and were often referred to as mulattos . This shows that all agreements made by slaves, even if one parent was free and white, had to become slaves too. It is also evident that the slaves were not satisfied with their fate and often berated their owners, deliberately destroyed objects or worked slowly, ran away or even committed suicide. Slaves rose up against their owners too; an Native American slave named Charles was deported to Martinique after leading a slave revolt in Niagara .

After the signal for a long-term abolition of slavery was given when the United States was founded, British loyalists brought more than 2,000 African Americans to British Canada. Several others were brought to Prince Edward Island , Cape Breton Island, and Newfoundland . The British colonial government supported this and in the Imperial Act of 1790 had abolished all import duties on negroes, furniture, household items and clothing to encourage the entry of English.

Historian Marcel Trudel records 4,092 slaves and around 1,400 slave owners throughout Canadian history. The owners of the 2,692 slaves of native origin were mostly French, while the owners of the 1,400 slaves of African descent were mostly British.

The region with the richest number of slaves was around Montreal with 2,077 slaves, followed by Québec (City) with 1,059 slaves and Trois-Rivières with 114 slaves. Several marriages were concluded between the French colonists and their slaves, 31 of them with native and 8 with African-born slaves.

In 1793, the government of Governor John Graves Simcoe in Upper Canada passed the Act Against Slavery , which allowed the gradual abolition of slavery. Slaves who already lived in the provinces were not free until their death; however, no new slaves should be introduced and children born to female slaves should be released at the age of 25. This law ensured that slavery in Upper Canada would end sooner or later, but it also reduced the sales value of slaves within the province, causing many to be sold to the United States. Some slaves from Upper Canada also fled to the slavery-free states of the USA.

In 1797, Canadian courts began to prosecute slaves who sued their owners for bad treatment. In Lower Canada this only became common after Judge William Osgoode found in 1803 that slavery was incompatible with British law. This historic ruling did not abolish slavery, but it did result in the release of 300 slaves and the rapid decline of slavery. Still, slavery existed in both Upper and Lower Canada until the British Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act in 1834 , which abolished slavery in all parts of the British Empire .

Most of the released Canadian slaves of African descent were sent to Freetown , Sierra Leone . Those who remained in Canada mostly ended up in all-black communities like Africville near Halifax . There are still four slave cemeteries in Canada today : in St. Armand (Québec), Shelburne (Nova Scotia) , Priceville (Ontario) and Dresden (Ontario) .

During the time of Canada's liberation of slaves, the United States, particularly Ohio , established the Underground Railroad , an organization that allowed slaves in the American southern states to flee across the Ohio River to the northern states and to various settlements and cities in Upper Canada, from Also known as Canada West from 1841 to 1867 , helped.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Slavery in the New World
  2. ^ Digital History African American Voices ( Memento July 15, 2007 in the Internet Archive ); Haida Warfare
  3. Olivier Le Jeune
  4. Brett Rushforth, Slavery, the Fox Wars, and the Limits of Alliance ( March 10, 2007 memento in the Internet Archive ), in: The William and Mary Quarterly . Third Series , Volume 63, Issue 1, January 2005, para. 32. Rushforth confuses the two explorers. François-Marie was 12 years old at the time of the first war against the Fox.
  5. a b c d e Afua Cooper: The Hanging of Angélique . Harper Collins, 2006, ISBN 0002005530 .
  6. James W. ST. G. Walker, "Blacks" ( September 27, 2007 memento on the Internet Archive ), in The Canadian Encyclopedia