The discovery of America caused the epidemiologic unification of planet, causing a microbial and viral shock at Amérindiens.
Already reached by the contagious diseases which struck Europeans and partially immunized, certain African populations
appeared adapted better that Amérindiens to the new American epidemiologic medium. Consequently, the African introduction,
supporting the contagion at Amérindiens, encouraged the colonists to acquire more slaves originating in African areas
immunized against the transmissible infectious diseases, in particular against measles and variola. Perceptible from the very start
of XVIIe century, this choice of the colonists contributed, at the same time, with the deterioration of the populations
amérindiennes and the development of African slavery in the New World.

The characteristics of age and sex of the deportees conditioned the demographic trends of the American black populations.
The small proportion of women among the slaves, the fact that those already spent several years of their period of fruitfulness to
Africa and the small number of unloaded children made difficult the reproduction of the slaves to America. Like C writes
it. Meillassoux, the reproduction « mercantile »of the slaves - by the means of the draft - was faster and more profitable than
their natural reproduction. In this context, the United States, where the rate of reprodution of the slaves was positive from the
very start of XVIIIe century, constitutes a case with share in annals of modern slavery. The arguments allotting this specificity to
« the best processing »than the Americans would have granted to their slaves were rejected by the historians demographers,
who showed that the period of fruitfulness of the prisoners was about similar in all the American areas. Recent search underline,
on the other hand, the importance of the duration of breast feeding. Whereas the American slaves adopted the methods of
Northern Europe, nourishing their children during one year, in the other slave areas of the continent, they followed the African
traditions, prolonging breast feeding beyond one year. The gap of the intervals intergenesic which results from it seems to be
one of the reasons of the greatest number of births among American slaves.

In addition to the decline of the population amérindienne and the rate of negative increase in the black slaves, the Atlantic draft
was also stimulated by the reserves of Europeans to emigrate in America. David Eltis notices that, from the point of view of
immigration, the American continent constitutes, until the medium of XIXe century, an extension of Africa rather than a
prolongation of Europe. For each European made at the New World around the years 1820, it entered four, and perhaps five,
Africans. It is only after the years 1840 that the European migrations exceeded the transfers forced of Africans towards
America. Nevertheless, the importance of the slaves does not rest solely on the fact that, in America, they could be constrained
to work when the free workers refused there. Actually, the black prisoners were related to a specific productive sector : they
attracted more investments, worked more intensely, at greater length, in more coordinated way, and they produced goods for
the trade and export on an unequalled ladder in the colonial sectors dependent on free work. Coercion, the absence of the
sexual splitting of work in the fields and the reproduction mercantile of the slaves ensured by the Atlantic draft involve high rates
of economic activity among slaves : more than 80 p. 100 of them are economically active in the plantations, whereas, in the
contemporary free farmers, this proportion reaches a maximum between 50 and 60 p. 100. These data lead to a revision of the
diagrams of the physiocrat Dupont de Nemours and the theorist of the economic liberalism , Adam Smith, on the relative
inefficiency of the work of the slaves (R. W. Fogel and S. L. Engerman, 1975).
 
 

Academic Year 00-01
07/02/2001
©a.r.e.a. Dr. Vicente Forés López
©Ana Aroa Alba Cuesta
Universitat de València Press