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Defining Race & Lifelong Servitude in the Colonial Americas

Item set

This teaching module links Spanish colonial documents from the turn of the sixteenth century to British colonial innovations in the seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries, demonstrating how European colonists developed a racialized hierarchy that justified the widespread enslavement of Africans and their descendants.

Items

  • Acts of the General Assembly of Virginia Colony (1642-1705)
    Between 1642 and 1705, Virginia Colony established a series of statutes that increasingly limited the rights of Indigenous and Black residents while expanding the rights of Europeans. These acts reflect the increasing racialization of the colonial legal code.
  • Articles of Peace and Amity (1666)
    This treaty, signed between the English colony of Maryland and twelve Eastern Woodland Native American nations, stipulated the rights of Native peoples and their lands and established regulations for interactions between Native Americans and English colonists. The document reflects an already established relationship between the colonists and Native nations by 1666.
  • Defining Race & Lifelong Servitude in the Colonial Americas
    This module links Spanish colonial documents from the turn of the sixteenth century to British colonial innovations in the seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries, demonstrating how European colonists developed a racialized hierarchy that justified the widespread enslavement of Africans and their descendants.
  • El Requerimiento (1513)
    Citing papal and royal legal authority, the Spanish Requirement of 1513 informed Indigenous Americans of Spain's rights of conquest, stating that if Indigenous Americans defied Spanish authority and Catholic conversion, they could be justly put to death and/or enslaved.
  • Emmanuel Downing to John Winthrop (1645)
    Downing's letter to Winthrop shows changing colonial attitudes to race and practices of enslavement.
  • Massachusetts Body of Liberties (1641)
    The Massachusetts Body of Liberties was the first legal code formed in the New England colonies. It established individual rights and protections that would later influence the U.S. Bill of Rights.
  • Plymouth, Massachusetts, Colonial Court Cases (1646-1675)
    These excerpts from the Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England document Native Peoples' engagement with the law after a 1641 code grants due process.
  • Proclamation of King Ferdinand of Spain (1514)
    This proclamation to the Taino and Arawak peoples of the New World informs them of new rule by Spain and the Catholic Church.
  • The Bull Inter Caetera (1493)
    The Bull Inter Caetera legitimized European land claims in the Western Hemisphere by decree of the Catholic Church. Establishing the Doctrine of Discovery, this papal decree became the legal basis for land claims in the region.