Impact of immigration in the Early Modern era, 1500-1750 - OCR AImpact on ideas and opinions on race

This was a time known as ‘The Enlightenment’ when scientific understanding grew along with ideas that individuals should be free to choose their own beliefs and to live their lives freely without domination by tyrannical rulers.

However during the same period, with the trade in enslaved Africans growing and Britain expanding its empire, the idea that humanity was divided into ‘races’ and that some were superior to others also took hold.

As trade in the forced transportation of African people across the Atlantic increased, a system of control came into effect to:

• Justify enslavement. The attitude of those involved in the slave trade was that as white Christians, they were superior to those who were enslaved. They believed in the eyes of God that their actions would be justified.
• Exert control on the slave ships and plantations. Those enslaved on ships were shackled together and kept below deck where there was not room to sit up. Outbreaks of disease were common on ships and those who died were thrown overboard. The journey could take up to two months. On plantations, enslaved people were forced to work from dawn until dusk and conditions were harsh and punishments cruel. They would be whipped for not working hard enough.
• Make indentured white poorer people working on the plantations feel superior to enslaved Africans. Treating white workers slightly better than the enslaved had the effect of making them feel superior from black workers. Dividing them in this way prevented them from uniting in resistance against those benefiting from the plantation system.

The racist idea that darker skinned people were inferior began to spread and influence social relations. Negative references to people of African and Indian origin, with comments on their blackness, became increasingly common. As religious divisions became less significant, ‘racial’ ones became more noted. Whereas Africans in Tudor England seem to have lived easily within wider society, now relationships between black and white people were affected by racial ideas.

Perhaps the deepest and most dangerous legacy of this period was the development of ideas about ‘race’ based on skin colour that we still suffer from in the 21st century.

Revision tip

This was the period in Britain’s history when it began to growth in wealth and power.

List the different ways listed in this guide which demonstrated how Britain amassed wealth. How was this growing wealth linked to the movement of people?