American Historical Association

131st Annual Meeting (January 5-8, 2017)

January 05 - 08, 2017

The field of Native American slavery has grown significantly over the past decade and a half. What was long considered to be a relatively early and minor aspect of the story of the colonization of the Americas has increasingly become central to our understanding of how European empires used Indian slavery to negotiate, trade, and—ultimately—to build profitable commodity colonies. Over the past fifteen years, dozens of books, articles, and dissertations have described in mostly regional terms how Indian slavery and various nodes of Indian slave trading emerged over time. But from time to time, it is important to step back and consider the larger history at the hemispheric level. Every single European empire in the Americas participated in the enslavement and trade of Natives, although in ways that were sometimes parallel and sometimes vastly different. This panel, then, takes a look at specific aspects regarding Native slavery that span multiple geographies and imperial contexts in the Americas, including the volume/size of Native slavery, the changing legal contexts of indigenous slavery, and the connections between the Indian slave trade and an inter-imperial African slave trade.