The Virginia House of Burgesses enacts “An act concerning Servants and Slaves,” a comprehensive 41-section legal code consolidating and strengthening nearly two decades of piecemeal slave legislation into a unified framework that permanently establishes racial slavery as Virginia’s …
Virginia House of BurgessesVirginia ColonySlaveholdersslaveryinstitutional-corruptionslave-codeslegal-frameworkracial-caste
The Virginia House of Burgesses enacts a law establishing that “all children borne in this country shalbe held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother,” implementing the Roman legal doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem (literally “that which is born follows the …
Virginia House of BurgessesVirginia ColonySlaveholdersslaveryinstitutional-corruptionslave-codeslegal-frameworkgenerational-bondage
The English privateer ship White Lion arrives at Point Comfort in Hampton, Virginia in late August carrying “twenty and odd” captive Africans originally from modern-day Angola. According to a letter by colony secretary John Rolfe, Governor Sir George Yeardley and head merchant Abraham …
Virginia ColonySir George YeardleyAbraham PeirseyWhite Lion privateersEnslaved Angolansslaveryinstitutional-corruptionatlantic-slave-tradecolonial-economylabor-exploitation