This essay reconsiders the theme of the comparative differences in slave systems in the New World. Despite the rejection, by North American scholars over the past quarter century, of any comparative differences, recent research has shown important variations in the slave regimes. These variations depended on differences in labor markets, in demographic structures and above all in attitudes towards manumission and the class of free colored persons prior to emancipation. Although all slave plantation regimes shared much in common, there were differences in the participation of slaves and free colored in non-agricultural and non-plantation occupations. This often depended on the availability of alternative white labor. Moreover in the 19th century many of the Latin American regimes increased the pace of manumission and learned to accept the free colored as a fundamental part of their free economy even while adopting racist attitudes toward them. At the same time the United States and some of the Caribbean plantation regimes slowed the pace of manumission and created severe restrictions on the social, geographic and economic space and mobility of their small free colored class. The causes and consequences of these differences are discussed in this essay.
Afro-Americans slavery; plantation agriculture; social mobility; economic mobility