Why were the British colonies in the Chesapeake region and the Carolinas moving toward a slave labor system?
basically it came down to a lack of colonists during the early years, many rich men and merchant companies brought large tracks of land in the new southern colonies with the aim of planting ‘cash crops’ like tobacco and cotton, however they could not find the people to work them, (both crops needing lots of people to work and harvest the crops)the people coming to the colonies were looking for their own land, not looking to work other peoples for them, (which they would have been doing back in England anyway) as such the merchant complained to the government about the lack of colonist’s, luckily this solved a problem for the government, back in England they had had a number of uprisings, mainly Scottish clans fighting each other or government forces, the government had 1000’s of rebel prisoners hanging around, so the government sent these men to the colonies as slaves, naturally this set the tone for later years, the scottish slaves could not survive long in the hot southern sun in dis
