What Is 'Natural Increase?'

In 1619, by one count, twenty Africans arrived by boat at Fort Comfort, Virginia. There is some dispute as to whether they were indentured servants or enslaved. This count doesn’t consider the enslaved people that arrived earlier in St. Augustine, Florida. For now, we’ll ignore their absence from the data in the article below:

Reading and analyzing the data can be dizzying but not nearly as much as the conclusion reached explaining the rapid growth in enslaved people in America.

“Although researchers have been unable to demonstrate causal relationships, the increases observed in slave fertility are consistent with the emergence of American-born majority slave populations, more balanced slave sex ratios, improvements in slave health, increases in average slave holding sizes, and increased slave population densities, all of which facilitated slave marriages (although not legally recognized as such) and childbearing.” Phillip D. Morgan

Other rationale mentioned included a bump in the number of imported Africans just before the ban on the international slave trade took effect in 1809. When you look at a chart of the population growth of the enslaved, that bump isn’t noticeable after the ban took effect; in fact, population growth continued to grow exponentially.

All experts agree that the growth didn’t come from imported enslaved people or those smuggled in after the ban. Enslaved people were having babies, lots of them, at a far greater percentage than the Europeans and later Americans in the country. Despite the high maternal mortality rate (mothers who died during childbirth), and that half of enslaved children died in their first year. Also, the life expectancy of enslaved people was half that of white people. Still, the Black population was growing rapidly, by what many historians like to call “natural increase.”

I once singled out a historian, Dr. Jenny Bourne, in an article describing the natural increase as a rationale for increasing the enslaved population. I hoped she would respond, and I may never know for sure if she read my story or how she might reply. I may have been wrong to single her out as many historians and almost all textbooks that mention the phenomenon; support the theory of natural increase.

The concept of natural increase is a lie, covering up why the Black population increased dramatically in such a hostile environment. Enslaved people were forcibly bred to increase the profitability of those who owned them. The ban of the international slave trade was planned during the writing of the Constitution and implemented the first day it was legally permissible. The forced breeding (rape) of enslaved women was part of a plan to enrich Virginia and surrounding area plantation owners to make up for dwindling tobacco revenues. They couldn’t bother to rotate crops as was already being done in Britain. In addition to forced pairings of “breeders” and “bucks.” Plantation owners and their families often raped slaves for their own pleasure and demanded a higher price for their offspring who became house slaves or fancies to serve their interests further.

American history books don’t teach about the breeding farms that led to the dramatic increase in births of the enslaved. The movement to ban Critical Race Theory (CRT) prevents people from learning about this dark part of American history. Texas history books tried to limit discussion of slavery and suggest they were “workers.”

“The Atlantic slave trade brought “millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.”

When called on it after publication, they called it an “editing error” that was missed by McGraw-Hill Education the publisher, official text reviewers, and the Texas Board of Education. I call bullshit!

American historians, politicians, and educators at every level often falsify American history to at best make it sound better and at worst perpetuate white supremacy. The only solution is exposing the truth and stopping the lies in their tracks. Natural increase is just one of the lies accepted and passed on as the truth. It’s time we expose this lie and all others. Don’t you agree?

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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