One of the most important developments in the English colonies in America during the seventeenth century was the emergence of African slaves as a major component of the labour force. Population figures tell the story. As late as 1650, there were only 17,000 Africans in English America, just 2.5 per cent of the total population. Most Africans lived on the Caribbean islands. On the mainland, there were only 2,000 Africans in 1650, a mere 4 per cent of the total. By 1700, however, the African population approached 150,000, more than a third of the population of the English colonies as a whole, while on the mainland, the African population approached 31,000, 12 per cent of the total. There has been considerable debate over how to explain this development.

On Barbados, the growth of African slavery occurred quickly in the 1650s and blacks were a majority of the island's population by 1660. In the Chesapeake colonies, by contrast, the process was more gradual, and Africans did not form a majority of the unfree labour force until the 1690s. As a consequence of Chesapeake gradualism, the debate has focused on the Tobacco Coast. Why, historians have wondered, did they take so long? In its early stages, the debate focused on the legal status of the first Africans in the region and on the relationship between slavery and racism, but more recently it has concentrated towards the shift from a work force dominated by British indentured servants to one dominated by African slaves.