Slavery in Pennsylvania A Dissertation Submitted to the Board of University Studies of the Johns Hopkins University in Conformity with the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 1910

The book begins by tracing how people of African descent arrived in the region long before Pennsylvania was formally established. Through a series of colonial records—Dutch, Swedish, and early English—readers learn of individual Africans serving governors, working farms, and even appearing on official charters in the 1640s and 1650s. By the time William Penn founded the colony, a small but growing Black population was already woven into everyday life in Philadelphia and its surrounding counties.

The dissertation then details how a steady demand for labor spurred merchants to import enslaved workers, while a rising chorus of white artisans complained that African competition depressed wages. From 1700 onward the Pennsylvania Assembly tried to curb the trade with a series of escalating duties and outright bans, only to see each measure struck down by colonial authorities or the British Crown. These early political battles reveal a colony caught between economic reliance on the African Company and a growing unrest among free laborers, setting the stage for the complex dynamics that would shape Pennsylvania’s slave society.