Virginia Imposes and Then Removes Duties on Slave Imports (1694–1699)

Virginia's colonial assembly debated and imposed import duties on enslaved Africans in the 1690s, motivated partly by revenue needs and partly by concern among tobacco planters that rapid expansion of the enslaved population could destabilize the colony. However, the duties were politically contested and periodically lifted. The debate reveals how the slave trade was understood primarily as an economic question, with enslaved people treated purely as commodities whose import volumes were to be managed for plantation profitability.