...Atlantic Slave Trade In the mid-1400s, Portuguese ships sailed down to West African coast to avoid the Islamic North Africa that has monopolized the trade of sub-Saharan gold, spices, and other commodities that Europeans wanted. During these voyages there were many maritime discoveries that were unknown to European’s traditional limit of navigation, south of Cape Bojador, which with time will make it easier for them to navigate the Atlantic. At the beginning, Portuguese were only in the search of gold and other commodities, but with time their interest also went to the African people. Lancarote de Lagos, a Portuguese navigator, sailed in the Senegal River and captured a group of Africans and carried them off into slavery. During this period, race was not a major factor to be carried into slavery. Slaves were composed of many individuals of different ethnicities who were captured after a war, had a debt, and other situations. The Atlantic slave trade was set in motion mostly for the production of sugar. Nowadays, the production of such a benign thing such as sugar to have caused a massive slave trade is really hard to understand. However in those days sugar was not taken for granted. European’s ever-growing sweet tooth was the driving force for the development of the Atlantic world. Because the work of growing sugar was so burdensome, free workers would not do it willingly and that is why the industry came to depend upon slave labor. Starting in 1492 when Christopher Columbus...
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...The Atlantic slave trade started on the Gold Coast, present day Ghana, about twelve million Africans were transported to the America’s. African slaves became the main focus of trade between Africa and Europe. American colonization demanded labor, but since the Native American’s could not work with European’s because theytheir populations were thinning out, they focused on the enslaved African people. African slave trade helped the wealth and growth of America but at the cost of humanity. African American Mosaic by John H. Bracey Jr. tells the stories of the slave trade in West Africa, on the middle passage and in America. It suggests that West Africa were willing to capture other Africans for weapons and wealth. The story of Olaudah Equiano was about how he was kidnapped by other Africans and taken through the woods to the beach where a slave ship was waiting for him. “Was carried on board I was immediately handled, and tossed up, to see if I were sound, by some of the crew; and I was now persuaded that I had gotten into a world of bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me (Bracey, 16).” This is probably how every African felt when they were forced onto that slave ship to sail to an unknown land. Equiano also talked about how dirty and digusting the slaves ships were. “I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life (Bracey, 16).” Also according to Alexander Falconbridge, “The deck, that...
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...The trans-Atlantic slave trade resulted in the force migration of Africans by Europeans to the New World; they would eventually become the slave labor for the plantations in the New World. Even though Europeans were staunch defenders of political and economic freedoms at home, they had no problems with being involved in the practice of slavery overseas. Historians have attempted to analyze the impact of the trans-Atlantic slave trade on both the Old and New World. Historians have focused their scholarly examinations on the global context of the Atlantic slave trade as way of getting a better understanding of why it was that Europeans came to settle on Africans as their preferred work force in the New World. While the focus of the field of study has been on the commercial and economic aspects of the slave trade, there have been attempts at shifting the narrative from that of economics to the cultural aspect of it. There needs to be a comprehensive analysis of the social and economic impact of the slave trade on the development of Africa. Also, gender roles during the slave trade should become a point of emphasis for historians. Historians have pointed to the economic development of the colonies in the New World coupled with the decimation of the native population as the genesis of African slavery in the Americas. As Herbert Klein...
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...Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade took place from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. During the Atlantic Slave Trade between twelve to twenty million slaves were brought to the Americas from Africa. An estimated two million Africans did not make it across the Atlantic to the Americas. The Atlantic Slave Trade was part of the Triangular Trade; trade that went from Europe to Africa on to the Americas then back to Europe, creating a triangular shape across the Atlantic Ocean. Millions of slaves were forced to come to the Americas from their home in Africa. This had many effects on not only Africa and the Americas, but the rest of the world also. So, what were the effects of the Atlantic Slave Trade? The biggest effect the Atlantic Slave Trade had was the help in the development of the Americas. Population loss and social disruption from trade caused the underdevelopment of Africa. The culture in the Americas also changed as the slaves brought their culture with them. Although there were many negative effects from the Atlantic Slave Trade there were also some positive ones. The slaves had a large impact on the development in the Americas as they caused the growth in agriculture and the economy. If the slaves were not brought over to the Americas, the development would not have been as fast or large. Because they were forced to work long hours and do jobs nobody else wanted to do. Because they were cheap labor, landowners could buy many so there would be more slaves to work...
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...behind the Atlantic Slave Trade? The most essential motivation behind subjection is to free oneself of work and drive the terrible work upon another person. A second explanation behind the reason for subjugation is just avarice. English men saw an approach to benefit their pockets without doing any work themselves. Transporting slaves started as a business person’s occupation for British sailors. European laborers did not have the physical ability to manage working in such unforgiving conditions. Therefore, the purpose of slavery in the United States was to get the hard work done for free. The Atlantic Slave Exchange began during the fifteenth century, when Portuguese ships cruised down the West African coast. Their...
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...Atlantic Slave Trade Essay The Atlantic Slave Trade involved the transportation of slaves that were taken from African and were to be brought to the New World. It was a long voyage and it was difficult to have to manage so many slaves and make sure that they made it to their destination in order to be sold off. The Atlantic Slave Trade brought with it the problem of overpopulation to the colonies so laws had to be passed to have them under legal control. Although the colonies were becoming heavily populated, bringing slaves included getting cheap or free labor which benefited the slave owners. They gained freedom to focus more on that would affect them and therefore were more involved in politics to make sure that no laws would take away what they saw as benefits. To prevent rebellions on ships,...
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...communities to buy slaves to bring back with them for work. The roles and duties slaves had depended on their genders. Women were more likely to get sold into slavery to perform household chores, spin and dye cotton, and sometimes be shown off to let everyone know of a man’s wealth. Men would usually work outside either farming, doing repairs, or building things. In later years, when European countries came into the slave trade, slaves from Africa could be bought with a trade of goods of clothing, food, firearms, and even liquor. Though, by the 18th century, most slaves were obtained...
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...It is shocking that there are more slaves today than at any other time in history. That’s the reaction one gets after realizing that there are added slaves today, approximately 27 million, ( according to the U.S State Department) double the total number believed to have been taken from Africa at the helm of the trans-Atlantic trade. Many people still perceive slave trade as a thing of the past, but it exists within different forms on different continents, ranging from labor and sex trade to debt enslavement, where one is forced to work to offset small loans. From Niger within central Africa where females are bought and sold off as unauthorized wives thus exploited for sexual gratification, to quarry slave within northern India, and Ghana where...
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...worked the other way around. Africa spread its influence to others as slaves were transported to other areas, some more than others. The Portuguese went to west Africa until they reached the Cape of Good Hope to make factories, forts and trading areas with merchants. An example of a factory is El Mina, and these factories allowed control over the certain area. The Portuguese gave goods and sometimes slaves in return for African ivory, pepper, animal skins, and gold. Lançados at the interior were to help with economy. Missionaries were made to convert,...
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...The Atlantic Slave Trade Between the years of 1450-1750, the Europeans had used the people of Africa as slaves. They would kidnap them from their homes and then board them onto a ship to be sent to America to labor in their vast farmlands. Because of this, their race has been treated in the most unfair manor throughout history. During the 1400’s throughout the 1700’s, there was a growing demand for slaves in America. The Europeans weren’t allowed to sell the Native Americans as slaves because they were freed by the king, so they instead decided to sell the Africans in what was known as the “Atlantic Slave Trade.” This trading process would take people from Africa to Europe and then transport them by ship to America to be sold and used as slaves. This was a very long and uncomfortable voyage that killed many before they even reached the shores of America. (Documents 1 & 5) The life on the ship was horrible for all who were aboard it. There was not much room on this vessel to put the slaves, so they were all packed inside of a very small room. It got so tightly packed, that many almost suffocated because of the lack of oxygen in the room. When they did get air, it was very putrid and carried a disease that killed many before they arrived. The slaves were often beaten several times a day for irrelevant things, such as, not finishing...
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...A Brief Overview of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade David Eltis(Emory University), 2007 The trans-Atlantic slave trade was the largest long-distance coerced movement of people in history and, prior to the mid-nineteenth century, formed the major demographic well-spring for the re-peopling of the Americas following the collapse of the Amerindian population. Cumulatively, as late as 1820, nearly four Africans had crossed the Atlantic for every European, and, given the differences in the sex ratios between European and African migrant streams, about four out of every five females that traversed the Atlantic were from Africa. From the late fifteenth century, the Atlantic Ocean, once a formidable barrier that prevented regular interaction between those peoples inhabiting the four continents it touched, became a commercial highway that integrated the histories of Africa, Europe, and the Americas for the first time. As the above figures suggest, slavery and the slave trade were the linchpins of this process. With the decline of the Amerindian population, labor from Africa formed the basis of the exploitation of the gold and agricultural resources of the export sectors of the Americas, with sugar plantations absorbing well over two thirds of slaves carried across the Atlantic by the major European and Euro-American powers. For several centuries slaves were the most important reason for contact between Europeans and Africans. What can explain this extraordinary migration, organized...
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...The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was a time when millions of Africans were taken from their homes to come and work in the Americas as slaves. The Spaniards needed someone to come and work in their plantations and mine their gold and silver, so they went to Africa to get laborers. Africans were taken from their homes and made slaves, slaves were considered property, and America and Africa both suffered in a way. The slave trade is considered one of the worst crimes against humanity. All of this, just because the Spaniards weren’t willing to put in the work on the plantations and in the mines. When the Europeans first discovered the Americas, they knew there was gold and silver to be mined and things to be grown and sold. The Spaniards don’t want...
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...Nicole Portuondo AMH2091-01, Fall 2014 The Atlantic Slave Trade transported millions of Africans from West Africa to the New World. The process of transporting them was brutal and contained many hardships for the Africans. The Europeans saw the Africans as animals and savages, who deserved to be treated as such. The Middle Passage, the overseas voyage to the New World, was the most grueling part of the slave trade. The voyage lasted for months at a time and the conditions only got worse as time went on, Europeans would use Africans for their personal entertainment. On the Middle Passage, African’s experiences differed greatly; men chose to rebel, women were taken advantage of, and many became diseased or died. African men felt that they needed to do anything in their power to escape from the misery of enslavement. While on these ships, they would try to overthrow the Europeans with slave rebellions. The rebellions were hard to plan because many Africans were from different nations and did not all speak the same language. Blacks studied their oppressors and would look for any chance to take advantage of their errors, “Insurrections are frequently the consequence; which are seldom expressed without much bloodshed” (Falconbridge). The Europeans had no mercy on blacks and blacks had no mercy on the Europeans; they were thrown overboard, shot at, and beaten. In Roots, Kunta Kinte and his fellow African men seized the opportunity to steal the shackle key from the ship hands while...
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...The slave trade also helped to shape the United States into what it is today. Today, when people think of slavery they are mostly only aware of its piece in the United States. Before the United States was even discovered traders were trading human beings for little trinkets and spices. The beginning of slavery was similarly started everywhere that it was present and grew to the point where it began to take over whole countries. According to Don Nardo, the author of “The Atlantic Slave Trade,” slavery had been going on for over four centuries. Slave trading was started by the Portuguese because they were the first people to begin exploring the world. The explorers went to other places and found that these new places didn’t only trade objects, food, and livestock; they traded people too. During the Seventh and Eighth centuries slavery was very popular too as well as in ancient Greece. Since slavery had been going on for so long, many did not think anything of the real nature of the trade. Even though some people may have found slavery to wrong and unjust the...
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...• African identity- this term will be used interchangeable. (1) realizing the African continent commonality, (2) the culture and behavior of the slaves (African born and creoles)—basically what defines the slaves’ identity. • Creoles- (1) Atlantic creoles that are phenotypically and culturally mixed with African and European cultures. The Dynamic African identity: Coping with Slavery Upon considering the changes and the creation of an “African” identity (definition 2), it is important to realize that similar to the constantly changing slavery due to the frequent shifts in the social, political, and economic contexts, the “African” identity was also dynamic. Although the overall reason that prompted the development of the notion of the African continent (definition 1) might be similar across the board of slavery, the specifics of what constituted this identity (ex: religion, family formation) is largely dependent on the time period and region being discussed—ex: the 17th Century African identity in North America is different from the 18th Century identity in Europe. Several factors that enhanced the creation of the African identity (definition 2) include: (1) ability to form families as a result of the gender ratio, mortality rates, segregation from other slaves, (2) population ratio of native-born to creolized slaves, and (3) religious movement that were characteristic of the time and space. These three factors allowed for the African identity to be realized...
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