This chapter showcased Africa’s way into the world economy with all its ups and downs, including slavery. Many things, such as culture and religion, were changed once brought into Africa. This also 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, …show more content…
The Atlantic slave trade, however, was brutal with its high mortality rates. In some cases, such as in the Dutch ship of 1737, only 16 slaves made it out of the 700 on ship. The Atlantic slave trade did not really include many women and children since labor was hard, and death rates, as mentioned from before, are high. Since there was only a few amount of women in the slave importer’s lands, there was a small birth rate of slaves, with British North America as an exception. Africans also wanted to keep women and children as their own slaves or to grow their own kinship groups. Benefits of the slave trade included new crops, such as maize and manioc, which compensated a little bit from the smaller population at Africa since women and children were imprisoned as well. The Dutch were major opponents after taking El Mina against Portugal, who used to control most trade. The Dutch had power over Angola for a short period of time as well during 1637. By the 1660s, the Royal African Company was the result of English excitement to get slaves for Barbados, Jamaica, and Virginia. The French also made a company as well during that time, but it was not important until the 18th …show more content…
Africa became reliant on European trade, which was somewhat bad as well. With this reliance specifically on European trade, Africa did not specialize in other economic actions. Slaves were more important in the Atlantic basin by the late 18th century. In the early 19th century, Brazil, Caribbean, and the southern United States needed more slaves. Slavery may have been in Africa before the Europeans, but the Europeans changed slavery. African labor before Europeans was divided into different classes, where there was peasant status to chattel slavery, where the people were seen as property. Slaves were usually concubines, servants, soldiers, administrators, slaves working fields, or even paid slaves. All were fine, but there were European slavery relationships that showed exploitation of someone else. Women slaves were important to Africa. More women in Africa (since there were not many involved in the slave trade) meant that polygyny, or having many wives at one time, was possible. Rulers and merchants’ harems became stronger. All of these were signs of decreasing women