Slave Trade

Colonialism and Imperialism are one of the core foundations of the Atlantic Trade System that occurred between the 14th and 19th centuries. Colonialism is the process of a group of external settlers, in this case settling in Africa and claiming the land for their own. Colonialism is the control or governing influence of a nation over a dependent country, territory, or people. Colonialism refers to the set of practices and policies implemented by the imperial agents to obtain and maintain control, stability, economic objectives, and social engineering in the constituent polities of the imperial periphery. (pg. 12) Imperialism is a policy of extending control or authority over foreign entities as a means of acquisition and/or maintenance of empires, either through direct territorial conquest or through indirect methods of exerting control on the politics and/or economy of other countries. Most subsequent definitions of imperialism agree that it refers to an ideology or set of doctrines, that it implies domination that it reflects international affairs, and it involves actions and ideas in support of expansionism and the maintenance of empire. (Pg.7 Modern Imperialism and Colonialism). Imperialism and colonialism facilitated both the general and the regional effects of the sugar revolution, while at the same time the sugar revolution helped to shape the direction of imperialism and colonialism in new ways.
The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade took place across the Atlantic Ocean from the 16th through to the 19th centuries. The vast majority of slaves transported to the New World were Africans from the central and western parts of the continent, sold by Africans to European slave traders who then transported them to North and South America. The numbers were so great that Africans who came by way of the slave trade became the most numerous Old-World immigrants in both North and South America before the late eighteenth century. The Portuguese were the