Preview

Atlantic Slave Trade Research Paper

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
411 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Atlantic Slave Trade Research Paper
European exploration and claiming of the continents bred a desire to colonize. This way of life created a significant demand for labor. Europeans sought to exploit and solicit cheap labor in inconceivable amounts. This mass trade of humans, known as the Atlantic Slave Trade, spanned multiple continents and resulted in Africans being forcibly removed from their homeland and to be sold and traded as property. This is known as the most voluminous trade of humans in history, and preceded centuries worth of suffering of which essentially created the devastation of an entire race of people in the interest of land and wealth.

The Atlantic Slave Trade had routes that spanned from Europe, Africa, North and South America, as well as the Caribbean.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The transatlantic slave trade was the largest horrific forced migration of Africans from their homelands to western hemisphere from 15th to 19th Century. Over twelve million men, women and children became the victim of this extreme exploitation. It was one of the terrific assaults in the human history which greatly influenced Africa’s Political and economic state. The purpose of the slave trade was to obtain profit and goods from European traders .Europeans used the slaves for plantations in Americas and also imported them to Brazil.…

    • 955 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Initially African slave traders transported African slaves across the Sahara to Muslim lands to the north and east. Later Portuguese slave traders shipped African slaves across the Atlantic to the plantations Millions of slaves were mistreated over the course of 300 years. Two million slaves may have died of disease and mistreatment as they crossed the Atlantic.…

    • 310 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout history, slavery has been a vital asset to many cultures including Egypt, Rome, Greece, Portugal, and parts of Africa. Slaves were used as laborers; they were the reason sugar, tobacco, and cotton were such prominent products during the time period. Although slavery was common in ancient cultures, the most well known slave trade is the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Spanning for over four hundred years, the Trans-Atlantic slave trade robbed approximately thirteen million African people of a normal life with their families and communities.…

    • 1626 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Chapter 26 Essay

    • 1394 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The Portuguese brought a few slaves home from Africa, but found that they were impractical for use in Europe with its small, family-based farms and town life. However, it soon was clear how slavery could be readily adopted in the Americas. Like the overwhelming majority of preindustrial societies, African kingdoms practiced slavery, and when Europeans offered to trade their goods for slaves, African traders accommodated them. As a general rule, African slave hunters would capture Africans, generally from other groups than their own, and transport them to trading posts along the coast for European ships to carry to the New World. However, despite the fact that slavery already existed in Africa, the Atlantic trade interacted with and transformed these earlier aspects of slavery. Before the Atlantic slave trade began, slavery took many forms in Africa, ranging from peasants trying to work off debts to those that were treated as "chattel," or property. The Atlantic trade emphasized the latter, and profits from the trade allowed slaveholders both in Africa and the Americas to intensify the level of exploitation of labor. African slaves were traded to two areas of the world: the Western Hemisphere and Islamic lands in the Middle East and India. Fewer slaves crossed the Sahara than the Atlantic, but the numbers were substantial. Whereas most slaves that…

    • 1394 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The new contacts among Western Europe, Africa, and the Americas, lead to the economies improving as crops and food spread around. Economically, in the Americas, European colonists advanced from mining for silver, to farming for crops. All of the goods were traded with other countries. The triangular trade connected imports and exports of different goods mainly between North America, Africa, and Europe. The reason the Atlantic changed into a huge trading port was because many countries were overflowing with resources other countries would love to have. The countries would exchange their resources for another country’s. A vast part of the triangular trade was the Atlantic slave trade. As agriculture became more and more important in daily life, labor was becoming vital. Africa exported slaves to the West Indies and to North America.…

    • 446 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    People in power often dictate recordings of history, but the Atlantic slave trade found an exception to this pattern. Documents from both enslavers and enslaved of this time regarding management of captives provide an insight on the treatment of slaves in the middle passage. Data from both parties clearly illustrates slave trading as a massive industry, and one where enslavers valued efficiency over the well-being of captives to garner the maximum possible profit. Conditions illustrated in these primary documents two and three demonstrate the extremely poor quality of life which slaves faced at the hands of clearly apathetic enslavers within the middle passage.…

    • 495 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    As the demand for slavery grew it created the Atlantic slave trade. Starting with trade first between the Caribbean, and southern colonies, and then expanding to include Europe, the slave trade grew more refined, and grim. Larger numbers of slaves began to be transported on merchant ships sometimes up to 500 slaves were brought over at a single time. Once brought over the slaves were torn apart from their families, sold, and forced to work under horrific conditions. Without the ability to speak up for themselves, slaves had no opportunities to gain rights or freedoms until the civil war.…

    • 509 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Atlantic slave trade is considered to be the largest and most revolting forced migration of human beings to ever be recorded. The migrations, which totaled approximately twelve to fifteen million Africans, sailed across the Atlantic to work in fields, mines, and many other places between the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. Slavery around this time was not uncommon, therefore not looked down upon by most societies. This took away the moral disadvantage of slavery, and looked towards the potential opportunities. The people in Europe could rarely receive a profit from European-grown crops.…

    • 900 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Europeans originally enslaved the Native Americans. The Native Americans, however, did not like this and fought back, ran away, or died of disease. The colonists, in a panic, decided that they had to replace the lost workforce. The colonies turned to Africans. This is where the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade originated. Unlike most slavery occurrences, The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was different because it was racial slavery. Only Africans were…

    • 607 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Trans-atlantic slave trade also known as the “triangular Trade” was born out of an emerging global trade network which joined Europe, Africa, and the Americas ships full of european goods travelled to Africa, via America and then back to europe with finished goods.…

    • 91 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    As early as the 1700’s, many slaves were captured to work on the white man’s plantation. For this purpose cotton and tobacco took center stage as they became the cash crops. Poverty stricken with no way out, slaves became frustrated, alienated, and violated, which caused most of them to become rebellious and runaway. However, when runaways were apprehended, flogging was the mere punishment, and death was the severity. Chores on the plantation consisted of cooks, workers in the fields, and mainly women working in the Master’s homes. Normalcy became a constant reminder of family members being sold or separated. Under these conditions, slaves…

    • 482 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Continuities Of Trade

    • 916 Words
    • 4 Pages

    This labor was inexpensive compared to the native Americans and indentured servants. The African slaves were sent along the middle passage, also known as the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which was an arduous journey across the ocean in which many Africans died on poorly maintained ships. This whole trade-based process led to the increase of slavery, crop production, wealth, and slavery in Europe and the…

    • 916 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Slavery is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as, “ the state of being owned by another person”. Slavery was a practice commonly used in the United States. It involved enslaving millions of African people. Although slavery was detrimental to the slaves, it proved to have beneficial values to slave owners and people running the slave trade. In this paper, I will explain the role that slavery played in developing the United States.…

    • 498 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Middle Passage

    • 819 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The first leg of the journey was from Europe, mainly Portugal to Africa. Many of the goods produced in Europe were not available in Africa or America. The Europeans traded manufactured goods, including weapons, guns, beads, cowrie shells (used as money), cloth, horses, and rum to the African kings and merchants in return for gold, silver and slaves. Africans were seen as very hard workers who were skilled in the area of agriculture and cattle farming. They were also used to the extreme temperatures that people of lighter complexions could not bear. There had always been slavery in Africa amongst her own people, where men from different tribes/villages would raid other villages to kidnap the women for their pleasures, and the men to use as slaves. To learn that they could actually profit from this activity made the job of getting slaves very easy for the Europeans. Slaves acquired through raids, were transported to the seaports were they were help prisoner in forts until traded.…

    • 819 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Trans Atlantic Slave Trade

    • 1885 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Several West African Societies were well organized and quite prosperous before the coming of the Europeans. Since the time of the slave trade many theories point out that Africa is the cradle of civilization, it is the birth place of the human race. We should never believe the Eurocentric view that Africa was a dark continent inhabited by uncivilized savages pretending to be humans.…

    • 1885 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays