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.…
These legacies of the slave trade are prominent through the idea of race, as “Atlantic slavery came to be identified wholly with Africa and with blackness” (689) Racism was used in this time period to justify actions, as through racism, “Europeans were better able to tolerate their brutal exploitations of Africans” (690). This racial discrimination became a reoccurring theme that has lasted well into the twenty-first…
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.…
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…
All in all, the Europeans gained a new workforce of slaves and a new demographic of people. However, to achieve all of this the Europeans traded their manufactured goods, weapons, and rum with Africa in exchange for slaves. The African kingdoms that participated in the Atlantic Slave Trade became stronger as a result, even prospering from the trade. Africans gained goods from the trade that benefited their society. The slave trade affected both European and African economies, some were beneficial to the respective countries, and others not so much.…
Over one-half of all the immigrants to the New World between 1500 and 1800 were Africans, virtually all of them sent to the Americas against their will. African society was portrayed as primitive and uncivilized. Africans were kept as slaves in Africa because of criminal behavior, unpaid debts, or from being captured in wars. Africans began to sell slaves as early as the eighth century to traders from the Mediterranean and later to the Portuguese. The African slave trade long preceded the European settlement in the New World (Text page 18.) Beginning of the sixteenth century, Africans and Europeans immigrated to the Americas. The search for economic growth led the migration of Europeans to the New World. The Mayflower sailed to Plymouth…
Africa and the Atlantic world explores the trials and tribulations of Africans being forced from their homeland and sold into slavery. Africans endured such hardships and conditions that their souls vanished with the site of mother Africa. Europeans sold and forced slaves to cultivate sugar plantations for their own profits. The Americas, Europe and Africa were involved in a cross continental system of human trafficking. African men, woman and children were shipped across the Atlantic to the Americas. Africans who survived being rapped, malnutrition, dehydration and being tortured on the voyage were sold to European masters and forced to be slaves on plantations.…
Europe, Africa and America treated atlantic slave trade differently. The slavery purchasing was mainly done through Dutch West Indies Company. The need for slaves became so big that the Europeans had to open trade to everyone. Europe made a great profit from slavery. Europeans saw Africans as people below them, the process allowed them to justify the purchase of slaves. Most slaves were prisoners of war. Europeans used guns, money, and horses purchase slaves from the Europeans.…
Before this weeks study I knew the Atlantic slave trade had a wide reach but the slave trade database brought my understanding to a new level. An unfathomable number of lives were loss and families torn about by lowering a human being to nothing more than an animal or property. The lives of the slaves were seen as disposable and many did not even survive the voyage by sea. Through our study of the Trans-Atlantic database I was able to learn how far the slave trade stretched and the number of human beings were taken and imprisoned to work while being tortured mentally and physically against their will paints a bleak picture of what this period in history was like by mans moral standards. “It is difficult to believe in the first decade of the twenty-first century that just over two centuries ago, for those European’s who thought about the issue, the shipping of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic was morally indistinguishable from shipping textiles, wheat, or even sugar.” (Eltis,…
West Africa was soon to be convulsed by the arrival of Europeans and become the advent of the transatlantic slave trade. Ships from Europe, bound for America, appeared on the horizon, and their captains and sailors-carrying muskets, swords, and shackles-landed on the coast, walked up the beach in their strange clothes, looked around, and demanded slaves. A horrific chapter in history had begun, and neither Africa nor America would be the same again. (Awmiller 14)…
The experiences of slaves in Africa varied greatly but can be summarised in the word “Maafa”, which means ‘great disaster’. For four centuries slavery killed millions of innocent African lives. Africans died when they were captured, suffered when they were packed into filthy conditions in slave ships.…
Slavery has existed in Africa since some of it’s earliest times of civilization. It’s believed that the origins of slavery started when Egyptians came to neighboring 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…
Throughout 200 years the Atlantic slave trade was removing millions of Africans out of their daily routine life in their home continent of Africa and taking them in the the new world; North America. Africans on board the slave vessels weren't just taking straight to America; they had a long voyage ahead of them. Taking one of 3 routes; 2 different triangular routes or the middle passage; with all horrible conditions surrounding them, Africans were not approving toward. Many got deadly diseases; htey have not been exposed or built up immunity to; or committed suicide by jumping overboard. The causes and effects of African slavery during the Atlantic slave trade period proved it was a very tragic time in history for Africans in the new world.…
Ever since the 5th century B.C, Africans have been stolen from their homes and sold to work for the rest of their lives in chains. At a dark time in our world’s history, almost every country participated in this trade. However, what many people do not know, is that Africa participated in the slave trade as more than just the victims. For hundreds of years, slavery had been alive and well in Africa. From prisoners-of-war being used to work the fields, to kings selling their subjects to westerners, Africa played a major role in the slave trade. Without Africa’s involvement in the slave trade, the use of slaves in other countries would be significantly lower. With the amount of slaves employed and shipped…
This book not only goes into details about the labor that the slaves partook in on a daily basis that kept America up and running, but also about the cultural aspect of bring slaves into the country. Bringing African’s over to America brought a whole new culture to America. Although white men enslaved African’s they continued to embrace their culture. They brought a new religion, language, music, and several skills that have uniquely blended the American culture that it is today.…