African Of The African Slave Trade Essay

In the 15th century, the Portuguese started to explore the coast of Africa. The Portuguese began to transport African slaves to Portugal and Spain, thus initiating the popularity of buying and selling slaves. In the 16th century, Europeans began to trade African slaves across the Atlantic Ocean. Slavery was not a new concept to Africa. Many African leaders prior to popularized slave trade had traded other Africans to the Arabs as slaves. Most people that were sold into slavery were forced into it because they had committed a crime. However, many were sold into slavery because they were captured in raids. Europeans did not intentionally search for slaves, but if they came across Africans that could be captured, they took them. Africans brought slaves to the coast in efforts to trade goods for cheap labor.

The African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade by Anna C. Bailey takes a rather interesting approach into the history of the Atlantic slave trade. Bailey took a personal journey, and was determined to break the silence. Of course with that being said it would prove to be a difficult quest since so many of these people are shamed about slavery, and the discussion of slavery is a taboo topic in its own ways. It was time to break the silence. Through out the book she explores diverse groups, of distinct people who all share the prevalent history of slavery. Her central theme in unveiling the past is through oral stories. Bailey makes it known in the first chapter that most texts written about the slave trade primarily focus on the Europeans perspective, which is what sets her book apart. Bailey herself residing in Jamaica takes an intimate standpoint to slavery, herself being of African slave descent, and knowing very limited details about her extensive family history. “What is clear from my family history is that more is known about the relatively recent past than is known about the period when my family members were undoubtedly slaves) . Through the obstacles and difficulties Bailey was able to succeed, and gave those affected a voice. Her approach will be examined, and the strengths and weaknesses in her approach will be brought to light.

Between the years 1492 through 1750 a new world was discovered that was before unknown to the eastern hemisphere. New contacts were formed in the Atlantic world due to the discovery and colonization of the Americas and later African slave trade, which were both very major events of this time. These interactions mainly affected Western Europe, Africa, and the Americas, whose economies were broadened and social structures further developed and altered as a result.

Slavery a practise that took absolute freedom away from African people for over 500 sometimes it is even referred to as the ‘African Holocaust’ because the estimated lives lost because of the slave trade is thought to be up to 100 million. And in 1691 this hideous practise was introduced to America and continued for another 250 years and it was only in the 18th century that America began to question the morality of slavery. This lead to a divide in the American people you were either pro or anti slavery. Due to geography Southern states benefited much more from slavery than Northern states did because they had the environment the could sustain plantations and their population was lower and less condensed. Northern states however due of the advent of industrialism did not need or benefit economically from slavery and because of higher importance placed on education and immigration there was a growing diversity of cultures and people so they were more aware of the moral issues involved with a practise like slavery. Another factor that contributed to the growing resentment of slavery in the North was a paradoxical one, because the South benefited so much economically for slavery where little to no labour skills were needed it began to affect the American economy as a whole as it limited the growth of the US economy. Work ethic was undermined and slavery itself only was only beneficial to the US in the short term and in hindsight it is easy to see that it actually stunted the US

The changes in African life during the slave trade era form an important element in the economic and technological development of Africa. Although the Atlantic slave trade had a negative effect on both the economy and technology, it is important to understand that slavery was not a new concept to Africa. In fact, internal slavery existed in Africa for many years. Slaves included war captives, the kidnapped, adulterers, and other criminals and outcasts. However, the number of persons held in slavery in Africa, was very small, since no economic or social system had developed for exploiting them (Manning 97). The new system-Atlantic slave trade-became quite different from the early African slavery. The

Despite being held at the bottom of the social pyramid for throughout colonial times, the labor of the colonies would prove to be far from useless. While vast, open land was turned into numerous plantations in the colonies by rich planters, the plantations could not purely be run by their owners, creating a great need for labor. This lack of labor would eventually be solved through the use of African slaves, but after the first shipment of slaves to Jamestown in 1619, few were purchased due to high prices for an extended amount of time. The planters, however, would be able to fulfill their need for labor through English indentured servants. Through the use of indentured servants, basically free labor was provided to land owners, while

The first African slaves were believed to have landed in Portuguese in 1442, the Portuguese merchants of this time were known to trade goods for slaves with Nigerians. The Portuguese were well known for trading slaves prior to the Europeans discovering America in 1492. According to an article titled The Transatlantic Slave Trade, “By 1490 approximately more than 3,000 slaves a year were being transported to Portugal and Spain from Africa”. Once Europeans colonized American land this began the three-way slave trade between Europe, Africa, and America. Majority of the slaves during this time came from slave traders in Nigeria, which was known to be majorly controlled by the Aro, Oyo, and Hausa groups. These slave trade groups were often under heavy pressure of the slave economy to constantly provide slaves for trading which resulted in war amongst the groups.

Olaudah Equiano was born in 1745 in an area of Africa which is now Nigeria. At the age of eleven he was captured and brought into slavery. In his book, The Slave Trade, Equiano describes the slave trade during this time. He illustrates how he became a slave and how slaves were treated. Through his descriptions of his homeland and other aspects of his life, we gain insight into the state of world trade at that time.

In the fifteenth century, Portugal was the leader in the slave trade. They first applied slavery to the harvesting of sugar cane in the Atlantic Island colonies and then later in Latin America. Over time, the Spanish, Dutch, and English began investing in the slave

The African Slave Trade reached its peak in the eighteenth century. The European Monarch, who were colonizing the Americas, needed a source of labor. The African slaves provided a source of cheap labor with little resistance in the beginning. As the Slave Trade progressed, it was realized that it had negative effects on the lives of the enslaved. Enquiano, Cugoana, and Prince share their accounts as they were enslaved. They intended to create a new vision of Africa, which contradicted the previous, more negative view of Africa.

The South was in desperate need of workers in the time before the mid-seventeenth century; however their help arrived in the mid-seventeenth century in the form of black workers. There once was an idea that the Afro-Black race was the only eligible people that should populate the system of slavery in America. Afro-Black slavery in the United States of America has been argued in two ways by historians and researchers. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the two points that one side asking if slavery was the result of white racism and the other side asking if white racism was a result of slavery.

In the last 50 years much has been done to combat the entirely false and negative views about the history of Africa and Africans, which were developed in Europe in order to justify the Transatlantic Slave Trade and European colonial rule in Africa that followed it. In the eighteenth century such racist views were summed up by the words of the Scottish philosopher David Hume, who said, ‘I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites. There scarcely ever was a civilised nation of that complexion, nor even any individual, eminent either in action or in speculation. No ingenious manufacture among them, no arts, no sciences”. In the nineteenth

The West African Slave Trade was a global event that focused on West Africa. It was the sale and ownership of another human being that was put into slavery. It was a “forced Migration” that lasted 300 years. It was an event that forced 15, 000, 000 people into slavery for a lifetime. From 1551 – 1850 about 15,000,000 people were brought into the slave trade it is said that roughly 5,000,000 did not survive, and may have immediately died before making through the shock of enslavement. About 10,000,000 people in the western hemisphere survived and were sold on the auction block. Generations continued into slavery, the offspring was also brought into slavery. The owners liked the idea of their slaves reproducing.

African slave trade can be expressed through various points of views, which had a major affect on a massive part of the world, its population and culture. A complication with the different point of views held by various ethnicities is that they are partially biased, and do not capture the true difficulty African slaves experienced. The majority of the time slave trade is told through Europeans historical agency, and the slave’s perspectives is often omitted. This history is highlighted through a form of ancient currency, the “King Manilla” displayed in the British Museum. The British Museum acquired the object in 1954, which was donated by the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. The king manila highlights history about slave trade and explores the imperial and colonial implications in Africa during the 16th century to the early 20th century.

Slavery has played a strong role in African society from as early as prehistoric times, continuing to the modern era. Early slavery within Africa was a common practice in many societies, and was very central to the country’s economy. Beginning around the 7th century, two groups of non-African slave traders significantly altered the traditional African forms of slavery that had been practiced in the past. Native Africans were now being forced to leave the country to be used as slaves. The two major slave trades, trans-Saharan and trans-Atlantic, became central to the organization of Africa and its societies until the modern era. Slavery and the slave trade strongly affected African society, and