African Slave Trade 1492 Essay

There had been slavery in Africa for a very long time but it was only minor in certain regions of Africa. When Islam spread through Africa in the seventh century there was a sudden increase in slavery and slave trade. There were prisoners of war in Africa and Muslim rulers said non Muslim prisoners can be bought and sold as slaves. Affecting 17 million African slaves to be transported to Muslim lands such as North Africa and South Asia.

Being fully aware of the benefits of the slaves, the British elevated their importation and by the turn of the eighteenth century African slaves numbered in the tens of thousands in the British colonies (1). As the demands in tobacco increased, labor increased. Like the simple law of supply and demand. Ending of Royal African Company’s monopoly in 1698 encouraged more traders to enter the slave business -- thus making African slaves more accessible (4). As a result of their increased expense, their masters were stringent and determined to get as much out of them as possible thereby working them mercilessly (Faragher 2009, p. 83). Initially, the cost of slaves may have been more expensive but in the end the masters were able to keep them enslaved.

The slave trade in the North American colonies began to grow in the 1600s. The African slave trade sourced their slaves from many different West African villages and countries. The business of slavery was a growing and profitable field, not only for the slavers, but also for the slaveholders. With the decrease of indentured servants, settlers in the English colonies looked for a new source of labor to satisfy their growing labor demands. The next source was Africa. “By the 1690s slaves outnumbered indentured servants four to one” (45). Europeans largely disregarded the ethical dilemma posed by slavery due to the European view of Africans and their culture as uncivilized, foreign, and heathen (44). The largest forced migration in history (44)

There are different experiences of the slave trade that are reflected in these documents such as those of an enslaved person (Olaudah Equiano), a European slave trader (Thomas Phillips – an English merchant), an African monarch (King Jao) whose kingdom and personal authority suffered from the slave trade, and an African monarch (Osei Bonsu) who opposed the ending of the slave trade. Of all the commercial ties that linked the early modern world into global network of exchange, none had more profound or enduring human consequences than the Atlantic Slave Trade. And in all these documents, we can see how people reacted differently to this system based on how they encountered it and how it affected them.

The Atlantic Slave Trade portrayed the lack of empathy and compassion many Europeans felt toward the treatment of African slaves. Europeans used slavery to advance their own economic standings and seemed to care little on how slavery uprooted African culture and society. As the Industrial Revolution sparked a more intense trading system across the Atlantic, the demand for African slaves dramatically increased. Slaves were seen as a “Necessary Evil” as described by Thomas Jefferson. American Colonies thrived off the backs of African slaves; agricultural production soared in the colonies, feeding the mother countries the raw materials they needed for factory production.

The transatlantic slave trade began in the 15th century, after the Portuguese started exploring the coast of West Africa. This had a long term effect on Africa because even though it started out benefiting the upper class in Africa, the long term effect was devastating. When Europeans started to enter Africa, they enjoyed “the triple advantage of guns and other technology, widespread literacy, and the political organization necessary to sustain expensive programs of exploration and conquest”(Doc 4). Africa’s relations with Europe depended on common interests, which Europe did not share. Europe’s contact with Africa, involving economic exchanges and political relationships, was not mutually beneficial.

In the Atlantic slave trade, African slaves were treated like animals or even objects. White people took advantage and mistreated them. A few examples of this

The Slave Trade in Colonial America The first blacks in the American Colonies were brought in, like many lower-class whites, as indentured servants. Most indentured servants had a contract to work without wages for a master for four to seven years, after which they became free. Blacks brought in as slaves, however, had no right to eventual freedom. The first black indentured servants arrived in Jamestown in the colony of Virginia in 1619.

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

The “New World”, now known as the “Atlantic World”, is the history of the connections between western Europe and the British, Spanish, Dutch, and French colonies. They were all a part of the great imperial project set off by Europe. The main influence of the Atlantic World was the expansion of commerce from Europe and Africa to America. Some traveled in search of religious freedom, or to escape from oppression, but most were in search of economic opportunity. As this went on, slave trade began rising between Africa and European America. In the mid-eighteenth century, the “Great Awakening” began in Britain, which spread to the Americas, as did The Enlightenment, which helped spread scientific and technological knowledge. Artistic, scholarly,

1492 is when European colonization began. A Spanish expedition sailed west to find a new trade route to the far east but instead landed in what the European referred to as the “New World”. This quest was led by Christopher Columbus. Spain was the sponsor of Columbus’s voyages, so they were the first European power to settle the largest areas, from the Caribbean and North America to the Southern tip of South America. The “Columbian Exchange” is known as the post-1492 era. A widespread exchange of Culture, plants, animals, human populations, ideas and diseases between Afro-Eurasian and the American hemispheres after Columbus’s voyage to the Americas. The founding of European Nations’ first colonies in the New World were the Spanish. The Spanish

In the year 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in search of raw materials and mistakenly ended up in the "new world". Over the course of years the discovery of America led the Europeans to overpower Indigenous people by spreading their religion, taking control of land and increasing the economy.

Throughout mankind people have been discriminated. They have been discriminated because of their gender, race, height, weight, and much more. Back in the day they did not have laws to protect those who were getting discriminated against, and it got out of hand. One of the largest scale attempts at genocides to ever occur was slavery. The African Slave Trade, spanning almost 350 years was a horrid genocide that killed millions of Africans, as well as wiping out villages.

The African Slave Trade has influenced a vast part of the world. This marvel has been portrayed in a wide range of routes, for example, slave exchange, constrained movement and genocide. The issue with these depictions is that none of them precisely portray the African Slave Trade or it's results since they are all one-sided purposes of perspectives. Albeit none of the portrayals alone frame a not too bad view on the subject, each of the three nicknames appear to give a more brief comprehension of why the slave exchange began and how it has influenced such a large number of individuals, social orders and nations.

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