Essay about African Slave Trade

The new world refers to America that was discovered by Christopher Colombus at the close of the fifteenth century. In that time, the Atlantic slave trade was already underway. Central to its beginning and steady momentum were Portuguese merchants who turned towards human trafficking for profit. Also, The discovery of America also led to the dawn of a great network of trade. In addition, other European powers such as the British, Spanish, Dutch, and French soon joined the trade. Accordingly, in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the trade route assumed a triangular shape. European traders brought “textiles, rum, and manufactured goods” to Africa, they exchanged the goods for enslaved men

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

Slaves were always in the fields whether it was picking cotton, to producing tobacco they did everything. If the slaves ever messed up they would get beat, their owner would beat them and leave bruises, and scars on them. The owners were brutal they made the slaves get up early and go to bed very late. The slaves averaged about 4 hours of sleep a night. Slaves tried to escape and run away by getting to the Underground Railroad and hiding in houses but some of this was impossible to do.

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

There were many slaves at plantations. There was also lots of different kinds of plantations which grew different crops.

Life on the fields meant working sunup to sundown and worked six days a week. Their behavior and movement was restricted. Slaves lived in small shacks with a dirt floor and little or no furniture. Life on large plantations with a cruel overseer was oftentimes the worst. If slaves had complains that they were being unfairly treated, slaveholders would most often be very protective of their "property" and would release the overseer. Adult male slaves were used to tend the fields, pastures, and gardens. Female slaves and young children usually served as domestic slaves, tending to the master's family as cooks, servants, and housemaids. Most slaves

Artisans and skilled workers were the smallest group of slaves. These slaves were taught skills such as weaving, sewing, blacksmithing or carpentry. Obviously these slaves were valued for their skills in maintaining buildings and other equipment on the plantation. Often these slaves might work outside of the plantation or slave owners home at a job that actually paid. Unfortunately, as the slaves were the property of their owners, any money they made was actually paid to the slave

Once slaves were taken to the plantations the slaves were expected to be in good physical health and be ready to work. They had to complete any task whatsoever their master told them to do even if they did not want to. In the case that a slave did not co what their mast told them to do they would be beaten by him or someone that worked for him. There were various types of slaves on the southern plantations. On type of slave was the field slave which was the ones that done the planting and tending to the crops on the plantations.

The majority of the African American slaves worked on tobacco plantations and large farms. Working in a tobacco plantation was one of the hardest things to do. It was an eleven month crop, which had four different stages to it and required constant care. According to The Colonial Williamsburg, there were some advantages to working on a farm or plantation verses working in a household or an urban setting. Generally, slaves in plantations lived in complete family units, their work dictated by the rising and setting of the sun. They generally were allowed Sundays off. Though, the disadvantage was that slaves were more likely to be sold or transferred than those in a domestic setting. They were also subjected to brutal and severe punishments because they were regarded as less valuable than household or urban slaves. Urban and household slaves generally did not live in complete family units. Most domestic environments used female labor. Therefore, there were very few men. In fact, jobs for

“No beds are given to the slaves to sleep on; if they have any they found it themselves.” “ A physician in Alabama wrote in the Southern Cultivator in 1850: One of the most prolific sources of disease among Negroes is the condition of there houses.... Small, low, tight and filthy; there houses can be but laboratories of disease. (Rogers 8)

The definition of the word slave means “a person who is the property of and wholly subject to another”. (Slave) In 1619 Slavery began in the United States and changed our country forever. African Slaves were brought to Jamestown in Virginia to aid in the production of tobacco and cotton. African-American slaves helped build and support the economic foundations of the new nation. By the 19th century, westward expansion, along with the abolition movement in the North, would start a war over slavery that would tear the nation apart in American Civil War. The Union won the war and freed over four million slaves. The legacy of slavery continued to influence American history, from years of Reconstruction to the civil rights movement that emerged in the 1960s, a century after emancipation.

Although the physical aspects (beatings,malnutrition,branding) did contribute to the hardships of the slaves, nothing could compare to the internal battle each of them took on daily. To wake up every morning knowing you are “owned” by your master would be extremely hard to cope with, especially after you had just been ripped from the arms of your loved ones, this was the case with slaves who had been captured in Africa and travelled on the Middle passage to the Americas, then sold off like cattle to a life of slavery and possessorship. Depression and feelings of inadequacy would come hand in hand if you were not allowed to reach your full academic potential, but masters of plantations often would not let their slaves read or write as they believed that only the wealthy deserved an education, alas slaves were not regarded as humans therefore they did not deserve the privileges we now commonly associate with being apart of the human race, but the more common reason slaves were refused an education is because the risk of being exposed to ideas such as freedom was dangerous as this could give them ideas on how to revolt. Although flesh wounds may last a

A slave is a person who was owned by another person or at the time an “owner”, most slaves worked from sunrise to sunset, these are just some of the jobs women did during that time, cooking, laundry, gardening, building, repairing tools and child-rearing(the process of raising a child or children). Slaves often slept in a kitchen or outhouse/shed, on Sundays, end of work days or Christmas the slaves could check up on their personal needs such as Health, Shape, Pain factor, Bruising/scars and other important things. When the slaves had down time they often went and visited friends/family, a slave was not normally educated, which meant if they ran away, they would need to be careful, because their farms normally would be surrounded by forest.

Sometimes the children would be split up and sold, separated from their parents and other sibling’s. Many slaves did not get proper medical treatment. Children working the field or just playing with other children would catch lice and disease like the flu or the common cold. They often could not go to the doctor if they wanted to because they could not afford to. So, they would have

Slaves had no rights at all in the south. Many worked as servants and farm laborers. Some practiced skill trade as shoemaking and others worked on cotton plantations as field hands. Men and women did harsh backbreaking labor in the fields. They cleared new land, planted seeds, and harvested crops in all weather. Teenagers worked alongside the adults pulling weeds, picking insects off the crops and carrying water to the other workers. Some slaves became skilled workers such as blacksmiths and carpenters. Some slaves worked in cities but their earnings belonged to their owners. Planters often hired these skilled workers to work on their plantations. Older slaves like women worked as servants in the planter’s house. They cooked, cleaned and did other chores under the supervision of the planter’s wife.