Compare And Contrast African Slavery And The Slave Trade

For over 2,000 years, slavery has been conducted in various parts of the world. From year 1500 to year 1900, Europeans stole individuals from West Africa, West Central Africa, and Southeast Africa and shipped them to the different parts of the Atlantic. This process dehumanized them of their identity. Europeans stole husbands, wives, merchants, blacksmiths, farmers, and even children. They removed them from their homelands and gave them new names: slaves. European slaveholders never thought to take ownership of their actions by killing humans with brutality and degradation. Slave trade was considered popular in England and soon after more countries began the process of taking slaves to newly claimed territories. These countries include

Slavery in Africa was very similar to the peasants in Europe, which was a hard, laborious life (yet still having the ability marry, own property, etc.), however very different from the American slavery where all rights were denied and slavery was lifelong.

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)

The act of slavery was already happening in Africa prior to The Atlantic Slave Trade. The slave trade provided no restrictions, this caused chaos in both Africa and America. Africans captured slaves and as the demand grew getting slaves became a motivation for war. This lead to internal conflict in Africa that can still be seen today. An article in The Abolition Project did a good job summing up this statement, “Forms of slavery existed in Africa before Europeans arrived. Some

For more than three and a half centuries, the forcible bondage of at least twelve million men, women, and children from their African homelands to the Americas forever changed the face and character of the western hemisphere. The slave trade was brutal and horrific, and the enslavement of Africans was cruel, exploitative, and dehumanizing. The trade represented one of the longest and most sustained assaults on the life, integrity, and dignity of human beings in world history.

African slavery existed within its own continent and countries long before European interference. It wasn't until the mid-fifteenth century that the Portuguese sailed the Eastern Africa coast in search of a trade route to the East that they inherited an alternative discovery. The Portugal trade with Africans along the coast led to colonization and eventual trade of African slaves. This was the eventual segue of slaves into extend European culture (p.39-40 Roark). Slaves reached the New World in the early sixteenth century in Caribbean region discovered by Christopher Columbus, most imported from Europe, while some came directly from Africa (par. 1 Etlis). By the time African slaves made their way to the Jamestown settlement in 1619, African slavery had already been a large part of European and New World culture for well over a century. Slaves had been imported to help work on the production of America's first founded cash crop: tobacco (Slavery in America). From the tips of American roots, we see the reliance of slavery to aid with work. This European practice that

European expansion led to a dramatic increase in the slave trade. Traffic of enslaved people was not new. As in other areas of the world, slavery had been practiced in Africa since ancient times. However, the demand for enslaved Africans increased with the European settlement of the Americas in the 1490s and the planting of sugarcane there.

The Europeans tried to enslave the Native Americans but found it to be very difficult as it was easy for them to escape and rejoin their tribes and in such a time, there were power in numbers. On the other hand, it was not so easy for Africans to escape and travel back to Africa, and if they did attempt to escape, the punishment in most cases was death. Slavery was profitable and the slaves were sustainable to the tobacco plantations. The African were physically able to work under harsh conditions and another key aspect is that although the African slaves were from Africa they came from different parts of Africa and were diverse in language and skills. The diversity especially in language made it hard for them to rebel. Since, they spoke different dialects it made it hard for them to communicate with each other, rebuttal, and more importantly made it hard for them to organize and to stage any form of rebellion.

Enslavement of African Americans was a common and legal practice in the United States from the 18th to the 19th century. Slavery of African Americans began in the American colonies when the British colonies in America bought slaves from Africa. It was a practice that was used as well as legal in all 13 colonies. It lasted in many states up until the end of the American Civil War. Slavery lasted longer in some states then it did in others. In the north slavery was abolished earlier then it was in the south. Reason being is in the south, there was more plantations and farms that needed tending to. Many young slaves were exposed to harsh conditions, having to pick cotton on farms or work in the plantations for their owners who treated them poorly.

When you hear the word slavery, the image of the horrendous deed that was the American enslavement of Africans most likely comes to mind. But, slavery goes much further back than the early 1800’s of agricultural America. The ancient Romans had slaves,but it differed fromAmerican enslavement. It can be a common idea that American slavery and Roman slavery werealmost the exact same, but that is not the case (Fragments). By comparing the two types of slavery,the ideacan bepresentedthat the two may have had similar ideas and goals,butthey were not the same thing.In ancient Rome, slaves were acquired through trade and slave markets and were often prisoners of war and piracy orthe children of men and women who were slaves themselves (Cartwrightand

First, African slavery was very different than normal slavery, like in America before it was abolished. In Africa, slaves had very different opportunities compared to the slaves of another culture. Slaves in Africa could (depending on the location) be integrated into the slave owner’s family, or even obtain positions of military or administrative importance. Also, in early African culture, slaves were used as a way to determine land ownership. Before colonial officials imposed European law, African tribes distributed land based on the amount of laborers available to the family, thus beginning regular raids on other tribes to obtain slaves and by extension: land.

The horrors of the New World Atlantic Slave trade system cannot be expressed in figures along. The humanitarian and cultural losses are staggering. Throughout this period, more than a million and a half died

Throughout history there have been many gruesome crimes committed. The records and information that have been written about African slavery are one of the top atrocious crimes in history. By 1820, four slaves had crossed the Atlantic for every European. Between 1525 and 1866, in the entire history of the slave trade to the New World, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World. Only, 10.7 million survived disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America. However before the Europeans had arrived to Africa there was already a slave trade in process. The Islamic slave trade accounts for nearly 9 million captured African slaves in the seventh century. A tragedy of such

African slavery started at the 16th century and ended in the 19th century. Slave life was the most brutal and disrespected period of America. When Africans first stepped foot on the slave ships coming to America things were bad. The white man beat, raped, and treated the black men like animals. Life on the plantation wasn’t any better. The slaves didn’t work for a paycheck, they worked for their lives. The black man had difficulties adapting to the environment, learning another language, and being a monogamous.

This essay will attempt to describe the modalities and consequences of the abolition of the slave trade in early nineteenth century West Africa. We now live in a world where slavery is considered not to be morale since it was abolished however cases of slavery still exist today but are hidden from the public eye so well that no one even knows the exist. Forcing someone to perform various duties like cleaning without any form of payment against their will is considered to be a form of slavery and anyone found to be having slaves or holding anyone against their will these days is punished and possibly sentenced to jail for a very long period of time. We are in the 21st century and slavery is something that is not accepted by