Decentralized Societies And The Slave Trade Essay

John. W. Blessingame, The Slave Community: The Plantation Life in The Antebellum South (Oxford University Press, Inc: 1972, 1979).

This paper will discuss how the centralized and decentralized societies interacted during the slave trade and how the trade had an effect on them. It will also discuss how and why some of the decentralized societies were predatory towards people exactly like themselves by looking at multiple decentralized societies, including the Balanta and the Igbo. Though each side of the debate gives convincing evidence and arguments, the Atlantic Slave Trade was not just centralized societies preying on decentralized societies and the decentralized societies were not completely victims. They used different mechanisms to defend themselves. In some decentralized societies, after they gained some power, they would prey on other weaker decentralized societies.

The Atlantic Slave Trade was a part of African history that had made one of it's biggest impact on Africa's relation with the world and more importantly on the inner workings of the country itself due to its large-scale involvement of many of the people in the continent. Although the slave trade was so long ago the impact can still be seen in Africa's social workings within the people, its economy in the local and global market, and within the political landscape of the countries.

Africa had been the target of colonialism and slavery for many years. The colonies that European’s developed during fifteenth and sixteenth century were the main reason that started slave trade in Africa.

The ‘scramble for Africa’ was a phenomenon in the world between the years 1880-1914. The ‘dark continent’ was relatively untouched by Europeans up until this point, with few ports of control on the coasts in the west, which were remnants of the slave trade, and in the south, Britain held the Cape, taken from the Dutch during the French Revolutionary Wars. So, during a period of 30 years, it came to pass that almost the whole of Africa was taken by Europeans. (Except Liberia a colony for freed American slaves, and Abyssinia managed to hold out against Italian aggression). It will be my objective in this essay to analyse the economic factors which resulted in the almost complete colonisation and takeover of Africa, and also to determine to

Although all this documents stress voices from the Slave Trade, each document sheds a unique light on the much-debated question about who should be held responsible for the tragedy of the Atlantic slave trade. For example, Document 15.1 sheds light on the role of both European and African merchants in the trafficking of slaves as well as the human suffering of the slave trade. However Document 15.2 reveals the cooperation between local African rulers and European and African traders in the slave trade. Moreover, Documents 15.3 focus on how disruptive European traders could be to established African governments, even those that actively opposed the slave trade. And finally, Document 15.4 shows how some African leaders were attached to the slave trade and promoted it even when European were moving to end it. Nonetheless, all the documents do shed a clear and a full light on what should be held responsible for the

There is no doubt that the United States was built upon the hard work of Black-American slaves, referred to at the time as bondpeople, who were the main labor force in producing important American exports, such as cotton or tobacco, which were, in fact, the backbone of the American economy during that time. Due to bondpeople’s overall importance in keeping the United States the powerhouse that it was, the domestic slave trade was a value market that “‘was roughly three times greater than the total amount of all capital, North and South combined, invested in manufacturing, almost three times the amount invested in railroads, and seven times the amount invested in banks’”(23). In “‘In Pressing Need of Cash,’” Daina Ramey Berry, a professor for the Departments of History and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas, looks at a fifteen year period, from 1850-1865, of the economic factors of the domestic slave trade. Berry uses Steven Deyle’s findings in his study, "Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life” which examined both the "long-distance interstate trade" and the extensive local or "intrastate" trade of enslaved males and females, who were priced differently depending on their perceived market value (23). With Deyle’s findings, Berry specifically discusses the relationships among gender, age, skill, or type of sale and how those factors, generally, determined the priced paid of enslaved workers.

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.

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

Screams for relief, cries for comfort, and moans for death all revolved around the slave trade. The slave trade is an event that not only impacted Africa, but the whole world even still today. This essay will explain how cultures were ruined and families were torn apart. The slave trade has influenced history worldwide because it has impacted continents economically, socially, and politically.

As claimed by professor Sandra Greene, “We know, for example, that Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807, but in West Africa during much of the rest of the nineteenth century, the danger of capture and enslavement still infused a range of everyday activities” (Greene 3). This scholar states that the fear of enslavement was impeding on the natives’ lives. Though this did impact them, the economy was stabilized more than before the ban. After looking at this claim, I discovered less evidence supporting it, and the negatives of the individual lives of slaves were not proven to outweigh the improvements in the

Nathan Nunn, author of the article “The Long-Term Effects of Africa’s Slave Trade” was interested in researching and determining how the slave trade had affected Africa’s economy in the subsequent years. Rather than taking a human rights approach, Nunn chose to focus on the economic approach and sets out to investigate how certain characteristics of the slave trade have affected the development of the society economically. To be more specific, Nunn states that his thesis statement is that the African slave trade was not only damaging to the society but that there was a correlation between the process of acquiring slaves and the negative impact in the economy in the following years. To demonstrate that he would be creating a relationship with

The African Slave Trade has affected a very large part of the world. This phenomenon has been described in many different ways, such as slave trade, forced migration and genocide. When people today think of slavery, many envision the form in which it existed in the United States before the American Civil War (1861-1865): one racially identifiable group owning and exploiting another. However, in other parts of the world, slavery has taken many different forms. In Africa, many societies recognized slaves merely as property, but others saw them as dependents whom, eventually might be integrated into the families of slave owners. Still other societies allowed slaves to attain positions of military or administrative power. Most often, both

Re-evaluating the situation, striving to circumvent haste judgment, I anatomize how one could view a human as a mechanism of capital. Contrary to common American assertions about the slave trade, Smallwood attempts presents her literature as unbiased by noting the atrocities of both the Europeans and the Africans. Within the passage, she stated that European migrant workers were less costly to transport, but she failed to elaborate on the causation of this phenomena. It is my assertion that this occurred because migrant workers were not purchased, and that because the passage was optional, less crew was needed to oversee the masses. More cout is gained when the literature later discusses the economic benefits of African labor over that of European servitude. African slaves, and their offsprings were owned for life; servants were usually contractual and had a finite end date. I gained increased clarity of the moral justifications of slavery later in the passage. Europeans, seeing Africans merely as savages whom lacked nations and rulers, in a European traditional state, were unfit to retain autonomy. Smallwood posed a questions that mimics one that the Europeans may have asked. “What constitutes a country in the gold coast?” and “What meaning did ethnic labels actually have on people’s daily life?”