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How Did Slavery Affect West African Americans

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Slavery became associated with people from Africa because Europeans could obtain skilled slaves from an already established system to increase their profits. Europeans began to create agriculture plantations and had gold mines. They needed people who could work these highly important possessions.

Europeans had a high demand in products that would give them a lot of money such as sugar and cotton among other crops. The labor of the plantations and the mines was a heavy job so Europeans needed people that were strong laborers. The natives were not as strong as the Africans because they were susceptible to diseases and during the 16th century a law was implemented to band their enslavement. West and West central Africa was already involved in slave trading so they supplied the Europeans with the African slaves. Europeans considered the enslaved Africans to be inexpensive since some of the African traders preferred to be given gold, cloth, liquor or weapons. Africans tended to live longer because they were already introduced to the lifestyle before. …show more content…

Once they had the slaves they would take them to the coast and sell them. It would take them several weeks to get to the coast by walking with chains. From the 15th- 19th century, Europeans approximately obtained an estimate of 11 million slaves from West Africa. The Spaniards and Portuguese were the Europeans that most acquired slaves. Slave labor was very important for the development of the plantations and mining in the New World. The development of these were very important to the economy of the Europeans. Women African slaves were more commonly used for sexual purposes, housekeepers and cooks. They were beat up, raped, killed, etc. Europeans also bought children to work or for sexual

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