Journey Through The Slave Trade

The Slave Ship by Marcus Rediker is a great fiction novel that describes the horrifying experiences of Africans, seamen, and captains on their journey through the Middle Passage. The Middle Passage marked the water way in the Atlantic Ocean between Africa and the Americas. The use of slaves provided a great economy for the European countries due to the fact that these African slaves provided free labor while cultivating sugar cane in the Caribbean and America. Rediker describes the slave migration by saying, “There exists no account of the mechanism for history’s greatest forced migration, which was in many ways the key to an entire phase of globalization” (10). This tells us that African enslavement to the Americas causes a complete

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.

To really show the horrendous conditions that the slaves endured, the author includes a 1787 replication drawing of the slave ship Brooks. Built in 1781 with a lower deck intended to accommodate 294 slaves, giving each slave a space comparable to the size of a coffin. Adult males were allocated a space six feet long and fifteen inches wide and allowing even less space for adult women, boys, and girls. The height of the same area was just five feet, and did not include any toilet facilities for the slaves. In most cases, the captains would load double the number of slaves their ships were designed for leading to even worse conditions onboard with more mouths to feed but not enough provisions to compensate. Those slaves who died during the journey through the Middle Passage were simply thrown overboard, where their bodies were eaten by ravenous sharks.

As the Atlantic route expanded, accounting for nearly two thirds of all Africans leaving the continent, it created systems for the gruesome work of collecting and exporting slaves and brought the expansion of a system of slavery in Africa itself. The rising prices for slaves, steadily driven by increasing American demand, powerfully influenced local African developments where slave trade was well established. For example, in some cases such as Kingdom of the Kongo to the south of the Zaire or Congo River, slave trade was quickly organized from a region that had only limited slavery and became a steady exporter of slaves

The transatlantic slave trade first began in 1502, with records of the first slaves in the New World, lasting nearly four centuries. It connected the economies of three continents. The route began in West Europe, where it continued to Africa, trading manufactured goods such as rum, textiles, weapons, and gunpowder for slaves. From Africa, the ship went along the Atlantic to America, distributing slaves, and bringing agricultural products such as coffee, cotton, rice, and sugar back to Europe. The entire route typically lasted eighteen months. The slave trade ended in 1867, seventeen years after Britain began arresting slave ships.

Slavery has been a big part of American history ever since the first slave trade back in 1526, when many Africans set sale to the ‘New World’ from Europe.The reason why Americans looked to purchase slaves is also stated by some historians, “...the Americas looked to Africa as the preferred source of labor because slaves could be procured so cheaply here” (Inikori and Engerman, 30.) After realizing their benefits, they began to ship in more and more slaves from Africa. This was known as the Transatlantic slave trade and it lasted all the way from 1526 to 1867. During this time about a total of 12.5 million slaves had been shipped from Africa in all parts of the

The Atlantic Slave Trade was a system of slavery that took place between the 16th and 19th centuries. It comprised of capturing African tribesmen and women from areas of Western and Central Africa and placing them into the colonies of the New World in North, Central, and South America. Many countries like England, Portugal, Spain, Holland, and France, had participated in enslaving the African peoples. The African slaves were used to exploit an array of commodities such coffee, cotton, rum, sugar, and tobacco, and eventually they had become commodities themselves. Often times the slaves were treated awfully by their owners. Most were forced to work long and tiresome hours on plantations to acquire said commodities, and then use them to create products that would be later sold. The slaves did not receive any profits from the sale of the products that they produced, but they were paid with basic needs such as shelter and food. The revenue that was produced by slave labour was highly profitable, but in turn it was counter acted by the cost of keeping the slave labourers alive and well. By the end of the 18th century a period known as the Industrial Revolution had swept Europe, especially England, and her colonial partners. Never before had production been so cheap and efficient. Many believe that the enslavement of Africans was necessary to initiate the industrial revolution. They believe that the slaves provided the foundation to the development of the revolution, and without

For my comparison book review, I chose to focus on the Atlantic Slave Trade Second Edition by Herbert S Klein and The Economic Consequences of the Atlantic Slave Trade” by Barbara L. Solow. My focus of the trade is labor demands, effects on Africa, European organization of trade, and economy leading up to the end of the trade and after. Together, the two books demonstrate that the Atlantic Slave Trade was more than just the trading of Africans to different continents, but was a historical point that heavily impacted the world socially, economically and politically. While acknowledging the similarities of the two books in my essay, I will also address differences and points that may challenge each other. Before the institution of slavery was confined to only Africans, there were also indentured servants and other forms of caste workers that involved other races. Until the 15th century, the Mediterranean world use slaves as domestic servants, soldiers, mining and agriculture production. But according to Solow, when colonization moved to the Atlantic, plantation slavery became black and blacks became plantation slaves. Solow says that European colonization was associated with sugar; sugar was associated with slavery; and slavery was associated with blacks. (Solow, pg.5)

The Transatlantic Slave Trade often known as the triangular trade was described as the largest long-distance movement of people in all of history. The movement of Africa slaves to the Americas lastly for approximately four centuries and can be viewed as one of the first ideas of globalization . The ship would move from the Americas to Western Europe with raw materials, then to Africa with manufactured goods. Lastly, from Africa the Americas with African slaves. Thus the movement of over 12.5 million slaves from Africa and 10.7 million slaves arriving in the Americas. The slave trade changed to the demographics of the world forever. Many historians ask why did the European countries choose African for their source of slave labor

Ramesh Mallipeddi told an example of a real historical slave ship. He tells the story of “The Hannibal, a Guineaman financed by the Royal African Company, sailed with a cargo of 700 slaves (480 men and 220 women) from the West African kingdom Whydah to the Caribbean on 27 July 1694.”(Mallipedi, 235) This count of people on the ship displays a depiction of the vast amount of people on each of these voyages. It also gives

The trans-Atlantic slave trade set in motion a series of events that ultimately crippled a continent, and forever change how those of African descent became viewed around the world. The effects of the slave trade were both immediate and far reaching. In this essay I will discuss a few of the immediate effects of the slave trade as well as some of it farther reaching consequences.

Slavery was a sad event that African Americans had to go through in America starting in the sixteen hundredths. Slavery was bad because African Americans were kidnapped from Africa by Slave Traders and put on slave ships that enslaved African Americans. The Atlantic Slave Trade is the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people. Mainly from Africa to America and then, Africans were sold into slavery. Innocent African Americans were captured and beaten almost to death in captivity by the slave traders. Can you imagine the pain and horror African Americans went through while enslaving? Slavery is a negative event that should not be honored or relished! Innocent African Americans were taken away from their families. Can you

Millions of lives were forever changed by the Atlantic Slave trade. Some were affected positively, in the case of slavers and wealthy slave owners. Others, the men, women, and children captured and sold into slavery were affected in an overwhelmingly negative way. Slavery was perceived and experienced in two distinctly different ways by Africans and Europeans.

Atlantic slave trade from the fifteenth century and partially illegally through the nineteenth century, has always been a very ambiguous and controversial topic in North America and all around the world, and even in the modern world continues to perplex the minds of every individual. In schools and educations all around the world focus nearly too much on the brutality and evil treatment of the “black slaves”, and forget to mention the traveling of the slaves. The slave ships not only globally the general economy of the world but also played a role on spreading a sort of worldwide communism, at the ships’ most basic functions transporting the slaves, spreading cultures and foods, and finally and arguably the most important the slave ship prepared the slaves for their inevitable life on the plantations. The conditions on board of the slave ship show great proof

The Atlantic slave trade existed from the 16th to the early 19th century and stimulated trade between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Over 12 million Africans were captured and sold into chattel slavery off the coast of West Africa, and more than 2 million of them died crossing the Atlantic. These outcomes of the slave trade are rarely disputed among historians; the effect of the Atlantic slave trade in Africa, however, is often a topic of debate. Some academics, such as Walter Rodney, insist that Africans were forced to take part in the slave trade, resulting in demographic disruption and underdevelopment in all sectors of Africa. Historian John Thornton acknowledges the negative consequences of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, yet contends that it was merely an expansion of the existing internal slave trade which African rulers engaged in willingly. A final case made by Hugh Thomas completely contradicts Rodney’s thesis, asserting that the slave trade was not solely responsible for decreasing Africa’s population, and furthermore, that it was primarily beneficial to Africa’s economy and politics. The true outcome of the slave trade in Africa lies not entirely in any one of these arguments, but rests rather in a combination of all three. Although the Atlantic slave trade was detrimental to the economic and social development of Africa, the trade benefited a small portion of Africans, who willingly aligned themselves with