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

The document “Buying Slaves in 1693” portrays how the process of purchasing and transporting the slaves from the African coastline to the the English ship Hannibal. The document is a section in Captain Thomas Phillips journal dating May 21, 1693. This small section of text shows historically how you would go about purchasing slaves, and it also describes the compounds the slaves were held in. The description lays out a step by step process and side comments on what the captain has learn throughout his career. This text also demonstrates how two different cultures and societies interacted together through a form of trade.

The African Slave Trade was a massive system of Europeans taking African Americans and selling them into slavery. The African Slave Trade began in the 15th century. This slave trade put Africa in a weird relationship with Europe that cause the depopulation of Africa, but it increased the wealth of Europe.

The introduction of Africans to America in 1619 set off an irreversible chain of events that effected the economy of the southern colonies. With a switch from the expensive system of indentured servitude, slavery emerged and grew rapidly for various reasons, consisting of economic, geographic, and social factors. The expansion of slavery in the southern colonies, from the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to just before America gained its independence in 1775, had a lasting impact on the development of our nation’s economy, due to the fact that slaves were easy to obtain, provided a life-long workforce, and were a different race than the colonists, making it easier to justify the immoral act.

Starting with the Atlantic slave trade in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, in which slaves were brutally transported in the middle passage from Africa to America, slavery had an important role in the American economy, but differed in volume by region. However, as the colonies declared their independence in 1776, a gradual anti-slavery movement began in the North as many formed negative opinions about the Southern “Peculiar Institution” of a slavery-based economy. Various issues and ideas from 1776 to 1852 caused this gradual Northern abolitionist movement: political intervention, economic inabilities and threats, social anxieties and intervention, and fundamental moral ideas respectively reflect the thesis.

What is slavery? Slavery is forced labor and this forced labor is what built America and made them become more developed. “Africans peoples were captured and transported to the Americas to work. Most European colonial economies in the Americas from the 16th century through the 19th were dependant on enslaved African labor for their survival.” Many claim that enslavement was very necessary in order for America to thrive and not die off for it is now one of the best countries in the world. However, slavery was not necessary in the Americas it was just a mechanism that just stripped Africans of their human rights, giving the slave masters the “right” to abuse them. Slavery was not necessary in the Americas because without slavery America would

Slavery in America started in 1619 when settlers brought over African Americans to Jamestown, Virginia. The slaves came to Jamestown to work on the tobacco plantations. The slaves were also sent to other colonies such as South Carolina to work on the cotton plantations. Slaves were people who worked for no pay. This caused the land owners to make more profit from their plantations because they didn’t have to pay their workers. Southern slave owners, specifically in South Carolina, relied on slavery as a major part of their economy.

Virgina has differences and similarities when it comes to slave narratives. To explain further, this is why the details and experiences that these ex-slaves gave in describing the institution of slavery and the practice of slavery are tremendously important because Virginia became a royal colony, the first in English history. However, the English kings were occupied with affairs at home, the Virginia house of burgesses was able to continue its functions and won formal recognition in the late 1630s. Thus, representative government under royal domain was assured. By 1641, when Sir William Berkeley became governor, the colony was well established and extended on both sides of the James up to its falls.

The two majors drivers that led to the transatlantic slave trade was the European desire for the agricultural products of the Americas and the need for laborers to work the land in the Americas. All participants, besides for the slaves, benefited from the trading.

The history of the Atlantic slave trade is long and sordid, from the working and transportation conditions to the structure of the trade itself. Historians and scholars from all backgrounds have worked to understand the impact of slavery and why it went on for so long. Two scholars, John Thornton and Mariana Candido, have extensively studied both the impact and organization of the Atlantic slave trade, but disagree on a few main conclusions. Upon thorough review of both sides, however, John Thornton’s ideas regarding the Atlantic trade are more convincing than Candido’s, and by looking deeper into each side it is clear why.

1st slaves stolen from Portuguese ship heading to S America  give privateer some goods for slaves BUT only a few slaves

From the early stages of colonization, the institution of slavery would continually become established within the United States. This creation not only functioned as a system of labor, but also as a system for regulating the relations between the races. The North and South profited greatly at the expense of shackled and separated families, up until the early 1800’s as the idea of slavery became a topic to be repeatedly examined.

From this short passage alone one can tell that slavery was not in the minds of colonizers, but rather they preferred to use the excessive amount of Europeans that were to be removed from their land. The colonies offered plentiful space and opportunity for these individuals to prosper off the colonies’ initial and intended products (namely iron and glass.) England went so far as to lie to their citizens about the wealth the land held, making it seem as though food and riches were lying around, waiting to be plucked up. After sailing the long voyage across the seas to the Americas revealed this to be lies, citizens had few options but to stay and work; if they wanted to leave they would have to sail months across the sea with limited

In the documentary, Up from Slavery: 18th century Colonial America Under the Rule of the British Empire, the story of slavery begins on the coast of West Africa where thousands of African people are unceasingly enslaved and placed upon overcrowded ships on which they must endure the cruelest of conditions. Many did not live through the journey due to disease, malnutrition, or in some cases murder, such as the Zong Massacre where 132 slaves were thrown overboard in a monstrous act committed by the captain all for the sake of an insurance claim. Out of the 12 million slaves who endured the grueling Middle Passage, only about 5,000 were transported to the United States. However, by the time of the Civil War, that number increased to 4 million

The slave trade was the largest contributor to the British economy during the 18th century. Tomas Butler stated “The profits from the slave trade were part of the bedrock of our country's industrial development. Many people and institutions in every part of the country were complicit in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.” In the early Americas, Britain supplied a vast majority of the slaves to the new world to be sold to the highest bidder. During the slave trade British ships made over ten thousand voyages and enslaved approximately 3.4 billion Africans. Some of these ships would make a profit of twenty to fifty percent. Back in England the king and the ship owners were not the only people benefiting from the slave trade. Everyone from the factory owners to the factory workers were benefited as an effect of the slave trade. The upper-class citizens were definitely making the big dollars. These people included the owners of the slave ships, the factory owners, who were able to produce and sell the products that the Africans and Americans needed and wanted, bankers who made money from the interest they earned on loans from people who borrowed money for the long voyage, and