The Benefits Of The African Slave Trade

The Atlantic Slave Trade attempts to dehumanize enslaved Africans in numerous ways. First of all, from the sketch of a slave ship in the Middle Passage, it reveals that each slave has very limited space on the ship. Therefore, due to the harsh living condition on the ship, many slaves died in the Middle Passage. In addition, slaves were used as possessions, sold in market, “poked and prodded by strange white people” (Berlin 4). This intends to show “plantation owners’ wealth and power” (Berlin 2). Moreover, slaves might be “whipped, restrained, or maimed for any infraction, large or small ” (Henretta 100). Particularly, slave owners brandishing hot irons on slaves, to reveal their confined identity as slaves. Furthermore, the slave owners also

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 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.

From the 17th century until the 19th century, almost twelve million Africans were brought to the New World against their will to perform back-breaking labour under terrible conditions. The rationalizations and defences given for slavery and the slave trade were absurd and self-serving. Slavery was a truly barbaric, and those who think that they can control what another group of people eat, where they sleep, whether they are to live or die, or even whether they are to be bought or sold, are acting on a totally inhumane level.

The perspectives of African slave merchants, the female slaves, and the plantation workers in the Americans which are missing in this collection might add other dimensions to our understanding of this commerce in people. Knowing the perspective of the African slave merchants who were present during the slave trade in Africa would have

Slaves suffered within a system characterized by undernourishment, overwork, harsh punishment, ill health, and despair. The purpose of this paper is to address the significant problems slavery caused the world in which talk of rights and liberties were increasingly popularized. Slavery divested lives of many African Americans who were sold into enslavement for many years.

Slavery was a central institution in American society during the late eighteenth century, and was accepted as normal and applauded as a positive thing by many white Americans. In the 1770’s, there were approximately 400,000 blacks in the Southern colonies and 50,000 in the Northern colonies. Slaves were central to the operation of the colonies, especially in the South where they were a crucial element of the labour force. They were treated as inferiors, but living alongside whites, and essential as an exploited labouring class. On one hand, people were advocating liberty from slavery, while at the same time relying on slaves to drive the economy.

The Atlantic Slave Trade involved the forced intercontinental migration of West Africans across the Middle Passage during the 17th to 19th centuries. Between twelve and fifteen million slaves were exchanged between Africa, Europe and the Americas, together with raw materials and manufactured goods.

For numerous centuries land owners were dependent on a free source of labor provided by slaves. They were to pay for these slaves and then allowed to do as they pleased with them. Slaves cooked, cleaned, worked on plantations, and devoted their lives submissive to the orders of their masters. For over 150 years now, historians continue to argue whether or not slaves helped countries as a whole move economically at a faster pace, or whether after calculating the head cost and transporting the slaves, the trade ended up making having little significance to the country pace and the slave owner’s wealth. The Atlantic slave trade, when a massive number of slaves from Africa were taken on enormous

The development of the New World relied upon the buying and trading of slaves, as African Americans were critical labor force for plantations and construction crews that lead to the development of the Americas. During the course of slavery, ship Captains, Plantation owners and slaves composed journals of there their trips, tribulations and daily life. The stories and details vary, depending on who is recounting the tails, but one constant found throughout is that the poor treatment of slaves was evident. Even in journals written by people like Captain Phillips, who wrote about how he made his lively hood off of selling and buying African Americans, the inhuman treatment could be seen even though he had no intention of writing about it. On the other hand there are journals from African slaves, such as Harriet Jacobs, that served the purpose to detail the difficulties they faced and their harsh treatment rather than how they made money for their owners. No matter which stories one reads the sense of African slaves being treated inhumanly and like products in a store for the economic growth and profit for private traders can be seen.

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.

Situations became more intense for those slaves who actually reached the plantations over in the Americas. Many of the plantation owners had returned home to Europe, leaving their holdings (slaves and land) in America to be managed by overseers who were often unstable. Often times slave families were split up and they were not allowed to learn to read or write. African men, women, and children were forced to work with little to eat or drink. From today’s perspective this seemed very inhuman to treat another human being in such a manner. However, in between the 16th and 19th centuries the harsh treatment of slaves was accepted on the basis they were not considered ordinary human beings; they were if anything a sub race a less superior one. Slave labor provided some of the most sought after items in Atlantic and European trading exchange such as sugar, coffee, and cotton of the Caribbean; tobacco and rice of North America and lastly gold and sugar of Portuguese and Spanish South America. These commodities represented about a third of the value of European trade at the time.

In documents 1 and 2, both excerpts bring about a case on the immorality of slavery based upon the owner’s connection to the treatment of their so called property. In document 1, Frederick Law Olmsted discusses the complications of slave management that fuel the heated dispute on the harsh treatment of slaves by the masters while also explaining the factors that shift the severity of the slave system. Overall, Frederick Law Olmsted comes into conclusion that slavery “is never either consistently humane of consistently economical” (Doc 1). This being said tells us that the human disposition of harshly enslaving for profit can be seen as a means of benefitting the economy and thus accepted while at another point in the century, portrayed as a sin against humanity.

In today’s world it is widely know and accepted that money makes the world go round but, unfortunately that is not the question. The question is: what made the world go round in the early 1600’s? Surprisingly, just like the world today money made the world go around back then also. One major difference is that in today’s world machines do all of our dirty work, back then it was all up to the slaves. Finding the perfect slave was a challenge to the colonists. First, there was the indentured servants, second, came the Indians. However because Indians and indentured servants could escape to freedom with ease, they were not the ideal slaves. The colonists’ third attempt proved to be a gold mine. The unfortunate people who were forced in to

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