The Causes And Development Of The African 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 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 trade of African people from Western Africa to the Americas. During this time, the “European settled on the islands like Saint-Louis, Goree, Central May, or in the ports that were built along the coast, so it was the defensive possibilities of the island that made Goree a slave center, and its position along the way to the New World from Africa” (Street). “When the Europe and the Indian populations in the Americas and the West Indies died out, the New World looked at Africa since it was their last hope” (Street). The Portuguese would arrive and they would start to come to the people and work something out as in giving them alcohol, wine, spices, guns, etc. and the Africans didn’t think anything of it, so they started collaborating with the Portuguese. The Portuguese left out a few things and didn’t tell the Africans that they were going to start to build a slavery. The Political conditions that happened in the New World was they would help one’s ability to help capture and then sell them off to criminals or strangers. “The Economic stand point in West Africa that made the Atlantic Slave trade possible was that large amount of land that was not being used, it had very cheap labor for the enslaved Africans and, they had local plantation owners” (Street). The production of peanuts increased dramatically in which the peasants and the slaves paid the highest price for them. During the drought, they started to have food shortages which affected

The slave trade in the North American colonies began to grow in the 1600s. The African slave trade sourced their slaves from many different West African villages and countries. The business of slavery was a growing and profitable field, not only for the slavers, but also for the slaveholders. With the decrease of indentured servants, settlers in the English colonies looked for a new source of labor to satisfy their growing labor demands. The next source was Africa. “By the 1690s slaves outnumbered indentured servants four to one” (45). Europeans largely disregarded the ethical dilemma posed by slavery due to the European view of Africans and their culture as uncivilized, foreign, and heathen (44). The largest forced migration in history (44)

The Atlantic Slave Trade lasted between 1450 and 1750 and drastically impacted the lives of both European and African people. During this time, the Europeans, such as the British, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Dutch, traveled to Africa in search of labor workers. In total, over twelve million slaves were taken, mainly because they workers to make money, but it also had to do with their race, religion – as they were not Christian – and to civilize them because the Europeans did not believe that they were humans. Due to these European beliefs, the Europeans saw themselves as the most powerful group and viewed slave trade as a business. The Africans, on the other hand, had a harder time transitioning into slavery. Many of them were taken from their homes and forced to accept a new life working as a slave. These events did not come without many sacrifices from the African people. One of the major reasons the slave trade was so expansive is due to the low life expectancy of the slaves after their capture. While the Europeans believed that they were helping the African culture, as well as themselves, the African society as a whole suffered the most.

While African slave trading was not uncommon in Africa, when Americas was established the Europeans knew they needed cheap labor to work there plantations and mines. Europeans was always interested in trades in the African nations, so in the fifteenth and sixteenth century the Europeans traders started to get involved in the slave trade. Portugal was the first European country to start the transatlantic slave trade. People were kidnapped and enslaved an taken from West Africa and taken to Europe and America to be trade or sold for raw materials and goods.Slaves were packed on a ship on a long journey to America,an there journey was not an easy one. While upon the ship the slaves lived in dreadful conditions some slaves became sick and

In the beginning, a lot the Western Atlantic World viewed Africans as far too expensive considering their high death rate and continued to use Indians and indentured servants. By the seventeenth century, both colonists of the West Indies and Brazil introduced the use of slavery to their settlers, and it became a rapidly growing trend. African slaves in these areas worked on sugar plantations because of “the Indian population having been wiped out by disease… and white indentured servants unwilling to do the back-breaking, monotonous work of sugar cultivation” (Foner, 100). The rapid introduction of slavery to these two colonies generated a large increase in profit and trade.

As early as 1441, the Guinea Coast was a trading place for Portuguese to trade gold, ivory, pepper, and slaves. Slaves were brought back to Portugal as gifts for the Portuguese Prince, but other Portuguese, Europeans, and Americans took slaves back to their homelands to sell. The purchases of slaves formed in 1472 when a Portuguese merchant by the name Ruy do Siqueira received permission from the king of Benin within the boundaries of his kingdom. The different African kingdoms wouldn’t allow the Portuguese in certain areas of West Africa, so the

The African slave trade was a product of a huge venture that lasted for more than three centuries. Over millions of Africans crossed the three thousand mile Atlantic Ocean into North and South Americas to become slaves of labor, considerably to be the largest forced migration ever in history. Where they would be put to work under the most horrific conditions ever. By the seventeen-hundreds the trip across the Atlantic came to be known as the middle passage. In the early sixteen century Portuguese seafarers conducted the slave trade but it was on a very small scale. Only to satisfy a tiny market in Portugal and Spain, the other European nations had no need for slaves since their work labor was already too large. Portugal and Spain dominated

The Slave Trade gave power to many and found support from influential people, leaving those who did oppose the immorality of the operations terrified of the repercussions of speaking out against it. Lives were shaped by the slave trade; countless groups of people were growing prosperous and powerful (14). “At the top [there was] a small, high, and mighty Atlantic ruling class of merchants, planters, and political leaders, who, in ruffles and finery, sat in the American Continental Congress and British Parliament” (14). Likewise, selling, transporting, and using of slaves had become lucrative operations and were heavily protected by this ruling class. One such example is found when a pirate by the name of Bartholomew Roberts terrorized slave

Did you know the causes and effects of African slave trade in the Atlantic region caused millions of people to die? Starting off when we got to America, we used the native Americans as our labor force. The problems with this is that the men had little knowledge of farming because it was women's work. They also had poor immune systems and the English's diseases were new to them so they died by the thousands. The native Americans also knew the land very well and could run away. They could also just go to another group because all the Indians looked similar. So a different choice was needed, we ended up choosing the Africans. The men did the farming, women could cook, they had better immune systems, they didn't know the land well,

The impact on the African slave trade during 16th centuries to 19th centuries was huge. The economy of those countries which allowed African slave trade grew bigger and bigger. For instance, America, a huge land that had nothing before the trade, started to gain some profit out of farming and increased hugely on population. They used a big amount of African slaves to farm and work. And this created the economy better in America. Also Europeans, which were only one million people brought up 5.5 million African slaves (men, women, children) to the Western Hemisphere. 80 % out of 5.5 million slaves were enslaved as a field worker (sugar). With all of those slaves working in the West Hemisphere, Europeans gained huge profits and were able to

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was developed by the existing system of slave trade in African Kingdoms. Demand and need for more slaves lead to active participation in obtaining slaves by African Kingdoms. “European explorers found slavery as a popular custom with advantages in many countries, which influenced Europe to make slavery a strong trade and monetary investment to its colonies. Therefore, in 1441 Europe started trading slaves in Africa.”

The Atlantic Slave Trade affected the people of Africa with a steady decrease in population numbers more specifically an example being in Sub-Saharan Africa where in 1600 the region represented 16% of the world’s population yet by 1900 this percent was less than half of what it’d been. One factor seen as a more so probable cause of this decrease in population had been the consideration of Africa seen as a major source of slaves. With this, people of Africa were taken as slaves and torn from their native land to be transported across the Atlantic to work forcibly in mainly the Americas. With the Atlantic Slave Trade, larger, more powerful societies took over pre-existing small-scale kinship societies of Africa. One example of this being the

Portugal was the first country known to take advantage of African slaves. In 1444 the first slave ship arrived from Africa carrying 235 slaves. Portugal's main goal with slavery was to transform slave workers into a form of economic boost. These slaves were to be workers, and cargo for trading with other countries. 25 years after the first slave ship arrived, the