The Economic Effects of the Slave Trade on Africa, Britain, and America

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.

Slavery had been practiced in Europe and the Caribbean. This being said, it did not exist in the English mainland colonies because there was no shortage of labor. In the 1670s and 1680s the Chesapeake economy depended on tobacco which required a large labor supply. At the same time, fewer and fewer men and women were willing to become indentured servants for a variety of reasons. The tobacco planters found the answer to this shortage in the slave trade. In the years between 1492 and 1770 more Africans than Europeans came to the Americas. Most were imported as slaves to Brazil and the Caribbean and only about 260,000 came to the region that would later become the United States. The slave trade was part of the Atlantic economic system, which is often referred to as the triangular trade. Triangular Trade was a system in which slaves, crops, and manufactured goods were traded between Africa, the Caribbean, and the American colonies. The future of Europe, Africa, South America and, North America were now bound together in the triangular trade and Atlantic economic system that would affect millions of lives over the centuries.The traffic in enslaved people served as an essential part of the triangular trade system. Europeans purchased slaves from Africa and then sold them in their colonies in America. The slave trade also had political and economic consequences for the people of West Africa. For example it created the powerful kingdoms of Dahomey, as it changed traditional economics. Goods now were imported to the coast instead of the Mediterranean. It also affected the population of West Africa unevenly. The slave trade left a shortage of men able to work in areas such as the Gold Coast. This resulted in new opportunities for women and encouraged polygamy. Despite the slave trade economic

Treated like items rather than people with families, the African slave trade tore people from their native land and caused mass controversy throughout the world. While some viewed it as a prosperous business that allowed for free labor, others saw the emotional and physical injustices caused by this movement. The ethical debate this “new business” sparked, created arguments both for and against the abolition of slave trade. Three prominent men who had key opinions on this topic were Malachy Postlethwayt, John Wesley, and John Newton. While Postlethwayt defended slavery and the benefits it created for the New World, Wesley and Newton, while not completely denouncing slavery, questioned its ethics and realized the dark villainy of the business. These figures sparked debate amongst men and helped create arguments both for and against the Slave Trade.

The Atlantic Slave Trade was a very important time in history. When the records of the Atlantic slave Trade are reflected upon ,the impacts of the shipboards revolts are often times overseen .Although these revolts did have an immense effect on the political, views of the Slave trade. Richardson’s “shipboard revolts,African Authority,and the Atlantic slave trade”. brings into view the fluctuating causes and effects of shore based, and shipboard insurrection . Because of Richardson occupation it grants him reliability to all of his claims and supports his opinions His profession of studying economics and international ,offers him a profusion amount of education in the countries which were involved in the Atlantic Slave Trade. Richardson expose the indispensable impacts of shipboard revolts , African Leadership on the Atlantic slave trade, the author accomplishes this by painting out the causes an effects of each specific revolt an also by exposing the progress.

In colonies, such as the ones in Chesapeake Bay, their entire economy was based on the production of cash crops. The plantations had a huge quota for cheap labor. As their own southern labor supply was scarce, the plantation owners often used black servants to get cheap labor. As the economy grew, so did the slave trade, and by the late 17th century, the supply of African laborers in North America was plentiful and extensive. Another way that economics had a huge impact on the development of slavery is through the Atlantic slave trade. The first slaves arrived before 1620, but until the mid-1690s there were a small group. This was because of the monopoly that the Royal African Company of England had, which allowed them to keep the prices high and the supplies low. However, when the monopoly was broken, prices fell and the amount of slaves arriving in North America grew exponentially. The need for labor to sustain their plantation-centric economy led to the origin of slavery, and the prices and monopoly of African slaves helped develop slavery into the basis of the southern work

Everyone has their own understanding of what slavery is, but there are misconceptions about the history of “slavery”. Not many people understand how the slave trade initially began. Originally Africa had “slaves” but they were servants or serfs, sometimes these people could be part of the master’s family. They could own land, rise to positions of power, and even purchase their freedom. This changed when white captains came to Africa and offered weapons, rum, and manufactured goods for people. African kings and merchants gave away the criminals, debtors, and prisoner from rival tribes. The demand for cheap labor was increasing, this resulted in the forced migration of over ten million slaves. The Atlantic Slave Trade occurred from 1500 to 1880 CE. This large-scale event changed the economy and histories of many places. The Atlantic Slave Trade held a great amount of significance in the development of America. Africans shaped America by building a solid foundation for the country.

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.

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.

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

We will start with how the Atlantic slave trade and labor had an impact in the beginning of the 18th century. One of the factors that funded the industrial revolution came out of the slave trade that was dominated by English traders at the peak of slave trade and the money that came out of producing tobacco and sugar in America by of course slave labor. “The profits from Atlantic slave trade, together with those from the sugar and tobacco produced in the Americas by slave labor, were invested in England and helped fund the Industrial Revolution during the eighteenth century” (Middle passage). We can conclude that slavery was the backbone of the economy, which helped in making the industrial revolution. By having huge amount of slaves work their butts off in plantations without paying them back made landowners make a lot of profit. “The aim was to carry as many Africans in healthy condition to the Americas as possible in order to make the large profits that justified such expenditures” (middle passage). That was the

I think that although capitalism and human nature both impacted the slave trade, human nature was to blame. Almost every human if not every single human wants to feel powerful in some way or another. We are wired to want more then we have, and to a certain extend wired to be greedy. People during the time of African slave trade wanted the same feeling. They wanted to have materials and resources that could make them feel above others. "Until the 1800s, the European presence in Africa primarily meant trade—trade in which Europeans exchanged iron, hardware, textiles, and other goods for pepper, gold, ivory, and, above all, human beings. " (The Human Record, 64) People during this time would stoop as low as to have human beings and

Labor exploitation was the key for the effectiveness of european expansion in the new world and define slavery as a principal component for global capitalism until it was not longer profitable. The atlantic slave trade influence europe economic growth and market development to rapidly spread through the atlantic trade. It was a intense dependence on the triangular trade that made merchants made big profits at the expense of the exploited labour abroad. Merchants were involved in all three sides of the triangle trade that allowed the transportation of slaves from Europe to Africa where goods were traded for slaves and then those slaves were brought to the Americas for the cultivation food crops and other raw materials; these later were brought back to Europe, Africa and the Americas to be sold. Resistance and revolts against the trade of slave was stronger in African areas where european demographic power was lower but “It was not until 1780s that increasing european along the west of africa coast finally drove up the price of slaves” and the overproduction of sugar in the caribbean and other raw materials lead the fall in the selling price of these products (shillington p181) european nations began to question whether the trade was still profitable or not. Britain was the first to completely abolished slavery in 1834 when manufactures found european labor in factories more efficient and less expensive than plantations. It was follow for the french colonies 1848, Cuba in

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