The Experience Of Enslavement To Africans And Europeans

Slaves and slave trade has been a paramount part of history for a very long time. In the years of the British thirteen colonies in North America, slaves and slave trade was a very consequential part of its development. It even carried on to virtually 200 years of Coalesced States history. The slave trade of the thirteen colonies was a paramount part of the colonies as well as Europe and Africa. In order to supply the thirteen colonies efficiently through trade, Europe developed the method of triangular trade. It is referred to as triangular trade because it consists of trade with Africa, the thirteen colonies, and England.

Slavery was a dark time in America’s past. Not only did slavery separate millions of families, it destroyed the white man’s reputation to African people. Many slave owners treated their slaves well, many did not. They forced their slaves to live in deplorable conditions. Malnutrition and overworking often led to death. If you were a slave, would you risk it all and try to run away? You might not have a choice if you wanted to stay alive.

Slavery in America was a horrific time period that negatively affected African Americans, and still affect some to this day. Africans were kidnapped from their homes, brought overseas in an inhuman effort, tortured, beaten, and forced to work long grueling hours for no pay. Because of the color of their skin they were considered worthless, and they were also considered as property. Whites did not recognize African Americans as human beings, and

Slavery was one of the darkest periods in African American history. Africans were taken from their homes in West Africa and brought to America to work on plantations. However, slavery was not something new, as it existed in Africa before Europeans partook in it, but slavery in Africa was very different from slavery in America. During their voyage through the Middle Passage many slaves perished. Those who survived were sold and subjected to the harsh life on the plantations. When this happened, their authentic cultures were drastically changed from the way of life in their native homelands in Africa to life in the plantation society of the American colonies.

Slavery in the American colonies had greatly shaped the nation as we know it to be today. After the discovery of the New World, Spanish conquerors intended to enslave Native Americans, but punishment, overwork, and diseases such as small pox and malaria decreased their population rapidly. The only solution was to kidnap African Americans from their homeland and transport them on ships under poor, unsanitary conditions, many of which died of yellow fever, dysentery, or suicide. Upon arrival, they were fed and oiled to make them more physically attractive so they can be purchased by wealthy landowners who forced them into labor. Here, plantation owners assigned task for each individual slave, working long hours in the field harvesting crops. At first, these African Americans held the status of indentured servitude, but as the demand for labor grew increasingly, treatment became much harsher. Additionally, African Americans were outnumbering plantation owners, and as a result, they were stripped of their freedom in fear of revolts. Although slaves have little to no rights, they played an important role in developing the economy despite experiencing racial discrimination.

The Europeans tried to enslave the Native Americans but found it to be very difficult as it was easy for them to escape and rejoin their tribes and in such a time, there were power in numbers. On the other hand, it was not so easy for Africans to escape and travel back to Africa, and if they did attempt to escape, the punishment in most cases was death. Slavery was profitable and the slaves were sustainable to the tobacco plantations. The African were physically able to work under harsh conditions and another key aspect is that although the African slaves were from Africa they came from different parts of Africa and were diverse in language and skills. The diversity especially in language made it hard for them to rebel. Since, they spoke different dialects it made it hard for them to communicate with each other, rebuttal, and more importantly made it hard for them to organize and to stage any form of rebellion.

Enslavement of African Americans was a common and legal practice in the United States from the 18th to the 19th century. Slavery of African Americans began in the American colonies when the British colonies in America bought slaves from Africa. It was a practice that was used as well as legal in all 13 colonies. It lasted in many states up until the end of the American Civil War. Slavery lasted longer in some states then it did in others. In the north slavery was abolished earlier then it was in the south. Reason being is in the south, there was more plantations and farms that needed tending to. Many young slaves were exposed to harsh conditions, having to pick cotton on farms or work in the plantations for their owners who treated them poorly.

Many slaveholders believed that enslavement of African Americans was both necessary and proper arguing that Africans were lesser beings. They believed Africans were inferior

According to Yeager (1998), historians have been less then precise when it comes to defining encomienda and distinguishing them from slavery (p: 521). Slavery was a condition of exhausting labor and restriction from freedom whereas the encomienda was a system where the encomendero had restricted rights of the indigenous population of Spanish- America. Out of all the force labors the encomienda was preferred by the Spanish crown. Even though the encomienda was executed for the care and to provide for the Native Americans as of result, it was disastrous to New Spain. The Indians were mistreated by their supposed protectors and they were defenseless against European diseases such as small pox and measles to which they had no immunity. These Indians perished in large numbers. Figures one and two display natives working in the encomienda and African slaves working on the plantations. By understanding what an encomienda and slavery is we can easily determine which figure depicts which system.

The history of slavery in America has been long and treacherous. From day one when their fellow Africans sold them to white men, the long, cramped, and dirty boat ride, and finally being torn away from their family, if they even had family with them. They were then forced to work on large farms, or plantations. After a Civil War, they were finally freed, but still were not equal to white men and women who reminded them daily with segregation.

The African Americans sustained many hardships and had very bad lives as slaves.They were beaten and not fed, and most starved to death.When or if they died they would be thrown overboard the ship and fed to the sharks.If they did make it they would be forced to do hard labor without pay and very little food. They were given poor sleeping conditions. When the slaves were brought from Africa they were auctioned to the buyers and were split up from their families, and they were treated unfairly. In addition to this, they were whipped and beaten as punishment. The slaves worked on the fertile lands of North America, where they grew rice, cotton, indigo, and tobacco.On the plantation the slaves cleared the land, timber, and worked the fields

Slaves were valued more for work and not their personality and to keep them happy, slaves were granted rights such as owning their own property and the ability to cultivate it, they also had the ability to marry other African women, and they are were not segregated by the white endentured servants, in fact it was very common for white servants and slaves to bond and form relationships at taverns ( The downward Spiral). As a result of the demand of Tabaco in the Chesapeake bay, more slaves were brought into the New World. After the 1640s people began to be distinguished by the color of their skin rather than their social status, causing a lot of hostility towards the people of dark color and severing the bonds and relationships between servants and slaves. Life for any free slave was hard, especially for a freed woman. Most of the time, women would sacrifice their freedom and become a servant and bind their children to be servants in order to survive.

Africans have not had it easy in America because of all this. Slavery is one of America's most embarrassing topics in all honesty because to have to have practiced that is just utterly disgusting. This has greatly affected the world today and how african americans live on a day to day basis. It has not been easy for African Americans in the United States. The crazy thing about it is that it was completely legal in the United States. It was not until the early 1800s that anti-slavery became a thing. People like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman started to rise against slavery. Many enslaved africans were directed to freedom because of amazing brave souls, such as, Harriet

But it is exclusively the ongoing legacy of African enslavement – the identification of blackness with inferiority and whiteness with its opposite - that persists and potentially disrupts every political and economic struggle in the United States today, whether it be for a living wage, for civil liberties, for the right to organize, for education and health care, for gender equality, for equal rights of immigrants, for “fair” taxation of wealth, for human rights of gay, lesbian and transgender people – everything. It is not accidental that the majority of the men and women in prison today are African American, and most of the rest are Latino. The so-called criminal justice system and the prison-industrial complex maintain a new form of slavery.

We must ask ourselves what led to this dreadful institution? Why was it Africans that were enslaved? Slavery was not anything new. In fact human slavery had excited for thousands of years, but the most recent form of slavery by the masses has been that of the Africans. Unlike popular belief, Africans were not the first group of people to be enslaved in the New World. When the conquistadors arrived in the New World, they had brutally destroyed the native population through mass killing and spread of diseases. The Spanish had also used the Indians as slaves to work on mines. Poor whites were also subjects to a form of slavery