The Trans-Atlantic Slave 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.

When Columbus sailed to the what he thought was India, he would never know the full implications of his “accident” that changed the world. Columbus’s discovery of the Americas created a whole new avenue for competing European states to jockey for world dominance, and most importantly, for wealth. In order to gain the power that Spain, France, Britain, and Portugal so greatly desired, an intercontinental trading network called the Atlantic Slave Trade was established. The need for cheap labor and the desire for large profits brought slaves from Africa, to North/South America. Slavery began to take a new shape, with a focus on plantation agriculture through a dehumanized class of workers. During the Atlantic Slave Trade, slavery was primarily beneficial to European’s. Not only did the Atlantic Slave Trade supply European’s with the resources (primarily crops) required to assume a position of world dominance, slavery also benefited Europeans by providing the wealth that was needed to compete with traditional Asian powers. However, slavery during the Atlantic Slave Trade was detrimental to African’s. They were ripped from their home lands, brought across the Atlantic, and sold into a life of manual labor, and often abuse. Similar to how Columbus would never know the full impact of his discoveries in 1492, Europeans during Atlantic Slave Trade would never know just how much it would catapult the European continent into a position of power, meanwhile having devastating effects on

Slavery originated from Africa "after the Bantu migrations spread agricultural to all parts of the continent." Africans would buy slaves to enlarge their families and have more power. Also, they would buy slaves in order to sell them to make a profit. It then spread out from Africa to Portugal and was said, "it is estimated that during the four and a half centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, Portugal was responsible for transporting over 4.5 million Africans (roughly 40% of the total)." There was one purpose of slaves and that was work, at little or no cost. Nobody wanted to pay others when there really was not that much money in the economy to begin with. The Europeans

Unfortunate Africans from different countries, ethnic, and cultural, was taken from their homeland. The Middle Passage took the enslaved Africans placed them in pairs handcuffs, leg shackles, and leg irons. The cargo ships were pledged, with the dangerous disease, seasickness, and overcrowded Africans. Therefore the Africans were taken across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas. Once there they were sold and later work on the European-owned plantations.

The Transatlantic slave trade was a horrific event where between 1526 to 1867 over twelve million slaves were captured and were sent from their native homes in Africa to the Americas. The African slaves that were captured over those centuries were shipped in bulk (between 30,000 a year in the late seventeenth century and 85,000 one hundred years later). Approximately, six percent of the African slaves were taken to North America in the eighteenth century and the majority of enslaved Africans were sent South America and parts of what is now Central America. In the Southern states of America, a single slave owner owned and housed about a thousand slaves. The slave population in the United States grew and this mainly due to the high fertility rate. However, due to the living environment many of the enslaved infants had a high mortality rate did not make it past their first year of life. This was the result of the children being fed food that lacked the nutrients they needed and they were breastfed too early. Due to the unhealthy environment, slaves contracted many terrible illnesses and diseases (i.e. blindness, skin lesions, Vitamin D deficiency, Diarrhea, whooping cough, etc.) that they usually succumbed to without a way to get proper treatment for them. In the mid-nineteenth century, the population of enslaved Blacks tripled from the beginning of the nineteenth

I believe that modern America’s slavery is worse than the Trans-Atlantic slave trade in the sense that no one is exempt from slavery and trafficking, and that the people who are put through this suffering are forced to do vile things, especially because today’s society is completely ignorant to the fact that this issue still exists. Slavery and human trafficking still happens to occur under the radar, and can very well be happening right next door. Slavery is worse now because back when the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (TAST) was thriving, everyone was aware about the existence of the institution, unlike now that the human race as a whole has become increasingly unaware that slavery and trafficking still occurs, but we choose to not think about it and ignore it, or even in some cases, people don’t even know the real severity of the slavery issue in present America. The very nature of slavery has changed and evolved into a more violent, secretive, aggressive, system that comes in different forms that all feed off the unwilling victims who are forced to endure unspeakable things. Slavery at this very moment is increasingly worse in the notion that no one is exempt from being a potential victim of slavery; gender, race, age, or national origin do not matter when it comes to holding someone captive. In addition, there have been laws and acts established in the prevention of slavery since the TAST, but they have not been enforced and the need for new and improved laws is high as

The wealthier, bigger traders had the means to hire workers to do the capturing and handling of the slaves. Interestingly, and in accordance to how the system works today, the workers received a wage based on their skill level, and their level of authority. The average slave trader received a wage higher than the alternative job wage, with workers skilled in mechanical trade receiving $1000 per year, and the worker with the same skill and in a position of authority would receive $1800 per year; both of which were considered a good income (Evans, 1986). An alternative method of employing extra hands at the time was paying workers to handle the slaves, from here on referred to as handlers, by commission. Handlers would receive on average $5 per day or received 5% of the capital investment to handle a coffle or a group of slaves (Evans, 1986). From the data on the volume of the trade, we can see that the slave trade provided increasing employment opportunities as it grew, to both low and high skilled workers. Thus, it benefited not only the colonies and the empires, but also those groups of people living in Africa that chose to take part in the trade.

In 1969 Philip Curtin described the historiography of the Atlantic slave trade as a “Numbers Game.” Curtin found that historians conceptualized the commodification of human beings through quantification. A year earlier in 1968, Frederick George Kay claimed in The Shameful Trade that fifty million Africans were exported into slavery in foreign lands. Twenty years later, Paul Lovejoy offered a summary of the field. He argued “that known scale of the slave trade was on the order of 11,863,000” Africans were exported into bondage. Then ten years later, in 1999, the work of David Eltis, Stephen D. Behrendt, and Herbert S. Klein was published as The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM. This work built upon the work of other historians who have largely dealt with the issue of the Atlantic Slave Trade by counting and quantifying human suffering. This database slowly grew and now includes documentation “on more than 35,000 slave voyages that forcibly embarked over 12 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.” This database has made it easier to quantify the Atlantic slave trade. Historians now could use the power of a computer to understand the sheer number of transportations. With the publication of this database it seemed likely that historians would continue the “numbers game” and get to the heart of the Atlantic slave trade. However, recent work on the Atlantic slave trade has gone in a different direction.

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

Trans-Atlantic slave trade, as we know it today, has its origins in the mid-renaissance period. It has been estimated that as early as the 15th century, Europeans began constructing trade forts and castles in West Africa. At first it was the Portuguese, during the “Age of Exploration”, that began exploring the coast of West Africa in search of gold and for a sea route to Asia (Essah 32). From the mid sixteenth century, Portugal’s tenure on the Gold Coast faced serious challenges from other European traders. The French and English arrived there in the 1550s, the Dutch in 1595, while the 1640s witnessed the arrival of the Swedes and the Danes, followed by Germans from the state of Brandenburg in 1683 (Essah 34).

Throughout the course of history moments arise that can change the time periods they are located in. However, few moments in history can change the state of the world forever. Moments like the invention of the Gutenberg printing press, the holocaust and the Trans Atlantic Slave trade ratified the world around it. While the Trans-Atlantic slave trade started out of just deporting criminals in Europe and prisoners of war in African became to transform into a capitalistic machine that “source(s) even suggests that there were as many as 10,000 per year.” It involved so many people that it ultimately changed the way economics worked for the 4 centuries that this industry made its mark in history. The question remains, however, why were Africans

Europeans were looking for a way to trade with china. During this time they managed to stumble across the americas. At first, europeans just used the americas for its resources. Later they realized they could take the land. After settling in the americas europeans needed slaves for many reasons. Portugal started the atlantic slave trade by shipping african slaves from their trading post in Africa. The Atlantic slave trade had many causes and effects during the Atlantic world which ends up changing the new world and the way it develops.

Slaves were carried across the Atlantic Ocean on cargo ships that could hold about five hundred people. They were crammed below the decks and chained together to ensure no escape. Everyone on the slave ships spoke different languages, so the slaves could not even converse with each other. If a slave refused to eat, he would be taken atop the deck and flogged. In some cases, when a slave was particularly rebellious, he would be thrown by a rope overboard, and dragged along the bottom of the boat. Sea life was absolutely miserable.

The Transatlantic Slave Trade took place through the fifth teen century to the nineteen century in the Atlantic Ocean between American, Europe and Africa. The Trade blossomed dur due to the expansion of sugar production increasing the labor supplied need , which caused a the higher demand for slaves. The expansion of sugar created organized business of seizing and selling slaves. But the transatlantic slave trade did not begin the capturing of Africans, European were capturing slave long before the slave traffic developed. The Portuguese were the first European that started to explore western Africa. When returning to Portugal they took 12 Africans as a gift back home to their king, this was one of the earliest experience of European

What is the slave trade? Well, I believe that the slave trade is when white people of the Americas would take black people,and put them on ships, and then bring them over the Atlantic ocean to the Americas to become slaves. This must have affected a lot of people during the Atlantic Slave Trade. Well, it did. Most of the slaves received being branded on their shoulder, breast or buttock. and many experienced getting their names changed so that is was almost impossible for their family to trace them. I’m always wondering, why did the slave trade last so long, and what values were found during the slave trade. Well, I believe the slave trade lasted so long, because numerous people died of diseases, which caused a heavy demand for more slaves every year. With the historical book, Roots, a primary sources, “Olaudah Equiano, and a secondary source “The Cruelest Commerce” I will give evidence to back up my answers to the three questions, what is the slave trade? How where humans affected by the slave trade, and why did the slave trade last so long and what values were found in the slave trade?