Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Effects on the American Economy

The Slave Ship by Marcus Rediker is a great fiction novel that describes the horrifying experiences of Africans, seamen, and captains on their journey through the Middle Passage. The Middle Passage marked the water way in the Atlantic Ocean between Africa and the Americas. The use of slaves provided a great economy for the European countries due to the fact that these African slaves provided free labor while cultivating sugar cane in the Caribbean and America. Rediker describes the slave migration by saying, “There exists no account of the mechanism for history’s greatest forced migration, which was in many ways the key to an entire phase of globalization” (10). This tells us that African enslavement to the Americas causes a complete

“The Slave Ship: A Human History” written by Marcus Rediker describes the horrifying experiences of Africans, and captains, and ship crewmen on their journey through the Middle Passage, the water way in the Atlantic Ocean between Africa and the Americas. The use of slaves to cultivate crops in the Caribbean and America offered a great economy for the European countries by providing “free” labor and provided immense wealth for the Europeans. Rediker describes the slave migration by saying, “There exists no account of the mechanism for history’s greatest forced migration, which was in many ways the key to an entire phase of globalization” (10). African enslavement to the Americas is the most prominent reason for a complete shift in the

The changes in African life during the slave trade era form an important element in the economic and technological development of Africa. Although the Atlantic slave trade had a negative effect on both the economy and technology, it is important to understand that slavery was not a new concept to Africa. In fact, internal slavery existed in Africa for many years. Slaves included war captives, the kidnapped, adulterers, and other criminals and outcasts. However, the number of persons held in slavery in Africa, was very small, since no economic or social system had developed for exploiting them (Manning 97). The new system-Atlantic slave trade-became quite different from the early African slavery. The

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

The effects of the development of the Atlantic Slave Trade had impacted the participating civilizations in 1450-1750. Many slaves were treated brutally. Some countries prospered as others died, and a new source of cheap labor has been found. The demand for cheap labor in 1450 to 1750 has caused economic, social, and political effects on civilizations from Europe, America, and Africa participating in the Atlantic Slave Trade by causing the downfall of African tribes and race, hardships of surviving slave life and leading European countries to become rich.

The Atlantic Slave Trade was the most devastating forced migration in history. Tens of millions of Africans were taken from their homes. They were moved by boat to South America, The Caribbean, and North America. There was a huge loss of life on the way over for many reasons including sickness and starvation. A considerable amount of the African population was forced into slavery. The Africans were forced into this because they were immune to a lot of illnesses that killed the natives. The also didn’t know the land, basically they were better to be worked as slaves than the natives.

Slavery spans to nearly every culture, nationally, and religion and from ancient times to the present day. Slavery was a legal institution in which humans were legally considered property of another. In the 18th century, new ideas of human rights and freedom emerged out of the European Enlightenment stretching across the Americas and Europe. By the era of the American Revolution, the belief that slavery was wrong and would ultimately have to be abolished was widespread, in both the Americas and northern Europe. However, the southern states of the United States believed that slavery is essential to their way of living and providing history, and religion to defend slavery. The debate between proslavery, whom were Southern states, and

The Trans-Atlantic slave trade lasted from the sixteenth century until the nineteenth century and involved the forced migration of millions of Africans to America. Strong and fit adults were seized from their homes in West Africa by other tribes or Europeans and were sold into slavery, shipped across the Atlantic Ocean, and sold to owners in North and South America. Although the Trans-Atlantic slave trade was politically and financially beneficial to a few high ranking African individuals, the political, economic, social, and cultural effects that it had on Africa were disastrous. The slave trade was financially rewarding to political figures who supported it and created an increase in violence because larger tribes would kidnap members of smaller tribes

“The African slave trade,” writes Gary B. Nash “is one of the most important phenomena in the history of the modern world.” The slave trade started in the late fifteenth century and prolonged for the next 400 years. Over those 400 years, approximately ten million Africans sailed across the Atlantic to America against their will. Shown in Red, White, and Black; The Peoples of Early North America, psychological, geographical and political factors affected the lives of slaves in early America; the masters subjugated the slaves through those means. In other parts of the Americas, as well as in the colonies, the slaves’ living conditions differed.

For centuries Europeans and African rulers conducted the worlds largest forced migration of people across the globe, transporting millions of Africans against their will in order to provide a large and cheap labor force to work plantations in the New World. In return for the capture and trafficking of slaves, African rulers received European manufactured arms, textiles, metal goods, as well as produce from across the Atlantic such as tobacco, cane sugar, and alcohol. As a result of the rapidly expanding capitalism and industry in Europe it wasn’t until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that the flow of slave labor into to the Americas increased dramatically, the majority of which went to labor on plantations in the West Indies and Brazil.

The transatlantic slave trade which took place during the mid-seventeenth century until the late eighteenth century is observed as one of the largest forced migrations (Lewis, et Al., 2009, 2). The discovery of the America’s pursued by European nations led to the uncovering of significant luxury goods and precious metals such as sugar, coffee, and gold (Eltis, 2008, 1). The slave trade resulted in African slaves that were trafficked from Africa to the America’s to be used as labor supply to mass produce these goods on plantations set up along the coast. These luxury products in its primary form were produced at these plantations and were transported back to Europe to satisfy the high demand for luxury goods (Eltis, 2008, 4).

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

This article about the Transatlantic Slave Trades comes from Encyclopedia Britannica. The author is Thomas Lewis, who is also a contributor to SAGE Publication’s Encyclopedia of African American Society, wrote this piece in October of 2015. This source briefly states that the transatlantic slave trade was the transportation of slaves from Africa to the Americas. It gives statistics about the enslaved and transported Africans. In addition, it walks through the progression of the transatlantic slave trade from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century in terms of the new countries involved and the type of slaves being taken, Brazil being emphasized. “Transatlantic Slave Trade” vividly describes the brutal conditions of the ships carrying the slaves

The Atlantic slave trade, lasting for over four centuries, affected various groups of people in very contrasting ways. It was the host of horrific, dehumanizing, and immoral experiences, but also of economic gain, adventure, and business. It was the first time that slavery had been conducted a large scale, and because it occurred during a time of need for manual labor on plantations, land owners saw the potential purchasing of slaves as an opprintunity to upscale their businesses. Through the perspectives of Olaudah Equiano, a captured African slave, Thomas Phillips, an English merchant, and African King Affonso I, it is clear that the Europeans and Africans that took part in the transatlantic slave trade had very different experiences and perceptions regarding the slave trade, primarily because of a difference in power, a difference in background, and a difference in technology.

The African slave trade started in Africa but made a triangle between Europe, the United States and Africa. It all started in the middle of the 15th century. The European expansion was to areas that had more tropical and semitropical areas that were unknown. The transatlantic slave trade began with the coming of Christopher Columbus. The Spanish monarchy had hired Columbus to find a passage across the Atlantic Ocean to the profitable markets of the Far East. He never reached. Columbus's landmark voyage launched a long era of European exploration of the Americas and the hunt of its native peoples, bringing wealth to Western Europe. They would ship the Africans to Europe so they could explore and report what they found.(“13 Facts about Slavery in Africa”) “As Thomas Morris clearly shows, racial slavery came to the English colonies as an institution without strict legal definitions or guidelines”(Finkelman). After they reported what they had found they would be shipped back to Africa or to the United States. They had to divide up what they shipped because what was being made was needed in multiple countries of the world. “On the first leg of their three-part journey, often called the Triangular Trade, European ships brought manufactured goods to Africa; on the second, they transported African men, women, and children to the Americas; and on the third leg, they exported to Europe the sugar, rum, cotton, and tobacco produced by the enslaved labor force”(“The