Essay on West African Slave Trade

The taking of Africans and the transportation to the “New World” is called the Middle Passage. This was the most cruel and tortuous trip anyone could imagine. Africans would be forced to march up to one thousand miles to the coast line. There was a fifty percent survival on this march. Once on the ships the slaves would be bound together, made to lie side by side. Disease was rampant aboard the ships, because of the vomit, feces and death. If you were fortunate enough you would receive two meals a day which would include rice beans and maybe a piece of meat. Slaves were forced to exercise so they would appear to be healthy when

It took place across the Atlantic Ocean from the 15th to the 19th centuries. It was a trade of human beings from African societies who were shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas. About 1.8 million people died during the Atlantic Slave Trade due to harsh conditions on the ship. Furthermore, many others perished during the process of capture and transport to the African coast done by the middle men. Slaves were kept in dungeon fortresses and suffered horrid living conditions while waiting to be sent out to sea on boats headed for America. Both on the forts and the ships, they were kept in dirty, dark rooms with little moving space and almost no food and drink. They were usually kept in chains and forced to lie on their backs. The transatlantic slave trade is sometimes known as the "Triangular Trade" because it was trade among three ports or regions. The voyages were from Europe to Africa, from Africa to the Americas, and from the Americas back to Europe. The raw materials and natural resources like rice, tobacco, cotton and sugar that were found in the Americas were brought to Europe. Europe then brought manufactured products such as cloth, beads and guns to Africa in exchange for slaves who were brought to the Americas. This voyage impacted the world. Africa became a permanent part of the interacting Atlantic world and millions of people were

At first trafficking humans only occurred in Europe: They would enslave each other and then sell them off. Some Enslaved Africans had already reached Europe, the Middle East and other parts of the world before the 15th century. Most of the slaves were taken from the western coastal states of Africa. The demand for slaves grew as time passed and the suppliers had to step up their activity. To obtain the slaves they would raid villages and small towns. One story from a former slave named, Olaudah Equiano, told his story about how they were captured. He said that his parents went to go work out in the fields while him and his sister sat in the house and played. While they were in the house they heard men outside, broke down the door, and took them away. From then on he and his sister were separated. When they were going to get on the ship at the coast he had seen a recipe that said there were 115 men and 115 women. When they reached the Americas there was a new recipe that said only 201 slaves survived. All of the captured Africans crossed the Sahara desert by walking through the hot sand in metal chains. They would walk to Europe and if they were

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.

Before Europeans joined the African slave trade, slavery was widespread throughout Africa, and slaves served to pay off debts, sold by their kin in exchange for goods during famine, or as war captives. The slaves were central to the trans-Saharan trade, and on occasion the slaves would be freed from servitude. Once the Europeans began to exploit the slave trade, they created a forced migration of African slaves into the

They did no more work than the other people in the village did. Their clothing, housing, food and mannerisms were the same as the people who owned them. European influence started to affect slavery in Africa and it was now becoming an enterprise rather than a legal system for punishment. Traders would come to Africa selling goods to these people, who did not have access to these goods before, in exchange for slaves. These traders would bribe chiefs of tribes to go out and capture neighboring villagers in exchange for goods, encouraging the kidnapping and enslavement of fellow Africans. "When a trader wants slaves, he applies to a chief for them, and tempts him with his wares." This was all a part of the European Triangular Trade. Goods were brought to Africa in order to trade with the Africans. Slaves were then shipped to the Americas to produce more goods to be sent to Europe in order start the whole trade cycle again.

Meanwhile in the Americas, European empires were growing, and they realized that they needed a more efficient work force. They had tried using Native Americans, but they usually died from European diseases. Europeans couldn’t work because of the diseases that the tropical climate gave them. It seemed like Africans would be the perfect solution to their problems. They were used to the tropical climate and immune to its diseases, had experience in agriculture, and there was already a market for them. This introduced the slave trade to North America, and in 1619 the first New World slaves were brought to Jamestown, Virginia. Most of the earlier slaves to journey the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade were from Windward Coast and Senegambia (Present-day Mauritania), but later expanded all along the coast of Africa. The Atlantic Slave Trade was also given the name “Middle Passage”, since it was the middle leg in the Triangular trade.

Africa was once a thriving and wonderful continent filled with luxurious and wealthy kingdoms, but that had all changed when a new and appalling type of slavery was introduced. Around the 18th century, Africa became an ideal place for Europeans to trade and buy slaves from. The slave trade in Africa seemed to be manageable and somewhat peaceful before the Europeans brought in a new type of slavery. When the Europeans bought slaves from Africans, they kept them as slaves for life which were very different from how long slaves were kept in Africa. Europeans kept slaves in extremely poor conditions and treated them as if they were less than human. These actions caused a great spike in the slave trade all over the world and many

Between the years 1492 through 1750 a new world was discovered that was before unknown to the eastern hemisphere. New contacts were formed in the Atlantic world due to the discovery and colonization of the Americas and later African slave trade, which were both very major events of this time. These interactions mainly affected Western Europe, Africa, and the Americas, whose economies were broadened and social structures further developed and altered as a result.

To really show the horrendous conditions that the slaves endured, the author includes a 1787 replication drawing of the slave ship Brooks. Built in 1781 with a lower deck intended to accommodate 294 slaves, giving each slave a space comparable to the size of a coffin. Adult males were allocated a space six feet long and fifteen inches wide and allowing even less space for adult women, boys, and girls. The height of the same area was just five feet, and did not include any toilet facilities for the slaves. In most cases, the captains would load double the number of slaves their ships were designed for leading to even worse conditions onboard with more mouths to feed but not enough provisions to compensate. Those slaves who died during the journey through the Middle Passage were simply thrown overboard, where their bodies were eaten by ravenous sharks.

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

Though the Natives were treated badly, they were soon saved by Bartolome de Las Casas, who persuaded the Spanish king to stop enslaving the Native Americans, instead use Africans as their slaves. This protest from Las Casas forever changed the course of history. After Las Casas’ protest was accepted, enslaved Africans were brought to the Americas through the Middle Passage, which was a sea route from western Africa to the eastern part of America. Space in the ship was very compact and hot. Also, due to the number on the ship, there was little room to move, causing many people to almost suffocate to death. (Doc 5). The Europeans had to pack as many Africans they could, knowing that some Africans would perish on the journey, to reach African slave quota. The Middle Passage itself killed over 20% of the captive African slaves due to the lack of space, hygiene, and nutrition. Not only did the Middle Passage bring enslaved Africans to the Americans it also helped spread Africans across the world This process today is now called

The slave trade was more than five hundred miles long and extended from Africa to the Americas. At least 30,000-55,000 ships went through the middle passage in the time of 1508-1888. In addition, only 9,778,500 out of the 11,698,000 slaves made it to the Americas.

In the 1500s to 1900s, Africans were taken from Africa and brought across the Atlantic Ocean where they were traded and sold for labor in the New World, which included the Caribbean Islands, and North and South America. Around the 1600s, the Europeans captured and bought slaves, which began the Atlantic Slave trade and the forced migration of about 24 million people from Africa.

In the last 50 years much has been done to combat the entirely false and negative views about the history of Africa and Africans, which were developed in Europe in order to justify the Transatlantic Slave Trade and European colonial rule in Africa that followed it. In the eighteenth century such racist views were summed up by the words of the Scottish philosopher David Hume, who said, ‘I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites. There scarcely ever was a civilised nation of that complexion, nor even any individual, eminent either in action or in speculation. No ingenious manufacture among them, no arts, no sciences”. In the nineteenth