What Happened Before The Transatlantic Slave Trade

Chapter 4, Transatlantic Moment, of Reversing Sail by Michael Gomez was extremely intriguing. As the saying goes numbers never lie. The statistical aspect provided by Gomez of the transatlantic movement was effective in altering my perception of the transatlantic movement as a whole. As the text states the scholarly consensus is that approximately 11.9 million Africans were exported from Africa. Only 9.6 to 10.8 millions arrived alive to America, meaning 10 to 20 percent was loss during the Middle Passage. These numbers show how extensive and outrageous the transatlantic movement was. These numbers represent people with established lives, who were kidnapped and put into forced labor. As Gomez stated serval times and how I now view, the transatlantic

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

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.

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.

African people began to attack opposing tribes and taking captives, and then would sell the captives to the Europeans to use for slaves. They would be placed on slave ships, where they would be packed in, forced to sit with sicknesses, death and whippings. “I feared I should be put to death, the white people looked and acted, as I thought, in so savage a manner; I had never seen among any people such instances of cruelty”(Equaino, Document D) The slaves were whipped on ships and treated like animals. The statement above was a quote from a previous slave. When slavery was brought to the New World, places with large agricultural based economies had many slaves. Sugarcane slaves were slaves that worked in the fields, planting, taking care of, picking and processing sugar cane. Life expectancy for these slaves was five years. The Silver mining slaves worked in conditions that would have them underground with poor ventilation, almost complete darkness, and natural disasters. They lived longer than Sugar Slaves, and most of the time could buy their freedom. The Columbian Exchange expanded the Atlantic Slave trade, which killed too

An estimated seventeen million men, women, and children were enslaved and transported from Africa to the West Indies by Europeans between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Before these individuals became slaves, there were indentured servants. Between the colonial era and Revolutionary War many changes in the practice of labor were made. Expansion of slavery throughout America brought about different conditions of slave life and Paternalism. Slavery in America was very different before and after the year 1790; these changes greatly affected the conditions in which these individuals lived and are worth analyzing.

For more than three and a half centuries, the forcible bondage of at least twelve million men, women, and children from their African homelands to the Americas forever changed the face and character of the western hemisphere. The slave trade was brutal and horrific, and the enslavement of Africans was cruel, exploitative, and dehumanizing. The trade represented one of the longest and most sustained assaults on the life, integrity, and dignity of human beings in world history.

“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

With the European discovery of the New World, African slave trade began to grow. Slaves were traded and bought and then shipped to some other place and then sold. Europeans would trade things for slaves then bring them to places like the West Indies and sell them. They would then buy goods and bring the goods back to Europe. This was the triangular trade system. Slaves played a vital role in trade all over the world, old and new. Although African slavery had already existed, there were many reasons as to why it was needed during the Atlantic World and there were many effects of this.

The Atlantic Slave Trade lasted between 1450 and 1750 and drastically impacted the lives of both European and African people. During this time, the Europeans, such as the British, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Dutch, traveled to Africa in search of labor workers. In total, over twelve million slaves were taken, mainly because they workers to make money, but it also had to do with their race, religion – as they were not Christian – and to civilize them because the Europeans did not believe that they were humans. Due to these European beliefs, the Europeans saw themselves as the most powerful group and viewed slave trade as a business. The Africans, on the other hand, had a harder time transitioning into slavery. Many of them were taken from their homes and forced to accept a new life working as a slave. These events did not come without many sacrifices from the African people. One of the major reasons the slave trade was so expansive is due to the low life expectancy of the slaves after their capture. While the Europeans believed that they were helping the African culture, as well as themselves, the African society as a whole suffered the most.

Throughout history slavery has played a major role on our country. It has shaped culture, racism, and our country coming together as a whole. In the upcoming paragraphs I will describe their journey to the new world and harsh trip throughout the middle passage. Also, I will explain in detail about how their knowledge helped southern colonies grow and succeed.

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 does still impact racism today in the US. The struggles over slavery gave a civil war, segregation, Jim Crow laws, and finally a civil rights movement to help us move forward and progress. Many scholars argue that slavery created racism, in the artificial categories of black and white. Racism was created, at least in large part, to justify slavery. To dumb it down for people who really don 't understand is racism is basically racial prejudice or discrimination. Some may strongly believe that the Atlantic slave trade impacted racism today negatively. With police brutality on blacks, the negative implicit of blacks on others, and stereotypical remarks made by people these are few of the reasons why racism is still a

Slavery developed in the Americas because of exploration and need or labor. Europeans captured Africans and transported them across the deadly Middle Passage, to the Americas, where they would be forced to poor under harsh conditions. Slavery had many lasting effects. Africa was depopulated, and Africans in America lost their cultures and identity while Europeans made money from the resources being exported in the Americas at the expense of Africans’ lives and culture.

Slavery has played a strong role in African society from as early as prehistoric times, continuing to the modern era. Early slavery within Africa was a common practice in many societies, and was very central to the country’s economy. Beginning around the 7th century, two groups of non-African slave traders significantly altered the traditional African forms of slavery that had been practiced in the past. Native Africans were now being forced to leave the country to be used as slaves. The two major slave trades, trans-Saharan and trans-Atlantic, became central to the organization of Africa and its societies until the modern era. Slavery and the slave trade strongly affected African society, and