What Were the African Reactions to Slave Trade?

African slaves were shipped to the West Indies and America as part of the Triangular Trade. Many slaves died on the voyage due to the ghastly conditions that accompanied the Middle Passage and others committed suicide. Portugal held a near monopoly on the export of African slaves for a period of about 200 years from the early 14-1600s. The peak years of the slave trade were during the 16th and 17th century, but Africans were forced across the Atlantic for an astonishing timeframe of around 400 years.

Question: Compare and contrast the time period prior to the development of the Atlantic slave trade and the time period right after its introduction and assess the impact of its emergence. To what extent did African slavery change American society? You may want to consider social, economic, and geographical.

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.

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.

The Atlantic Slave Trade involved the forced intercontinental migration of West Africans across the Middle Passage during the 17th to 19th centuries. Between twelve and fifteen million slaves were exchanged between Africa, Europe and the Americas, together with raw materials and manufactured goods.

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.

The slave trade started not very long after the discovery of America. Millions of people were captured in Africa and sold in America. By the end of eighteenth century after almost 3 centuries of Africans being brought to the Americas there was a population of almost 3,ooo,ooo. In 1697 Hispaniola became American's leading producer of sugar and had the most slaves. The conditions of the slaves became repulsive over 20% of slaves were dying just on the boat rides over.

The world wars had hit the Europeans so hard that they seriously and urgently needed a source of labor that would help in the rebuilding of their cities and mine their minerals such as coal, gold, and silver among others. They decide to turn to Africa for this labor and therefore, slave trade was born in the middle of the 15th century on the continent. The first batch of slaves was imported to Cuba.

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.

The most famous example of this kind of slavery is found in America, during the 16th, 17th and 18th century. During this time, America's southern states were dominated by slavery, and the vast majority of plantations were essentially run by black slaves, imported from Africa. The slave trade was founded in 1444, by the Portuguese who, sensing the need for more slaves, ventured to use Africans. They realised that the

The slave trade was done through Sahara desert to the North Africa and it began in the 7th century AD. Slaves were sourced from all parts of Africa and sold to traders in Morocco, Libya, Egypt, and to southern Europe. In the 17th century slave trade had expanded and approximately 10,000 enslaved Africans a year was sold from West Africa. The transatlantic slave trade began in 15th century when the Portuguese started exploring West Africa cost. The arts that existed by then are;

Many times discussions about slavery examine the everlasting racial impact of the practice. However, the reality is that Africans sold Africans into the slave trade, which, at that time, was far more motivated by finances than by any underlying racial motivation. Looking at the Great Circuit, and how African traders and political leaders impacted the slave trade, one sees Africans playing a significant role in the early slave trade. However, there were differences in how the slave trade operated in different regions in Africa, giving different local leaders different amounts of control.

The slave trade was the largest contributor to the British economy during the 18th century. Tomas Butler stated “The profits from the slave trade were part of the bedrock of our country's industrial development. Many people and institutions in every part of the country were complicit in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.” In the early Americas, Britain supplied a vast majority of the slaves to the new world to be sold to the highest bidder. During the slave trade British ships made over ten thousand voyages and enslaved approximately 3.4 billion Africans. Some of these ships would make a profit of twenty to fifty percent. Back in England the king and the ship owners were not the only people benefiting from the slave trade. Everyone from the factory owners to the factory workers were benefited as an effect of the slave trade. The upper-class citizens were definitely making the big dollars. These people included the owners of the slave ships, the factory owners, who were able to produce and sell the products that the Africans and Americans needed and wanted, bankers who made money from the interest they earned on loans from people who borrowed money for the long voyage, and

African’s didn’t just sit back and simply watch the horror which was unfolding there was great resistance. Ships records have uncovered many accounts of slaves rising up against their captors refusing to do what was asked of them, committing suicide, and once captives reached their destination and learned or their fate many attempted escapes. In letters written by the Manikongo, Nzinga Mbemba Affonso, to the King joao the 3rd of Portugal, he writes: