Imagine going about your everyday life when all of a sudden, you are taken away from your family, friends, and the life you know and you are placed aboard a ship going to a foreign place. On top of all that, you will have to work hard for free and be treated with almost no respect. It’s crazy right? Well not for the millions of Africans during the 15th to 19th century. The Atlantic Slave Trade was a part of the triangular trade which involved trading between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. The triangular trade was a trade system between the three continents which involved exchange of goods and slaves. The Europeans traded manufactured goods while the Africans traded slaves and the Americans traded for agricultural products. In all of this, the question arises that who is to blame? The blame can’t be placed on only one group of people because each group has played a big role in the slave trade. By looking at what was the role of each continent in the slave trade, we can see how much they are to blame. …show more content…
With the colonists gaining more land, they needed more labor workers for their farms and plantations. The Europeans would come and invade African villages and take away the poor men and children. To the Europeans who would come to trade and the Americans who bought the slaves, the slaves were just considered business. In Thomas Phillip’s journal, he talks about one of his voyages in which he says, “we mark’d the slaves we had bought in the breast, or shoulder, with a hot iron…”(Strayer 704) That comment just shows how the slaves weren’t considered humans by the traders. He also later states how he transferred 700 men and women and from the tone of it, it didn’t even phase him. (Strayer 705)The Europeans should be blamed because bought the slaves. Their high demand of labor workers is what really pushed the slave trade to become as big as it
The overseas trade in the South was completely different from that in New England and the middle colonies, as there was a shortage in crops of tobacco, rice, and indigo in conjunction for the English goods, which ended up being a downfall. Even with this being a downfall, New England had shipbuilding, fishing, and maritime trading which brought them in a good cash flow for trade. New England ended up inputting into place a high tax on specific goods such as fish, flour, and wheat, in order to safeguard there own agriculture and fishing wealth.
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
Slaves and slave trade has been a paramount part of history for a very long time. In the years of the British thirteen colonies in North America, slaves and slave trade was a very consequential part of its development. It even carried on to virtually 200 years of Coalesced States history. The slave trade of the thirteen colonies was a paramount part of the colonies as well as Europe and Africa. In order to supply the thirteen colonies efficiently through trade, Europe developed the method of triangular trade. It is referred to as triangular trade because it consists of trade with Africa, the thirteen colonies, and England.
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 trade in the North American colonies began to grow in the 1600s. The African slave trade sourced their slaves from many different West African villages and countries. The business of slavery was a growing and profitable field, not only for the slavers, but also for the slaveholders. With the decrease of indentured servants, settlers in the English colonies looked for a new source of labor to satisfy their growing labor demands. The next source was Africa. “By the 1690s slaves outnumbered indentured servants four to one” (45). Europeans largely disregarded the ethical dilemma posed by slavery due to the European view of Africans and their culture as uncivilized, foreign, and heathen (44). The largest forced migration in history (44)
Although all this documents stress voices from the Slave Trade, each document sheds a unique light on the much-debated question about who should be held responsible for the tragedy of the Atlantic slave trade. For example, Document 15.1 sheds light on the role of both European and African merchants in the trafficking of slaves as well as the human suffering of the slave trade. However Document 15.2 reveals the cooperation between local African rulers and European and African traders in the slave trade. Moreover, Documents 15.3 focus on how disruptive European traders could be to established African governments, even those that actively opposed the slave trade. And finally, Document 15.4 shows how some African leaders were attached to the slave trade and promoted it even when European were moving to end it. Nonetheless, all the documents do shed a clear and a full light on what should be held responsible for the
We as a world together have been through a lot of changes and made a lot of advances over the past couple of centuries. Many have argued about the outcome of the European expansion on the Americas. Some people feel that the Europeans had both a positive and negative impact on the expansion; however, the negative impact gave a devastating result, which would continue to change history for almost four hundred years. The Europeans were manipulative towards to indigenous people of the Americas. They exploited them, using them as their personal slaves. Most importantly, they silently murdered the Natives by introducing them to diseases such as the measles and smallpox. Consequently, a small pox epidemic was caused, which resulted in the
The transatlantic slave trade began in the 15th century, after the Portuguese started exploring the coast of West Africa. This had a long term effect on Africa because even though it started out benefiting the upper class in Africa, the long term effect was devastating. When Europeans started to enter Africa, they enjoyed “the triple advantage of guns and other technology, widespread literacy, and the political organization necessary to sustain expensive programs of exploration and conquest”(Doc 4). Africa’s relations with Europe depended on common interests, which Europe did not share. Europe’s contact with Africa, involving economic exchanges and political relationships, was not mutually beneficial.
“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 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 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 triangular trade is what the patterns in the map represent. Slave trade was essential to the development of the triangular trade. During the slave trade, Africans were shipped from Africa to the America and were used for manual labor on plantation fields.
The Atlantic slave trade existed from the 16th to the early 19th century and stimulated trade between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Over 12 million Africans were captured and sold into chattel slavery off the coast of West Africa, and more than 2 million of them died crossing the Atlantic. These outcomes of the slave trade are rarely disputed among historians; the effect of the Atlantic slave trade in Africa, however, is often a topic of debate. Some academics, such as Walter Rodney, insist that Africans were forced to take part in the slave trade, resulting in demographic disruption and underdevelopment in all sectors of Africa. Historian John Thornton acknowledges the negative consequences of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, yet contends that it was merely an expansion of the existing internal slave trade which African rulers engaged in willingly. A final case made by Hugh Thomas completely contradicts Rodney’s thesis, asserting that the slave trade was not solely responsible for decreasing Africa’s population, and furthermore, that it was primarily beneficial to Africa’s economy and politics. The true outcome of the slave trade in Africa lies not entirely in any one of these arguments, but rests rather in a combination of all three. Although the Atlantic slave trade was detrimental to the economic and social development of Africa, the trade benefited a small portion of Africans, who willingly aligned themselves with