Atlantic Slave Trade Research Paper

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Europeans were looking for a way to trade with China. During this time they managed to stumble across the Americas. At first, Europeans just used the Americas for its resources. Later they realized they could take the land. After settling in the Americas Europeans needed slaves for many reasons. Portugal started the Atlantic slave trade by shipping African slaves from their trading post in Africa. The Atlantic slave trade had many causes and effects during the Atlantic world which ends up changing the new world and the way it develops. Africans were chosen as slaves for the Atlantic slave trade. Europeans had easy access to these people. They went to leaders on the coast of Africa and traded their trade goods for slaves in return. The leaders …show more content…

The previous people in the new world did not work well with the amount of labor needed. Native Americans were dying from disease, were living in small or large communities, and they knew the land well enough to be able to rebel. People from Europe were not accustomed to the tropical weather and diseases, so they died fast. They also did not have enough workers because everyone did not want to work in this type of weather. African slaves, however worked in the new world for a variety of reasons. African slaves as stated previously did not have a way to escape. The slaves worked in Africa farming long before the Europeans, and this made their experience a good trait in the new world. They had worked in the tropical regions of Africa and interacted with Europeans, and this made it easy to make them work in the tropical weather because they wouldn’t get sick from tropical diseases or as well as any European diseases. Resistance was very improbable because a slave did not have knowledge of the land and wouldn’t be able to do very well against the Europeans. It was easy to access the Africans because they didn’t cost that much to people in the new world. African slaves were an easy choice for the labor in the new world because of how well everything worked out for the Europeans and not the …show more content…

Slaves were given very little living space and the conditions were horrible. They lived in old worn out clothes in old wooden shacks. The living conditions were not the worst, however people in the new world were harsh to slaves. Owners would often whip slaves as punishment for almost anything. The owners would use some cruel and unusual punishments on their slaves. The people of the new world didn’t see slaves as people, but rather as a barbaric human. The Europeans of the new world did not think about the Africans as people and this caused racism in the new world. Settlers did not feel guilty about this because they twisted religion to justify themselves. They said that if it is the will that this may happen to help the people in need then let it happen. They used religious excuses to justify enslaving people from Africa just to make them do their work. The African slave trade in the Atlantic world was caused by a number of factors and leads to a number of effects in the development of the Americas. African people were treated harshly and enslavement caused millions of deaths. Slavery caused racism in the world because of the way settlers viewed Africans as nothing. Slavery has caused problems later on in the new world about how to get labor done. Slavery has changed the amount of people in the Americas to increase the number of Africans. The impact of the Atlantic slave trade

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