How did the slave trade affect African Society? Now I’ve been free I know what a dreadful condition slavery is. I have seen hundreds of escaped slaves, but I never saw one who was willing to go back and be a slave.” – Harriet Tubman. Before there was Martin Luther King getting shot, the Kul Klux Klan hanging innocent African Americans, or Harriet Tubman helping escape slaves there was the Slave trade. The slave trade, also known as the trans-Atlantic slave voyages, was a transatlantic trading pattern that started as early as mid-17th century. What started as trade of manufactured goods soon changed into the trade of humans. Some African Americans got rich of the slave trade by capturing enemy tribes and selling them to the European settlers, …show more content…
People commonly sold themselves into slavery to pay off debt or support their families, or they were forcibly enslaved for crimes or in war. In Africa, slaves were employed in many ways as servants, peasants, soldiers, administrators and field workers. In most cases, there were whole villages of enslaved dependents who were required to pay rent to the ruler. When Dutch, Portuguese and other European traders came to the West African coast, they quickly saw the value of men and women as slaves in America. The trade that developed between the foreign Merchants, the rich and powerful rulers, and merchants of West African nations drained the entire nation of the people who were needed to prosper and …show more content…
Several wars resulted in massive enslavement, including the export of prisoners across the Atlantic, the ransoming of others, and the use of enslavement within Africa itself. The Kongo civil wars were responsible for the capture and enslavement of many. Africans were also kidnapped and sold to European merchants to sell in the new world. The families of many of the captured Africans were willing to pay for the return of their loved ones. Because slaves were in high demand around the world, merchants declined the money or would take them, but never return the
The Transatlantic Slave Trade started out as merchant trading of different materials for slaves. With obtaining a controllable form of labor being their main focus, the Europeans began to move to Africa and take over their land. The natives had to work on the newly stolen land to have a source of income to provide for their families.Soon others Europeans began to look for free labor by scouring the continent of Africa. Because Europeans were not familiar with the environment, Africans were employed to kidnap other Africans for the Transatlantic Slave Trade. After trade routes were established, different economies began to link together, and various items were exchanged across the world. As the Atlantic Slave Trade grew larger, problems began
Becoming a slave was terrible; someone was either born a slave or kidnapped. When slavery first started, white Europeans went into Africa and kidnapped African Americans. As the years went on this process became too difficult for the Europeans, so they established hundred of trading station along Africa’s West Coast. Local African rulers and black merchants delivered the captured people to the posts and them sell as slaves.
The Atlantic Slave Trade was one of, if not the largest scale movements of human beings from one part of the world to another by sea and could have been considered a mobile killing machine because of the horrible conditions. The numbers were so large that the slaves who came by slave trade were the most Old-World immigrants in the world. Even though there were only races of people enslaved during the Atlantic Slave Trade, African Americans were the most numerous. Records show 34,941 voyages during the time of the slave trade. The Transatlantic Slave Trade took place across the Atlantic Ocean in the 16th century and lasted till the 19th centuries. The way that the Atlantic Slave Trade came about was cruel but not unthinkable. The capture and enslavement of African Americans was inevitable, the only question was when. A lot more slaves were taken to the South America than to the North America because the South “needed” them more. The South Atlantic economic system was based on producing crops, making goods and other things to sell. The enslaved people didn’t just skip into the ship with smiles on their faces. The Spanish colonists asked the King of Spain for permission to bring slaves to The New World to provide for them. Spanish Colonists were currently forcing Native Americans to do their labor for them but they were dying in large numbers because of diseases and lack of care from the colonists. The King of Spain gave approval to the colonists to import Africans and from then on Africans were transported there for use and labor and other needs of the Spanish colonists. During this time many African American slaves were transported. An estimated twelve to fifteen million African Americans were shipped throughout the world includ...
Every year, more and more money is donated to Africa to promote democracy in order to get rid of the powerful coups in many countries through out the continent. While the coups are declining and democratic governments are being established, the economic growth and development of Africa is not anywhere it should be considering the abundant natural resources and coastline that the continent possesses. Even though countries, like the United States of America, donate millions of dollars they are a large reason why Africa is underdeveloped economically. The Trans-Atlantic Slave trade is the most devastating event in the history of the world. Nearly 14,000,000 men, women, and children were displaced, sold into slavery, and killed by the trade routes.(
Slavery has been used throughout history but the African slave trade of the seventeenth and eighteenth century is the most brutish known to history. It was unique in three major ways. The amount of slaves being traded was tremendous. More than eleven million African slaves were “shipped” to the New World between 1519 and 1867. Of these eleven million, only 9.5 million reached the sure because of disease and extremely poor traveling accommodations.
In the seventeenth century, slaves became the major focus of trade between Africa and other parts of the world, namely the Americas and Europe. This was known as the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The trans-Atlantic slave trade was an involuntary voyage of Africans from their homeland, across the Atlantic Ocean, to the New World. The trans-Atlantic slave trade caused the deportation of millions of Africans to the Western hemisphere of the world. Millions of captives were shipped to their destinations performing hard labor under terrible conditions. The slave trade was horrific, and the enslavement of the Africans was cruel and dehumanizing. Throughout the world of trans-Atlantic slave trade, the Americas, Europe and Africa were connected, playing
“Since a slave could be sold in America for twenty to thirty times the price in Africa, men, women, and children were crammed aboard vessels as tightly as possible to maximize profits” (Foner, Seagull 4th, 134). Some ships were capable of carrying more the 600 slaves. Slaves would be squashed in dark, hot and airless holds that were below deck, and would be left there for most of the voyage. One slave trader wrote, “the heights, sometimes, between decks was only eighteen inches, so that the unfortunate human beings could not turn around, or even on their sides… and here they are usually chained to the decks by their necks and legs” (Finer, Seagull 4th, 134). Some of the voyages could last up to several weeks, and not surprisingly, some slaves died on the horrific journey across the Atlantic. When reaching America slaves would be traded off for valuables such as rum, tobacco, cotton and sugar- white gold. These items would then be shipped back to England, where they would be sold for a very profitable price. This is how some of the people and economy of Britain profited from the slave trade. The consequences of these actions were good and bad. The good part was that many people benefited from the profit, but the bad part was that the benefit from profit was from destroying people's lives such as the
Servitude is a usual part of African ritual. Tribes would often use trade to obtain slaves by going to the head chief and trading for livestock. Not only did various tribes trade with the people of their countries, but with the Europeans of other nationalities as well. There were times that tribes would go to war and keep chiefs and prisoners of war were kept as slaves, to trade with European countries. Many times slaves were sold due to being punished, or to rape and other various crimes. Some were also forced into life of captivity. It was common for young individuals to be kidnapped and taken to a home of a common family to work and serve them. Many owners would treat their slaves fairly. The masters would own a piece of property and have an apartment for their own personal family along with a home for the enslaved family. Equiano talks about how many slaves owned their own slaves in some cases. If a family was wealthy enough, they would accommodate their property, meaning the slaves. They were a part of the owner’s family and were as brutally treated comparing to slaves of the Colonial U.S.
village, and then burn the huts to the ground. Most of the people who were taken
Slaves were seen, as property that could be ruled upon. Due to that they were out of their country and were in one were they had no rights. You might ask if there was no remorse in the Africans of selling “their own ethnic
Africans had an assortment of individuals with various societies, ethnicities, yet 10.5 million of them were caught or seized then transported off in a slave exchange inside Europeans, Americans and Africans themselves.90% of them went straightforwardly to ranges of sugar generation—almost half to the Caribbean, and more than 40 percent to Portuguese 1 in each 25 transported Africans were transported to the British settlements ofAmericerica. Slavery was utilized to debilitate their own, however reinforce the proprietors monetarily with large scale manufacturing and reaping with the assistance of them. None of these individuals had a say on themselves or their family and would be isolated from them also for a consultation on Africans sudden shortcoming.
The concept of the slave trade came about in the 1430’s, when the Portuguese came to Africa in search of gold (not slaves). They traded copper ware, cloth, tools, wine, horses and later, guns and ammunition with African kingdoms in exchange for ivory, pepper, and gold (which were prized in Europe). There was not a very large demand for slaves in Europe, but the Portuguese realized that they could get a good profit from transporting slaves along the African coast from trading post to trading post. The slaves were bought greedily by Muslim merchants, who used them on the trans-Sahara trade routes and sold them in the Islamic Empire. The Portuguese continued to collect slaves from the whole west side of Africa, all the way down to the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa), and up the east side, traveling as far as Somalia. Along the way, Portugal established trade relations with many African kingdoms, which later helped begin the Atlantic Slave Trade. Because of Portugal’s good for...
The first leg of the journey was from Europe, mainly Portugal to Africa. Many of the goods produced in Europe were not available in Africa or America. The Europeans traded manufactured goods, including weapons, guns, beads, cowrie shells (used as money), cloth, horses, and rum to the African kings and merchants in return for gold, silver and slaves. Africans were seen as very hard workers who were skilled in the area of agriculture and cattle farming. They were also used to the extreme temperatures that people of lighter complexions could not bear. There had always been slavery in Africa amongst her own people, where men from different tribes/villages would raid other villages to kidnap the women for their pleasures, and the men to use as slaves. To learn that they could actually profit from this activity made the job of getting slaves very easy for the Europeans. Slaves acquired through raids, were transported to the seaports were they were help prisoner in forts until traded.
Since the 17th century, slavery helped build the United States by strengthening the economy, but also ruined many African American’s lives. Slavery especially effected the South and their economy, politics and laws, and the culture. Many whites did not see an unethical problem with the slave trade, especially if they treated their slaves well, but that is wrong. African Americans tried extremely hard to hold onto their culture and their lives before slavery. African Americans, free or not, suffered immensely because of the prejudice put upon them merely because of the color of their skin.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, slavery connected the world. Slaves were present on almost every continent and were traded frequently across the Atlantic Ocean. Various countries influenced their allies, persuading others to join the chaotic process of selling human lives. Slaves were taken from their native homeland in Africa, sold to plantation owners in the West Indies, and then shipped to their final destination: the United States of America. This was not just a bad habit or business tactic; slavery became a cruel lifestyle. Thousands of lives were altered, leaving a considerable impact on the physical, emotional, and social aspects of society. Many causes attributed to American