Effects Of The Transatlantic Slave Trade

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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

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