Slavery In The 19th Century

Through the 16th to the 19th century, slavery was closely intertwined on a global scale on the basis of economics. Slavery, especially in the Americas, became a colonial and empirical institution, which then made those societies dependent on coerced, forced labor for many economical activities based on racial hatred and violence. At each stage in the transatlantic slave trade, African people experienced systematic violence and oppression, shaped by racist capitalistic ideas that white opportunists profited from. Slavery was never an inevitable outcome of African and European encounters, but it developed in this way because of the search for wealth and money, combined with severe white supremacy and ethnocentrism. As slavery continued to develop, and many countries, such as the emerging United States in the late 18th century, had slaves as a major part of their economic model. Then, especially in slave ships and markets, there was a process of dehumanization that made the white sailors disengage themselves from the misery and brutality they were inflicting on people. It could be argued that violence was a necessity from Europeans’ perspectives, to try to keep enslaved people from revolting, and disrupting the flow of wealth they had obtained from the cruelty of slavery. Their wealth, was dependent on the continuation of slavery, which was why this system was so brutal by nature. The people in

Enslaved Africans’ whole lives were drastically and brutally altered, but their sense of agency, community, and kinship with those in their same situation made them forge dynamic cultures within their spaces. While Europeans may have aspired to erase their identity completely, they sill brought their cultural, religious, and spiritual ideas with them, which could not be erased. The relationship between violence and wealth was dependent on those who wished to keep pushing the brutal system