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Sugar and Slavery Cane Essay

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Submitted By jknox53
Words 1261
Pages 6
Justin Knox
11/22/08
A Block: Slavery Slaves As a Commodity

The Transatlantic Slave Trade opened a global marketing system when Portugal had an importing business. The “product” of this industry was slaves from West Africa. This business did extremely well since North America, also known as the “New World”, had an unreliable work force. Before Africans were used, Europeans relied on indentured servants. They would have a sentence of about four years work with no pay after that time they had to be freed and paid to work. Other people were used as slaves such as Native Americans and Caucasians but they were killed by diseases that foreigners carried which their immune system could not handle. A lot of people feel that slavery does not exist anymore, but if slavery is making people work for little to no money and taking away some of their rights then sweat shops is slavery. In this paper, I will show how profitable the Transatlantic Slave Trade was. I will prove this first by acknowledging how many places were involved with the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Second, I will explain how other trades affected slavery. Third, I will show how we still use sweatshops as a form of slavery today. The Transatlantic Slave Trade supplied the main base of the New World’s economy. The majority ships that sailed yearly for Africa were from the city of Newport. A little over sixty percent of North American voyages that involved the Transatlantic Slave Trade were founded in Rhode Island because of their ports. Spanish America had 1,552,000 slaves, Europe had 175,000 slaves, British North America/ United States had 399,000 slaves, French America had 1,600,000 slaves, Brazil had 3,647,000 slaves, British Caribbean 1,665,000 slaves, Dutch America had 500,000 slaves and Danish West Indies had 28,000 slaves. From 1526 until 1870, all these slaves were sold this means

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