...A Brief Overview of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade David Eltis(Emory University), 2007 The trans-Atlantic slave trade was the largest long-distance coerced movement of people in history and, prior to the mid-nineteenth century, formed the major demographic well-spring for the re-peopling of the Americas following the collapse of the Amerindian population. Cumulatively, as late as 1820, nearly four Africans had crossed the Atlantic for every European, and, given the differences in the sex ratios between European and African migrant streams, about four out of every five females that traversed the Atlantic were from Africa. From the late fifteenth century, the Atlantic Ocean, once a formidable barrier that prevented regular interaction between those peoples inhabiting the four continents it touched, became a commercial highway that integrated the histories of Africa, Europe, and the Americas for the first time. As the above figures suggest, slavery and the slave trade were the linchpins of this process. With the decline of the Amerindian population, labor from Africa formed the basis of the exploitation of the gold and agricultural resources of the export sectors of the Americas, with sugar plantations absorbing well over two thirds of slaves carried across the Atlantic by the major European and Euro-American powers. For several centuries slaves were the most important reason for contact between Europeans and Africans. What can explain this extraordinary migration, organized...
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...The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was a time when millions of Africans were taken from their homes to come and work in the Americas as slaves. The Spaniards needed someone to come and work in their plantations and mine their gold and silver, so they went to Africa to get laborers. Africans were taken from their homes and made slaves, slaves were considered property, and America and Africa both suffered in a way. The slave trade is considered one of the worst crimes against humanity. All of this, just because the Spaniards weren’t willing to put in the work on the plantations and in the mines. When the Europeans first discovered the Americas, they knew there was gold and silver to be mined and things to be grown and sold. The Spaniards don’t want...
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...century, Britain was at many wars with France, Netherlands, and Spain. These nations dragged the Native Americans into their power struggles as the wars reached the New World. Native Americans faced challenges to trade, peace, and relations with each other and with European settlers in both allying with and waging war against European settlers. However, a few turned these challenges to their advantage. In allying with one European country and not the other, Native Americans faced hostility and conflicts with the other. During the War of the Spanish Succession, Britain was fighting both France and Spain. It allied with the Creek Indians in the Carolinas to attack Spanish settlements in the New World, specifically Spanish Florida. This alliance with Britain resulted in Spanish aggression towards the Creeks. However, even the alliance with Britain could not stop hostility between the English settlers and the Creeks; the Creeks rebelled against the English settlers after the latter ordered the natives to pay trade debts. Farther up north in the New England region, Mohawk Indians allied with the...
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...inequality and financial oppression. The Dutch settled in what is known as present day New York and named it New Amsterdam during much of the 17th century. Through the Dutch West India Company, the Dutch used enslaved Africans for labor when they were first brought to this colony around 1627. These African slaves built the wall that gives Wall Street its name,...
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...Racism v. Slavery Although Western European explorers treated Africans as chattel during the African slave trade, racism did not play a component in who were considered slaves. Racism did not create slavery, slavery created racism. Africans being used as chattel was a result of competition between the Americas and East Asia. The Europeans simply did not want Asia to have superiority over them. Africans were sold into two distinct slave trades, the Atlantic slave trade and the trans-Saharan slave trade. The Atlantic slave trade was predominantly composed of African males. The purpose of these males was to provide hard labor in the fields as gardeners and harvesters. Unlike, the Atlantic slave trade, the trans-Saharan slave trade included...
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...subjugate and enslave? Maybe the en slavers do not believe what goes around comes around as in karma. In today’s society slavery can be interpreted in different ways according to the culture of the people. In this topic discussion slavery and the atrocities associated with it will be examined and explored. . One of the largest and prime examples would be the African Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Although not the only slave trade engineered by Europeans, Jews and Spaniards it was by far the most horrendous of slavery. The Trans-Atlantic slave trade involved the kidnapping, torturing, and murder of an astounding number of Nubian African slaves. It has been reported that over 100 million slaves were transported from the African continent and brought to north and South America to help till the land and build. What most individuals fail to realize is that not all Nubian African Americans are descendants of slaves. History that has not been tainted or buried says that black Moors were living right here in North America before...
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...Influences on the Middle East and trans-Atlantic slave trade In Race and Slavery in the Middle East An Historical Enquiry, the author, Bernard Lewis, tackles difficult subjects such as slavery and racism without prejudice and manages to explain the slave trade development in the Middle East along with the great influence and contribution it had on the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Whether it was by enforcing institutions, networks, commercial patterns or Middle Eastern concepts or by following different ways of the slave trade. With his impartial academic analysis, the reader is able to comprehend the history behind the region where slavery lasted the longest. His twenty-four colorful illustrations where the reader can appreciate the culture of slavery are a great example of local perceptions in the Middle East. Slavery in the Middle East was a tolerable institution. From the very beginning the reader can appreciate that “the institution of slavery indeed had been practiced from time immemorial” and thus establishing the slave trade in the Middle East as something passed down from ancient civilizations. Although the methods for obtaining slaves changed throughout the time something that stay in consistency about the slave trade in the Middle East was tolerance. Tolerance, for the Middle Eastern, not only meant acceptance but compassion. All communities were united in order to urge slave owners to treat their slaves as humanely as possible and to ensure this policy was followed...
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...The Trans-Atlantic slave trade occurred during the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. In determining the role that trans-Atlantic slavery played in shaping the United States economy, one need only to look to the expanding role of labor intensive agriculture, particularly cotton after the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney, as a major factor in this development. Slavery provided a reliable labor force that strengthened and increased the capitalism in the economy of the emerging United States. It was soon discovered by European colonists that the abundance of land they were settling was useless without sufficient labor to exploit it. The first attempts at filling these needs proved to be unsuccessful or unreliable. The Native...
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...its historical struggle with slave trade and colonisation; and its resultant internecine warfare and exploitation of resources. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SLAVE TRADE Slavery is one of the most emotive issues in history. According to Black (2015), slavery is similar to war: in one light, enforced servitude, like large-scale, violent conflict, is easy to define. But, what the slave trade means for the history of East Africa or the Mediterranean lands is different from what it means for the Atlantic world. By the middle of the eighteenth...
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...forms of slavery that was used on the slaves. These three areas were really important because that’s where it all started. Slavery began in 1492 in Africa because of the trade across the Mediterranean and the Atlantic sea which led to slaves into Italy, Spain, Southern France and Portugal. Then slavery in the middle east began right after and then soon came along slaves in America. All of these different countries had slavery, but how are they all the same? Chattel Slavery is one form of slavery which went into America from the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Since the Africans were property, chattel was the only way Europeans could become richer than Africans...
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...Atlantic Chattel Slavery Through the progression of slavery, we see a gradual but dramatic change the way people viewed slaves. Many factors aided the deterioration of treatment towards slaves from a people to property mindset. Whether it was the beginning of the African Slave Trade, the economic driven cash crops, British laws passed to control slaves or the development of British Low Country each factor belittled the human aspect of a slave. To understand how one gets labeled as “cattle” we must understand where it came from. We first look at the beginning treatment of slaves to gather a comparison on how it differed from Atlantic Chattel Slavery. Slaves in the early east Africa were generally war captives of conquering dynasties. Islamic religion helped to maintain the humanity of these war captives. They were accepted as a member of the family (nation) but the lowest ranking one. Islamic members who owned slaves had obligations to educate and convert them to Islam. They also made it illegal to sell children from their parent which in turn was a cultural device to bring outside people into the society. After two generations of slavery these families were accepted into the society. Slaves during this time would also live to the same standards as their owners. This means a slave owned by a wealthy person would have a better lifestyle (clothes, food, etc.) than a poorer one. Slavery was still not a positive experience but when we compare to the lifestyle of Caribbean/America...
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...was the same for the 19th century, with the utilization of the slaves. We are going to talk about the slave trade at the Docklands and the abolition of slavery in Great Britain. Issues: How was the Great Britain Empire working during the 18th century ? What was the role of London in the trade and commerce during the 18th and 19th century ? How was the slaves use in Great Britain ? How did the slave trade end in Great Britain ? Subjects: The British Empire during the 18th century (Aymeric) London’s role in the trade and commerce during the 18th (Paul) London’s role in the trade and commerce during the 19th (Esther) The slave trade at the Docklands (Freya) London was at the heart of the ‘trade triangle’ that fuelled the slave trade. Traders left here with manufactured goods, such as guns, and exchanged them for slaves in Africa. The slaves were then taken across the Atlantic (the ‘middle passage’) and sold to plantation owners in America and the Caribbean for sugar, tobacco, rum, rice, cotton and tea, all of which were shipped back to London. It’s estimated that 11-12 million Africans were transported across the Atlantic for slavery. During the 1720s alone, nearly 200,000 Africans were transported in British ships. Packed into tight spaces with little food and water, thousands died en route. Built in 1803, Warehouse 1 was the first docklands warehouse built to hold the fruits of this trade: sugar, coffee and rum. The building, now the Museum in Docklands...
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...finally free of slavery; but even 150 years later, African Americans are still not treated equally. I’m sure we can all agree that African Americans deserve some sort of repayment for all the past injustices that were committed against them. This brings me to my first point. There is indeed a need for reparations. Throughout the 1500s, European slave traders abducted native Africans and shipped them across the Atlantic Ocean in terrible conditions. According to the Transatlantic Slave trade database 12.5 million slaves were shipped from Africa to North America, the West Indies, or South America. Out of the 12.5 million Africans, only 10.7 million survived the horrible voyage. Upon arrival, they were separated from their family and sold to different slave-owners. At each of their plantations, they worked from dusk till dawn, with no payment except enough food to keep them breathing. These people were entitled to compensation, but received nothing of the likes. Slaves were also a major part of the United States economy, so this is another reason that they deserve compensation. According to the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, slave-grown cotton provided for over half of all US export earnings. And by 1840, the South grew 60% of the world’s cotton and 70% of all cotton consumed by the British textile industry, which is the largest textile industry in the world. Clearly these African Americans definitely deserve monetary reparations, but it may not be within our control whether...
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...imperialism. Because of this contest to colonize the New World, extensive trade networks were formed across the known world. Goods from the Africans went to the British colonies, and goods from the colonies went to the mainland to later be distributed across the globe. The goods traded varied from bourbon and rum to guns and bows and arrows to the item people wanted most: slaves. Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, nearly 10 million to 20 million Africans were enslaved and...
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...It is shocking that there are more slaves today than at any other time in history. That’s the reaction one gets after realizing that there are added slaves today, approximately 27 million, ( according to the U.S State Department) double the total number believed to have been taken from Africa at the helm of the trans-Atlantic trade. Many people still perceive slave trade as a thing of the past, but it exists within different forms on different continents, ranging from labor and sex trade to debt enslavement, where one is forced to work to offset small loans. From Niger within central Africa where females are bought and sold off as unauthorized wives thus exploited for sexual gratification, to quarry slave within northern India, and Ghana where...
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