...The African Diaspora across Europe and Asia The study of the African Diaspora is a relatively focused topic, in general focusing on the Atlantic Slave Trade and those who were enslaved in the Americas. Of particular interest to many recent historians is the fact that black Africans have been experiencing forced settlement outside of Africa for centuries prior to the Atlantic Slave Trade. Slaves have established a presence in many different urban and rural areas of the world including, Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, and Europe. Ibn Khaldun has been quoted, “history is information about human social organization and that there were two basic forms of human social organization: urban and rural.” Through urban and rural settings, one can understand the development of African slavery outside of the Africa and excluding the Americas. In ancient times Africans traveled as merchants, sailors, soldiers, and adventurers across the Red and Mediterranean Seas and the Indian Ocean. Africans and Arabs long interacted in the urban areas of Egypt, the Sudan, and across the Red Sea and shared common values and customs. The Arabian Peninsula seems to have the earliest African contact, with Ethiopian traders settling on the peninsula long before the Romans came. Not much is known how these slaves were captured but they were seemingly traded along the Horn of Africa, in urban trading post set up by traders. Furthermore, during the expansion of Islam after the 7th century AD, ushered in...
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...Slave Trade Slavery is the owning of slaves as a practice or institution. The condition of being a slave is bondage. A Slave is a human who is owned as property by, and is absolutely subject to the will of another and is stripped of all freedom and personal rights. Hard to believe but one of the most horrifying occurrences in World History, is the Slave Trade. It was a time in which people were sold as merchandise, where human beings were being treated as if they were not human. Beaten, being taken on a ship to an unknown land, drowned because of rations, and space. The capture and forced labor of Africans by Europeans began in the early 16th century. Africans were rounded up by other Africans as objects of trade with the Europeans. Eventually, slave ships became a regular sight in what came to be known as "the Middle Passage." These ships provided a constant flow of African slaves to Brazil and the Caribbean Islands, where the human cargo was auctioned off and brought to Europe or the New World. Many of the ships were not cleaned. The "cargo" was not fed or cleansed properly. Many captives died from the inhuman conditions on these voyages. Who had control? England gained control of the slave trade under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, and managed the shipment of slaves to Spanish colonies. As the colonies gained independence from Spain, they outlawed slavery, and soon slaves were most in demand in North America, particularly on plantations. Few were fortunate enough to be house...
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...Africa before the Transatlantic Slave Trade Racist views of Africa In the last 50 years much has been done to combat the entirely false and negative views about the history of Africa and Africans, which were developed in Europe in order to justify the Transatlantic Slave Trade and European colonial rule in Africa that followed it. In the eighteenth century such racist views were summed up by the words of the Scottish philosopher David Hume, who said, ‘I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites. There scarcely ever was a civilised nation of that complexion, nor even any individual, eminent either in action or in speculation. No ingenious manufacture among them, no arts, no sciences”. In the nineteenth century the German philosopher Hegel simply declared ‘Africa is no historical part of the world.’ This openly racist view, that Africa had no history, was repeated by Hugh Trevor-Roper, Regius Professor of History at Oxford University, as late as 1963. Africa, the birthplace of humanity We now knowWe now know that far from having no history, it is likely that human history actually began in Africa. The oldest evidence of human existence and that of our immediate ancestors has been found in Africa. In July 2002 further evidence of the existence of early hominids in Africa was found with the discovery of the fossilised remains of what has been called Sahelanthropus tchadensis, thought to be between 6-7 million years old, in Chad. The latest...
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...Atlantic Slave Trade In the mid-1400s, Portuguese ships sailed down to West African coast to avoid the Islamic North Africa that has monopolized the trade of sub-Saharan gold, spices, and other commodities that Europeans wanted. During these voyages there were many maritime discoveries that were unknown to European’s traditional limit of navigation, south of Cape Bojador, which with time will make it easier for them to navigate the Atlantic. At the beginning, Portuguese were only in the search of gold and other commodities, but with time their interest also went to the African people. Lancarote de Lagos, a Portuguese navigator, sailed in the Senegal River and captured a group of Africans and carried them off into slavery. During this period, race was not a major factor to be carried into slavery. Slaves were composed of many individuals of different ethnicities who were captured after a war, had a debt, and other situations. The Atlantic slave trade was set in motion mostly for the production of sugar. Nowadays, the production of such a benign thing such as sugar to have caused a massive slave trade is really hard to understand. However in those days sugar was not taken for granted. European’s ever-growing sweet tooth was the driving force for the development of the Atlantic world. Because the work of growing sugar was so burdensome, free workers would not do it willingly and that is why the industry came to depend upon slave labor. Starting in 1492 when Christopher Columbus...
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...had arguably the biggest effects on the New World, With this said, West African was also affected, primarily by the Portuguese. While it is clear that the Western Europeans were motivated to do whatever it took to increase their wealth and power, they were faced with a major problem. With such a large amount of plantations that required a great deal of physical labor, the Europeans were desperate for laborers. At first, they tried to use local natives to fulfill labor needs, but they quickly learned this would not work. “They resisted efforts to commandeer their labor, evaded Portuguese forces by retreating to interior lands, and took every opportunity to escape captors who managed to force them into servitude” (B p.684). This caused the Portuguese to look elsewhere and to target West African for the needed labor. Due to this increase in demand for labor, it marked the beginning to the slave trade. The slave trade is a major impact of the European voyages because African slaves were subject to awful living and working conditions. “I was soon put down under the decks, there I received such a smell that I had never experienced in my life… I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste anything” (AOS p. 5). This illustrates the horrible conditions that African slaves were exposed to. The Portuguese’s behavior was simply inhumane because they did not respect their slaves, instead, they were treated as replaceable tools that were needed to increase...
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...Transatlantic Slave Trade The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade took place across the Atlantic Ocean from the 16th through to the 19th centuries. The vast majority of slaves transported to the New World were Africans from the central and western parts of the continent, sold by Africans to European slave traders who then transported them to North and South America. The numbers were so great that Africans who came by way of the slave trade became the most numerous Old World immigrants in both North and South America before the late eighteenth century. The South Atlantic economic system centered on making goods and clothing to sell in Europe and increasing the numbers of African slaves brought to the New World. This was crucial to those European countries which, in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were vying with each other to create overseas empires. The evolution of slavery is crucial to understanding the importance of currently standing issues. Slavery began in 1440 when Portugal started to trade slaves with West Africa. The first Africans imported to the English colonies were also called “indentured servants” or “apprentices for life”. By the middle of the sixteenth century, they and their offspring were legally the property of their owners. As property, they were merchandise or units of labor, and were sold at markets with other goods and services. By the 17th century, Western Europeans developed an organized system of trading slaves. However...
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...“The history of the Caribbean is a history of exploitation of labor’’. The exploitation of labor is one of the most common issues faced in terms of human rights in certain countries. To gain power and wealth is only one of the reasons that exploitation of labor is a major issue. People use their power to take advantage of the less fortunate. Exploitation can be defined as an act of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work or to fulfill their own selfish purposes, whereas labor is defined as the use of physical and mental efforts in the creation of goods and services. So based on Caribbean history even laborers before the 20th century were taken advantage by their owners to gain benefits. Firstly the exploitation of the Caribbean with reference to the encomienda labor system. This system was created in 1512 by the Spanish to control and regulate American Indian labors (Arawaks/Tainos) during the colonization of the Americas. The word ‘encomienda’ comes from the Spanish word encomendar, "to entrust." The encomienda system was the earliest introduction of inhumane slavery as historians believed as one of the most damaging institutions that the Spanish colonists implemented in the New World. In the Americas, the first encomiendas were handed out by Christopher Columbus and institutionalized by Governor Nicolas de Ovando (1503) in the Caribbean. The Spaniards were referred to as the ecomendero because their responsibility was to ensure the well being of the...
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...Europeans were beginning to mix with the indigenous people, even though there were still social and sexual hierarchies. Silver became quite important, so laborers were sent to mine for silver. There were three different labor systems; one came right after the other. Until the free laborer system got set in place. Europeans began settling in Australia, even though there wasn’t much trade going on at the time. Many more people traveled to the Pacific after Magellan and Captain Cook. I. Colliding Worlds...
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...Height of slave trade A Point of No Return in Ouidah, Benin, a former gateway for slaves to slave ships. Slavery had long been practiced in Africa.[38][39] Between the 7th and 20th centuries, Arab slave trade (also known as slavery in the East) took 18 million slaves from Africa via trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean routes. Between the 15th and the 19th centuries (500 years), the Atlantic slave trade took an estimated 7–12 million slaves to the New World. In West Africa, the decline of the Atlantic slave trade in the 1820s caused dramatic economic shifts in local polities. The gradual decline of slave-trading, prompted by a lack of demand for slaves in the New World, increasing anti-slavery legislation in Europe and America, and the British Royal Navy's increasing presence off the West African coast, obliged African states to adopt new economies. Between 1808 and 1860, the British West Africa Squadron seized approximately 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard. Action was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against "the usurping King of Lagos", deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers. The largest powers of West Africa (the Asante Confederacy, the Kingdom of Dahomey, and the Oyo Empire) adopted different ways of adapting to the shift. Asante and Dahomey concentrated on the development of "legitimate commerce" in the form of palm oil...
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...10. mercantilism (p. 468) Quiz #2 1. caravel (p. 384) 2. conquistadors (p. 394) 3. Columbian Exchange (p. 431) 4. maritime (p. 402) 5. manumission . (p.467) 6. coerced labor systems (p.475) 7. plantation cash crop (p.470) 8. tariffs (p.469) 9. indigenous (p.393) 10. encomiendas (p. 439) 11. serfs (p.529) 12. mestizo (pp. 442 – 45) Historical Thinking Skills: Periodization, Causation, Contextualization Timeline Exercise: Annotate the timeline with two facts about the important effects of each event Unit 3: 1450–1750 (Early Modern) 1453 Ottomans captured Constantinople; end of Byzantine 1450s Gutenberg’s Printing Press; Portuguese expand trade in West Africa: Benin, Kongo 1483 Babur conquered northern India, and founded the Mughal Empire 1492 Reconquista completed; Columbus claimed Americas for Spain 1498 Vasco da Gama attacked Calicut 1517 Martin Luther posted 95 theses...
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...for travel and trade. Once Europe knew about explosives, guns and canons helped Western Europe conquer other lands. During the Ming Era in China there were vast growth in population, commerce, agriculture, and expansion. Admiral Zheng He led seven major overseas expeditions. Matteo Ricci and Adam Schall were Jesuit scholars that showed Chinese scholars Christian...
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...clarification: • African identity- this term will be used interchangeable. (1) realizing the African continent commonality, (2) the culture and behavior of the slaves (African born and creoles)—basically what defines the slaves’ identity. • Creoles- (1) Atlantic creoles that are phenotypically and culturally mixed with African and European cultures. The Dynamic African identity: Coping with Slavery Upon considering the changes and the creation of an “African” identity (definition 2), it is important to realize that similar to the constantly changing slavery due to the frequent shifts in the social, political, and economic contexts, the “African” identity was also dynamic. Although the overall reason that prompted the development of the notion of the African continent (definition 1) might be similar across the board of slavery, the specifics of what constituted this identity (ex: religion, family formation) is largely dependent on the time period and region being discussed—ex: the 17th Century African identity in North America is different from the 18th Century identity in Europe. Several factors that enhanced the creation of the African identity (definition 2) include: (1) ability to form families as a result of the gender ratio, mortality rates, segregation from other slaves, (2) population ratio of native-born to creolized slaves, and (3) religious movement that were characteristic of the time and space. These three factors allowed for the African identity to...
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...Africa was begun by the Portuguese. They established trading stations on the coast in the 15th and 16th centuries. The interior of what Europeans called "the Dark Continent", however, was not explored or colonized until the 19th century. By the early 20th century nearly all of Africa had been subjected to European rule. During early explorations Europeans, the Portuguese to be specific, took immediate notice to the wealth of the African continent by building forts at coastal trading posts in Western Africa, where ships could be loaded with the local slaves, gold, ivory, and palm products in exchange for alcohol, guns, and sugar; the vast wealth of certain areas in the Western African coast were given nicknames such as, Ivory Coast, Gold Coast, and Slave Coast for their chief products. Portuguese ships took gold from Eastern Africa to pay for the silks and spices of Asia(389). This world region has clear, mainly coastal, boundaries. In the colonial late 1800s and early 1900s, trade routes and connections moved away from the land crossing of the Sahara that connected northernmost Africa with the rest of the continent and toward the ocean routes linked with the expanding European global economy(380). Africa has a wealth of natural resources. Overall, however, Africa's potential mineral resources are underused, and the economic benefits from their exploitation seldom return to Africans. Some large deposits, such as the iron ores of Equatorial Guinea, remain unused at present because...
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...communities to buy slaves to bring back with them for work. The roles and duties slaves had depended on their genders. Women were more likely to get sold into slavery to perform household chores, spin and dye cotton, and sometimes be shown off to let everyone know of a man’s wealth. Men would usually work outside either farming, doing repairs, or building things. In later years, when European countries came into the slave trade, slaves from Africa could be bought with a trade of goods of clothing, food, firearms, and even liquor. Though, by the 18th century, most slaves were obtained...
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...also known as La Regla Lucumi and the Rule of Osha. Santeria is a syncretic religion created by the blending of Catholicism and Lucumi religion. This religion has roots in Africa, especially the Yoruba people in southwestern Nigeria. In Santeria, the saints of Catholicism and the comparable orishas of the Yoruba religion, are the same. As the New World was the new forcible home to slaves, Africans brought their Yoruba religious traditions along. They were forced to convert into Christianity and forget their original beliefs by their owners. But the slaves persisted and discovered a way to hide their beliefs with the introduction of Catholicism in Cuba in the 16th century. They disguised their gods/godesses behind the representation of Catholic saints so it would seem that they were praying to the saints, but were actually praying to their gods. The secrecy of practicing rites, prayers, and rituals has then become essential in Santeria. The transatlantic slave trade was responsible for the forced migration of between 12 - 15 million people from Africa to the New World from the middle of the 15th century to the end of the 19th...
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