...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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...Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade took place from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. During the Atlantic Slave Trade between twelve to twenty million slaves were brought to the Americas from Africa. An estimated two million Africans did not make it across the Atlantic to the Americas. The Atlantic Slave Trade was part of the Triangular Trade; trade that went from Europe to Africa on to the Americas then back to Europe, creating a triangular shape across the Atlantic Ocean. Millions of slaves were forced to come to the Americas from their home in Africa. This had many effects on not only Africa and the Americas, but the rest of the world also. So, what were the effects of the Atlantic Slave Trade? The biggest effect the Atlantic Slave Trade had was the help in the development of the Americas. Population loss and social disruption from trade caused the underdevelopment of Africa. The culture in the Americas also changed as the slaves brought their culture with them. Although there were many negative effects from the Atlantic Slave Trade there were also some positive ones. The slaves had a large impact on the development in the Americas as they caused the growth in agriculture and the economy. If the slaves were not brought over to the Americas, the development would not have been as fast or large. Because they were forced to work long hours and do jobs nobody else wanted to do. Because they were cheap labor, landowners could buy many so there would be more slaves to work...
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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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...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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...Running-head: Slavery The Atrocities of Slavery Christopher Tracy Arnold AIU Throughout the course of history mankind has lived by the old cliche “live by the sword die by the sword, but is that what they halfheartedly believe? Darwin believed in his theory of natural selection, yet how can a nation or tribe advance when barbarians are constantly looking for people to 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...
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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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...some point in their life, has learned something about slavery before. However, just like the Holocaust, there are some facts people are ignorant about. The secrets about slavery most people do not know is, enslavement of Africans occured because there was a massive demand for labor, people were benefitting for it, and also it was justified. In the late 1400s, Atlantic Slave Trade started within three continents; North America, Europe, and Africa. Which resulted in the exchangement of ten million Africans to the Americas. This idea of expanding labour through slavery affected the world. Even though slavery is a horrible and an evil act, in the 1400s there was a massive demand for labor and most of the labor needed in the New Colonies were very intense and there was not enough settlers and indentured servants, a...
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...Americans are ignorant to the history that the famous Wall Street was created from. In order to understand how Wall Street became the wealth center that it is today and its role in the system of global capitalism, it is imperative to know Wall Street’s upbringing. Wall Street was made from the backs of African Americans and to this day, it remains a key component in preserving racial 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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...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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...time, slavery dominates undue centuries and corrodes human existence itself as it taints mortal morale. With slavery strewn throughout countless countries, enslavement proves to be appalling in any aeon of the past or present. Brutally bonding innocent souls with the shackles of labor, slave trade in Sub-Saharan Africa during the Post-Classical Era, 600-1450 C.E., and the Early Colonial Era, 1450-1750 C.E., correlate through the time periods with the viley vain intent to collect and sell vulgar labor force. But the slave trade differs with the slave dealer’s motivation morphing throughout time, for the initial motive for slave trade commenced with the craving for personal profit and, overtime, altered...
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...effects of slavery in the Atlantic World. Slavery had existed for thousands of years before it came to the new world. African kings would use muslim slaves and kings in europe used slaves. This was not a new concept, but it became a malevolent one. The slave trade started in the atlantic world because plantation owners needed a lot of cheap labor for the excessive amount of work. When Europeans invaded the Americas, their plan was to use natives as slaves. Unfortunately thousands of natives died due to diseases, and the one that didn’t die would leave because they knew the land and didn’t want to be slaves. Since the land was so large a lot of work was needed for the fields that few people could offer. So people would...
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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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...Chapter 17 Atlantic Revolutions and Their Echoes 1750–1914 MARGIN REVIEW QUESTIONS Q. In what ways did the ideas of the Enlightenment contribute to the Atlantic revolutions? • The Enlightenment promoted the idea that human political and social arrangements could be engineered, and improved, by human action. • New ideas of liberty, equality, free trade, religious tolerance, republicanism, human rationality, popular sovereignty, natural rights, the consent of the governed, and social contracts developed during the Enlightenment, providing the intellectual underpinnings of the Atlantic revolutions. Q. What was revolutionary about the American Revolution, and what was not? • The American Revolution was revolutionary in that it marked a decisive political change. • It was not revolutionary in that it sought to preserve the existing liberties of the colonies rather than to create new ones. Q. How did the French Revolution differ from the American Revolution? • While the American Revolution expressed the tensions of a colonial relationship with a distant imperial power, the French insurrection was driven by sharp conflicts within French society. • The French Revolution, especially during its first five years, was a much more violent, far-reaching, and radical movement than its American counterpart. • The French revolutionaries perceived themselves as starting from scratch in recreating the social order, while the Americans sought...
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...Slavery: A Free but Forced Civilization from Origin Slavery is predated to the earliest known and existing cultures. Regardless of the culture, time, period or race, slavery is a discriminating concept in which people are held against their own will. Before new age society found a more humorous and sexual definition for the concept, slavery was and still is, in some parts of the world, humiliating. In particular, there is one which has been historically long lasting; the Transatlantic African slave trade. This long and grueling migration paved the way for new races and culture. African Americans thrive all over the world but unfortunately descendants from this race did not come to the Americas on their own free will. A world altering voyage and conquest took shape when Christopher Columbus traveled and discovered the Americas in 1492 (1). Historically true, the America’s took shape but not without risk, sacrifice, or discrimination of a divine civilization. Columbus was on venture seeking route to Asia, in turn; found an untouched land devoured by Native Americans (2). Being distracted new ideas and opportunities, he reset is path. The mark of the Columbian Exchange happened; bringing the eventual commerce of food, disease, culture, power and new races (3). All of the changes were not as promising or good. The transatlantic slave trade brought new life but also brought darker times. Columbus didn’t develop this concept, he actually adapted to it. Although, slavery in the...
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...After years of war and conflict, African Americans were 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...
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