...feet in width and six feet in length in bed”(11), and continues saying that the boats were small, the food was gross, and you were nearly guaranteed to get sick. This is not how most people treat someone they consider to be equal. He even says “Better black slaves on plantations than white servants in industry, which would encourage aspirations to independence”(10). It is my opinion that independence is something for which everyone should have aspirations, and any attempt to squash those aspirations is an act of injustice, and in this case, an act of classism/racism. In David Eltis’s book, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Eltis argues that British ended their direct participation in the nasty business, even...
Words: 322 - Pages: 2
...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...
Words: 1647 - Pages: 7
...By the early 1800s the transatlantic slave trade was growing out of control. At this time, England, France, Spain, and the Dutch all had stakes in the slave trade. These large powerful countries needed workforce to grow and cultivate their crops. These countries turned to the ever-growing slave trade that is taking place on the west coast of Africa. (The slavers scoured the coasts of Guinea. As they devastated an area they moved westward and then south...” (James 6). One great point that James makes is about how we view Africa at this time. We have been taught that African tribes were leading the slave trade by having these massive wars and capturing opposing tribes and selling them into slavery. The magnitude that we have been taught...
Words: 296 - Pages: 2
...The Transatlantic Slave Trade took place in the Atlantic Ocean through the 15th – 19th century between America, Europe and Africa. The Trade blossomed due to the expansion of sugar production, causing a higher demand for Africans. The expansion of sugar production drove The Transatlantic Trade to prosper. But the Transatlantic Slave Trade did not begin the capturing of Africans, European were capturing Africans long before the slave traffic developed. The Portuguese were the first European that explored West Africa. When returning to Portugal they took 12 Africans as a gift back home to their king, this was one of the earliest experience of European seizing Africans. But did the transatlantic slave trade consist of European kidnapping slaves...
Words: 1493 - Pages: 6
...this continent. In particular, the transatlantic slave trade affected many African states and people in West Africa. The transatlantic slave trade had affected many African societies and states in various ways. The reason for slave trade was due to the improper climate of European land for the production of sugar. Sugar in Europe was a rising commodity that Europeans did not have the labor and land for. When the Europeans were on route to Asia for spice trade, the weather would blow their ships to the west coast of Africa. Knowing that the Europeans were in not in Asia, they set to explore the continent of...
Words: 885 - Pages: 4
...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...
Words: 1261 - Pages: 6
...million kidnapped Africans were forced into the Transatlantic slave trade and shipped to the Americas, only a little over 10 million made it. The Transatlantic slave trade was a small segment of the popular global slave trade network and was responsible for the deaths of over two point two million future slaves. This mass kidnapping of oblivious Africans occurred across the Atlantic from the early sixteenth to nineteenth century and was the second part of the “Triangular Trade”. The Triangular Trade or Triangle Trade was a trading system between Europe, Africa, and the North America in which commodities such as arms, slaves, sugar, and coffee were transported between the three nations (Lewis). The...
Words: 1278 - Pages: 6
...supply than was available through the importation of European servants and irregularly supplied African slaves. At first the Dutch supplied the slaves, as well as the credit, capital, technological expertise, and marketing arrangements. After the restoration of the English monarch following the Commonwealth (1642-60), the King and other members of the royal family invested in the Company of Royal Adventurers, chartered in 1663, to pursue of the lucrative African slave trade. That company was succeeded by the Royal Africa Company in 1672, but the supply still failed to meet the demand, and all types of private traders entered the transatlantic commerce. Between 1518 and 1870, the transatlantic slave trade supplied the greatest proportion of the Caribbean population. As sugarcane cultivation increased and spread from island to island--and to the neighboring mainland as well--more Africans were brought to replace those who died rapidly and easily under the rigorous demands of labor on the plantations, in the sugar factories, and in the mines. Acquiring and transporting Africans to the New World became a big and extremely lucrative business. From a modest trickle in the early sixteenth century, the trade increased to an annual import rate of about 2,000 in 1600, 13,000 in 1700, and 55,000 in 1810. Between 1811 and 1870, about 32,000 slaves per year were imported. As with all trade, the operation fluctuated widely, affected by regular market factors of supply and demand as well as the...
Words: 271 - Pages: 2
...Slavery during the 1700-1900’s was a major piece of history led by greed and inconsideration of human life involving several different colonizers. Slavery in America began in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 when a Dutch ship brought about twenty African men and women to help tend to crops and tobacco growth. This led other countries to turn to slavery for cheap labor. Slavery slowly developed into what we know to be a long history of economic growth, suffering, abuse, and mistreatment. The history of slavery not only includes slavery as a whole but also the slave ships, slave revolts, and much more. Finally, on December 6th, 1865 the 13th amendment was ratified by American congress to abolish slavery in the United States. The article written by...
Words: 662 - Pages: 3
... 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 America’s was a forced and free transition, the continent of Africa provided the part of the migrating idea: African slavery and slave trading existed long before European disclosure (4). Since the concept was adapted from one of the countries who defined slavery long before the 19th century, slaves adhered to slavers or masters; this was also contributed from Africa. Men, women and children...
Words: 1239 - Pages: 5
...Name: Shivansh Agarwal Roll no: B10031 Quiz 2 paper The picture which has been shown in the paper clearly represents that the women sitting belongs to rich family and are enjoying their time drinking tea in porcelain dishes. The tea is sweetened by sugar. The background given in the picture also gives a good idea that these women belong to rich family. The wooden equipment could be interpreted as a musical instrument which can be acquired from a foreign country. While the Chinese people would feel fear in displaying things which they would get as a part of trade or gifts Europeans were quite fond of displaying artifacts which they would acquire from different countries as a result of trade or whatever means they could, be it war or raid or exploitation of people. The porcelain dishes displayed all came from china and were synonymy as china or chinaware. The sweetener which is used to sweeten tea had come from the European colonies in America. This represents that by the seventeenth century Europeans had established their networks in all part of the world. Porcelain is a ceramic which is obtained at heating ceramics at a very high temperature around 1300 degree high enough to give it a glassy appearance and in the middle is fused with cobalt blue. Europeans were quite impressed by this blue and white mixture and thought of them as classy. Chinese Porcelain was so thin that you could see the impression of your fingers from the other side in presence of light. When Porcelain first...
Words: 2273 - Pages: 10
...English, and Spanish planters were accustomed to purchasing African Slaves. The main parts of the Atlantic trading system ill go into is West Africa and the slave trade, New England and the Caribbean, and slaving voyages. Majority of the enslaved people taken to North America originated in West Africa. Some of the main Coastal rulers served as intermediaries, as they allowed the establishment of permanent slave-trading posts in their territories and supplying resident Europeans with slaves to fill ships that stopped regularly at coastal forts. Whydah was the major slave-trading port. It was said that Whydah passed at least 10 percent of all slaves exported to the Americas, and Whydah's merchants earned substantial annual profits from the trade. The Portuguese, English, and French all established forts there. Before any Europeans could begin to acquire any cargo, they had to pay fees to Whydah's rulers. However, the slave trade brought varying consequences for the nations of West Africa. Because of the trades centralizing tendencies, it helped to create such powerful eighteenth-century kingdoms such as Dahomey and Asante. The trade disrupted original trading patterns, as goods once sent north to the Mediterranean, were redirected to the Atlantic. Agricultural production intensified, especially in the rice growing areas because of the need to supply hundreds of slave ships with food for transatlantic voyages. Prisoners of war made up the bulk...
Words: 1020 - Pages: 5
...both positive and negative ways. The need for African slaves for Europeans came from a demand for a labor force to work the land in the Caribbean Islands. European colonization in Africa reaches back to Ghana in the late fourteenth century. From the fifteenth century and beyond, Ghana was a major slave exporter for the Europeans to the Caribbean and Europe. In Ghana, relationships were formed with political powers to produce and maintain European slave trading posts on its coast. The African response to European colonization varied. Middle and low class Africans suffered greatly as they supplied the slave force. In contrast, Africans who held power or were wealthy profited as they provided the slaves for trade. In both the past and Achebe’s novel, European colonization in Africa was both highly demanded and discouraged. Prior to colonizing for slave trade, Ghana was known as the “Gold Coast” to the Portuguese, Dutch, British, and English. (Richard, “The Gold Coast Slave Trade”) Only gold and resources were traded between Ghana and Europe. Similar to Sierra Leone, Europeans made their way to Ghana in the fifteenth century, building fortified trading posts along the “Gold Coast”. This area was militant protected which often caused conflicts with inhabitants. Europeans formed relationships with those in political power, which allowed them to colonize parts of Ghana, and also have a consistent source to supply them with slaves. European colonization of Ghana, ripped the country...
Words: 1638 - Pages: 7
...slavery was present almost everywhere. The main areas that affected the African Diaspora were Africa itself, the New World, and the Indian Ocean. Slavery in Africa started in approximately the 7th century and it was over religious reasons. Arab Muslims and Europeans traded in West, Central, and East Africa. Slavery existed in some of Africa’s earliest organized societies. The buying and selling of slaves were regular activities in cities along the Nile River. In Africa, early slavery resulted from warring groups taking captives. The treatment of slavery in Africa was variable. Many societies recognized slaves as merely property and some saw them as dependants who eventually might be integrated into the families of slave owners, because of this slavery was not heritable. Some societies allowed slaves to attain positions of military or administrative power. Slave owners and slaves were usually Black Africans. There were several different jobs for slaves that varied extremely in labor. Women were the majority of early African slaves, their labor included: agricultural work, trade, cotton spinning and dyeing, domestic chores (preparing food,...
Words: 1365 - Pages: 6
...supply than was available through the importation of European servants and irregularly supplied African slaves. At first the Dutch supplied the slaves, as well as the credit, capital, technological expertise, and marketing arrangements. After the restoration of the English monarch following the Commonwealth (1642-60), the King and other members of the royal family invested in the Company of Royal Adventurers, chartered in 1663, to pursue of the lucrative African slave trade. That company was succeeded by the Royal Africa Company in 1672, but the supply still failed to meet the demand, and all types of private traders entered the transatlantic commerce. Between 1518 and 1870, the transatlantic slave trade supplied the greatest proportion of the Caribbean population. As sugarcane cultivation increased and spread from island to island--and to the neighboring mainland as well--more Africans were brought to replace those who died rapidly and easily under the rigorous demands of labor on the plantations, in the sugar factories, and in the mines. Acquiring and transporting Africans to the New World became a big and extremely lucrative business. From a modest trickle in the early sixteenth century, the trade increased to an annual import rate of about 2,000 in 1600, 13,000 in 1700, and 55,000 in 1810. Between 1811 and 1870, about 32,000 slaves per year were imported. As with all trade, the operation fluctuated widely, affected by regular market factors of supply and demand as well as the...
Words: 1537 - Pages: 7
