American Slave Trade Research Paper

Slavery, an institutional system that dehumanizes all the people, such as the Africans and inhabitants of the new world, through hard agricultural labor and harsh treatment. It originated in the European continent. Slavery then was brought to the new world to be used as a working force. The main customers for the slaves were the people amongst the Spanish and American colonies. The slaves were brought to these colonies for similar reasons, for example, agricultural labor. However, slaves were treated differently amongst the societies in the colonies.

1.How did slavery develop and change in different places and cultures? Slavery began we people started using african americans to do their work. The would be taken from their homes and family to do these chores and had little to no rights. In the US we used them more on plantations to help with farming.

The Middle Passage refers to the journey in which Africans were transported across the Atlantic to the West Indies as slaves and were then sold or traded for raw materials. Due to the fact that Africans were considered as less than human, the conditions they were forced to endure during the Middle Passage were appalling. Evidently, the conditions varied by ship and voyage, yet the same problems arose; disease, abuse, lack of food and water as well as inadequate living conditions.

Slavery in America began when the first African slaves were brought to the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, to aid in the production of lucrative crops such as tobacco. Slavery was practiced throughout the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries, and African-American slaves helped build the economic foundations of the new nation. The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 solidified the central importance of slavery to the South’s economy (Slavery in America). By the mid-19th century, America’s westward expansion, along with a growing abolition movement in the North, provoked a great debate over slavery that would tear the nation apart during the bloody Civil War. Though the Union victory freed the nation’s four

cost about $40,000 in today's money. Slavery is still happening around the world. There are about 30 million slaves in the world, even in the U.S , there are still 60,000 slaves in America and 5 million of those 30 million are enslaved children. Enslaving black people was legal in all the 13 colonies . More than half of them lived in Virginia and Maryland and in the Chesapeake region where they made up of 50 to 60 percent of the entire population, the majority, but not all of the Africans were slaves.

In 1619, slavery contributed much to the growth of colonies in America. It continued until 1863. Moreover, the trade was widespread amongst the Americans, hence, became one of the largest industry during that particular century. Slaves were kidnapped from their residence in Africa, shipped to America under extremely unbearable conditions, and then auctioned off. The captives were treated with a lot of cruelty and hostility as they were being forced into the ships to be transported for slavery. They were later compelled to work and live under new intolerable conditions.

When the Americas were first being settled, the Europeans started farming to get a stable economy going. They decided that they couldn’t work the fields themselves, because they were too rich to be doing anything for themselves, so the early settlers started piggybacking off of other people’s hard work. Slaves started to make up more of our population than the actual Europeans did. They were all brought over from Africa and they were thought of as property; not people. During the Atlantic World, African slavery had many causes and effects on early American society.

American slaves were treated horribly. It was called the “Peculiar Institution” because it was a strange system. After a while, the South started to rely on slavery since it was agricultural. The North relied on the cotton from the South to ship to other countries. Once the cotton gin came to the South, they needed more slaves because they were producing more cotton. Plantation became the goal in the South and Abolitionists made the Southerners keep a tighter hold on their slaves. The United States was one of the last places to stop slavery and still keeps the ideas of white supremacy today. For example, in The Growth of The American Republic by Samuel Eliot Morrison and Henry Steele Commager, a textbook used from the 1930’s to the 1960’s _

While reading The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano, many questions arose in my head. I wanted to further my knowledge on multiple topics. The topic that stuck out to me the most was how the treatment of slaves differed throughout the book depending on their location. I analyzed the book into further detail on this topic. From Africa to England, Equiano experienced and observed many different treatment forms. The treatment differed due to a variety of customs and cultures.

The greatest slave trade stage was enslaved people transportation from West and central Africa to the New World- America. The trans-Atlantic slave trade was the largest forced movement and prior from the 16th through the 19th centuries. The salve trade between Western and Central Africa and the America reached its peak in the middle of 18th century when over 80.000 Africans annually crossed the Atlantic to spend all their rest of lives in chains. “For three centuries the white man seized and enslaved millions of Africans and transported them, with every circumstance of ferocious cruelty, across the seas.” (Morel.1903) Approximately from the 10 to 12 million Africans from the central and western parts of continent were sold by others Africans

After slaves were taken to slave forts along the coast, they were often kept there for several months at a time in brutal conditions before being taken across the Atlantic Ocean. When a ship was expected, local traders would clean the slaves up and put palm oil on them to make them appear more presentable after the months of poor conditions they endured. European slave traders would then come ashore and examine the people, and choose the ones they believed were most suitable for the hard labor they needed performed. Once they chose, they would transport the slaves by bringing them to the ship in large canoes. The ones that were not chosen were either beaten or murdered by their owners. Africans were terrified at the sight of the ocean, and

Slavery in America was started in 1619, when a Dutch ship brought 20 African slaves in the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia. Throughout the 17th century, European settlers in North America turned to African slaves as a cheaper, more abundant labor source than indentured servants, who were mostly poorer Europeans. Slavery was established throughout the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries, and African slaves helped build the new nation into an economic driving force through the production of profitable crops such as tobacco and cotton. By the mid of 19th century, America had a westward expansion and the abolition movement motivated a great debate over the slavery and created various sectional divisions that would tear the nation

The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 expanded cotton to be one of the most profitable on the North American main land and it also expanded slavery. Cultivation of cotton took extensive measures for example; they cleared forests and drained swamps to fit the cultivation of cotton. A rise in African American bondage occurred in the region from the Atlantic coast to Texas. Numbers grew fastest in the newer cotton producing states that included Alabama and Mississippi.

It was this forceful nature of blacks’ migration into America that caused their ever growing separation from the white labor force and led to the establishment of a slave society. The way European white immigrants were being treated, began to improve, so as to attract more white settlers to the colonies. As the status of white migrants rose, the role of Africans became more clearly outlined by legislation that separated them from white settlers. All this fueled the intense racism that eventually grew explosively. Slavery of the blacks was a direct result of the race and class consciousness of the slaves and planters and not the materialistic advantage that buying and selling the slaves would earn them. Once the black skin origin was linked to slavery, racism took power and continued even after slavery came to an end, till today. Slave trade was reinforced by the racist ideology that claimed the superiority of whites over the blacks, currently termed as white

Edmund Burke once said, “Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.” During the years of 1450-1860 slavery was the only way of life for many African-Americans. This time was known as the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Millions of African-Americans were transported as slaves across the Middle Passage. During the time of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, African women were seen as something of little value compared to other slaves