Slave Trade Dbq Essay

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The slave trade was a controversial issue for many people and still is even today. However, many of the leaders of European countries at the time of the slave trade were considered Enlightened Despots due to their reforms set in place to actually help the people and the betterment of the country. Also most of the writing at this time was observing treatment of slaves and most of the people in the world had accepted Enlightenment ideals or traditional christian values wherein both, everyone deserved rights. This is why it can be inferred that during the 17th to 19th c. there was not an absence of humanitarian concern for slaves when it came to the slave trade, but instead it was individuals who lacked humanitarianism while the rest of the world …show more content…

It was seen as necessity for a country to have slaves now since they needed them to do the work since the newly converted Christians had protection from slavery from the crown. Merrick Whitcomb describes this in his, Gold of the Indies (Doc 1). Whitcomb also goes on to describe how the Europeans treat the slaves imported from Africa. This is the first shift in the gradual switch to more humanitarian ideals. Writings like these eventually reached the mainland of Europe and let people have an inside look on how their countrymen were treating these people. Many people took first hand accounts of slaves being mistreated, such as the image of the Africans being thrown overboard (Doc 4). The person who did this most likely acted on his own to get a self-induced sense of power among other human beings. Although he might have been cruel to the slaves doesn’t mean a majority was in this time period. Also the image in Doc 3 shows Africans being rounded up and sent to get on the boats as they hikes through the jungles (Doc 3). This is an example of horrible things committed to slaves but the act of tying them up and mistreating them was not commanded by any government. Slaves were bought or captured by individuals who were looking to make a profit. People who acted like this showed but a small portion of the entire population and you can therefor not say that most Europeans were not

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