The Atlantic World: Slave Trade During the fifteenth century, Europeans started to colonize the Americas; North, South, and the Caribbean. While this period of colonization was occurring, the demand for cheap labor and money was consistently growing. Europeans attempted to use various different sources for slavery, such as Native Americans, but the numerous flaws with these other societies resulted in Europeans using African people as slaves. During the period of Atlantic slave trade, many issues contributed to the result of using Africans as slaves in the New World as well as effects for using them. These different causes and effects led to a great percent of African population to go to the Americas, and racism that lasted hundreds of years and still exists in today’s society. Europeans had many sugar and tobacco plantations, these plantations needed a sizable workforce in order for their fields and plantations to be profitable. The Europeans wanted more money, their solution to this was cheap labor. Their first approach to cheap labor was enslaving the Native Americans. The Natives had farming experience …show more content…
The Africans had farming experience and they had built a resistance to tropical diseases, due to the fact that they were already living in tropical land. They were not native to the New World so they did not know the land and could not escape easily. Even if the slaves did escape, they could be found easily because of their dark colored skin, they didn’t fit in with the lighter colors. The Europeans also made the Africans more accessible by giving African leaders and merchants things like goods and guns in exchange for these leaders in merchants bringing slaves to the Europeans at slave ports, so the Europeans didn’t have travel on land to get slaves
The African slave trade was very harsh for many reasons. This is because the idea of capture/sale was inhumane, blacks were kept in cages, conditions of ships were horrible, and one out of every three blacks died on the way over. By 1800, ten to fifteen million blacks had been transported as slaves to the Americas; while in Africa, fifty million human beings lives' were lost to death and slavery in those years. Blacks were easier to enslave than whites and Indians, but still were trouble to keep under thumb. These Afro-Americans rebelled by often running away and attempt to find family or sabotaging their work.
Trans-Atlantic slaves are often snuck into America up until around1865. Domestic slave trade, however, rose up and took the place of the Atlantic slave trade. This led the population of America born Africans to increase dramatically. Domestic slave trade drove motivation toward westward movement. The trade took slaves through through Virginia and Tennessee and to Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, the most popular trade spot being New Orleans.
Both parties are guilty for exchanging profits, goods, and extensive labor. The slaves were forced into European sugar plantations, and used for profits, forced labor, and brutal beatings. Slaves were outsiders and restricted to limited positions. (Strayer , 688). While, the Europeans hold responsible for agricultural slave practices, the Portuguese searched West Africa for gold,
These enslaved people were taken to the Americas in a deadly journey known as the Middle Passage. The Americas then traded cash crops and raw goods for these slaves. This trade system became known as the Atlantic Slave Trade System. The Atlantic Slave Trade System during the period of 1550 CE to the 1700s CE caused the displacement Africans from their native lands,
Exploration to the New World led to greedy rulers wanting more. There were many new resources and opportunities to make money; for example tobacco, sugar, and even minerals. Because of the demand for these crops, the Europeans needed someone to do the work. With the Native American population drastically declining, the Europeans had to find another source of labor so they turned to the African Americans. This began the slave trade where millions of slaves were taken from Africa to other areas as a source of income.
The Atlantic slave trade was the biggest illegal immigration in world history,and is sometimes called the Holocaust of Enslavement because of how many innocent people were unjustly killed. The first step of this trade was the Europeans who would travel to the west coast of Africa. Once they arrived it was common that they would bribe tribes with goods and weapons, commonly guns, that were used into turning against their own and capturing their neighbors. Upon being taken against their will the enslaved were then shipped across the Atlantic ocean. During this 2-4 month period they were beaten, shoved into small barracks, and many died due to lack of sanitation.
Following the period of Exploration, explorers discovered new lands rich with resources such as gold, silver, and other precious materials that needed to be mined, and crops that needed to be farmed. However, workers who could perform these tasks were scarce. The Native American population had been killed by disease and war, and the colonists weren’t often willing to do this labor. Fortunately for the European colonists, they had access for a convenient and inexpensive labor market via the means of African Slave Trade.
Because they were too weak it often resulted in them being abused worse because they weren’t doing exactly what the Europeans wanted to even though they physically could not. They were beaten and chained together. In document 8 it says the slaves were cut, mangled, and all together treated with no respect. There was no respect for their lives and they were treated like animals. They were burned with an imprint to make it known that they were owned.
These exchanges had a drastic effect on the Native Americans in the New world. When the Europeans came to the Americas, many Native Americans were exposed to new diseases, causing many of them to get sick and die. The Europeans brought Africans to the New World to work as slaves because
Because of the need to go deeper into the earth, the Spaniards are not willing to do so and because of the new rule, the Indians cannot be forced to do the labor either. This source is showing slight frustration towards the rule, which frees all Native’s who convert to Christianity. This ushered in a new idea of importing African slaves to complete the work for them. The Atlantic Trade influenced the business of buying and selling these Africans. Because of the easy access to Africa and the cheap prices for the slaves themselves, there would soon be the importing of slaves by the millions.
The triangular trade allowed for the exchange of goods and ideas between the continents surrounding the Atlantic ocean. Among these commodities were vulnerable individuals captured from Africa and transported to the Americas and the Caribbean. Millions of Africans were forced into slavery and were forever ripped away from their families, their culture, and their homeland. Northern British Colonies would soon find themselves largely dependent on slave labor, this stands especially true for the Chesapeake Bay colonies. At the same time slavery became a racial system in which those of a darker complexion, including indigenous people were seen as inferior and less valuable than an European individual.
And it was natural to consider imported blacks as slaves,...". Gaining more profit and land was their only objective. Europeans took over African countries and captured the African Americans. African American slaves were transported through packed slave ships, killing millions in the process. Eventually, they were bought and sold throughout America and were forced to do
In the Americas, the main exports were silver and cash crops, both of which required work that was terribly tedious and exhausting. This led to the overwhelming predominance of slavery in the Americas, since the Europeans were not willing to carry out the hard work themselves. When the Europeans found they lacked a workforce, the sought slaves elsewhere. While the people who were called slaves changed, the institution never did. The same mistreatment, torture, and horrible conditions were evident in American slavery until it was abolished centuries later.
Only three percent of the international slave trade arrived in the new colonies. Many African was sold into slavery because their family owed a debt and they had no other means to pay for it. Sometimes an individual voluntarily enter into a service contract, so they can pay off debt. Furthermore the individual would work for a specified period then eventually gain their freedom. When the first Africans slaves came to the new colonies they operated under a similar arrangement.
“Sugar cultivation in the Americas required both large investments of capital and a steady supply of labor, and investors were needed who could guarantee both” (Goucher, 1998, p.2).The contact of people from different areas to help provide and maintain labor is what connected the world. The paths that the slaves were sent on allowed them to take their traditions to that area with them which ultimately had an impact on those around them. This occurred simply because creating plantations allowed landowners to become part of the wealthier class, so it was important to make sure all labor needs were meant to have a successful establishment. In conclusion, slavery can be perceived as the time in history where the first instances of racism occurred, or it can be looked at as what connected the world as one centuries ago (Goucher, 1998, p.3).