FC: The Slave Trade
1: The The transport of slaves from Africa to the Americas forms the middle passage of the triangular tradefirst stage of the Triangular Trade involved taking manufactured goods from Europe to Africa: cloth, spirit, tobacco, beads, cowrie shells, metal goods, and guns. The second stage of the Triangular Trade (the middle passage) involved shipping the slaves to the Americas.The third, and final, stage of the Triangular Trade involved the return to Europe with the produce from the slave-labor plantations. Slaves for the Trans-Atlantic slave trade were initially sourced in Senegambia and the Windward Coast. Around 1650 the trade moved to west-central Africa (the Kingdom of the Kongo and neighboring Angola).
2: The slave trade enabled tribes to export and make money off of their enemies that they had captured. Economically, those Africans who conquered neighbors and took them as prisoners were able to sell them to European and Arab slavers. This infused the local economy with capital from their export and, at the same time reduced the local population. By reducing the population, there would be fewer people competing for limited resources. As demand dropped, the price for those goods would also drop.It decreased the population and scared most of the country to heart and also most stayed in their homes in case they were abducted. Africa's population stopped growing from the 1400s to the 1800s. There were not enough people left to farm for food and produce babies. So many young and talented human beings that was traded effected villages and tribes in Africa. The slave trade caused population decline in some African states, but an increase in others. Internally, Africans were used by other Africans as slaves for a variety of reasons. Agriculture, industry and trade required workers for farming, hunting, fishing, portage, mining, weaving, iron working, and salt production, among others.
3: Through this system, called the Triangle Trade Route, perhaps 10–12 million people were sold into slavery.
4: European slave trading activity moved south along the African coast over time, as far south as Angola. On the east coast of Africa and in the Indian Ocean region, slaves were also taken from Mozambique, Zanzibar and Madagascar. Many of the slaves were from the interior of Africa, having been taken captive as a result of tribal wars, or else having been kidnapped by black slave traders engaged in the business of trading slaves for European goods. | Slave ports in West Africa in 1750 are shown, identifying those held by the British, French, Dutch, Portuguese, and Danish. Gorée Island, the slave trading port opposite Dakar, Senegal, is only three kilometers from the coast and cannot be seen on this map. In addition to these ports were slave trading locations on the east side of Africa, at Mozambique, Zanzibar, and Madagascar. | Slave trade routes from Africa to the Americas during the period 1650-1860 are shown. There were additional routes to the New World from Mozambique, Zanzibar and Madagascar on the east side of Africa. Most of the slaves from the east side were brought to Portuguese controlled Salvador in the state of Bahia, Brazil, along with many other slaves from Angola. Brazil received more slaves from Africa than any other country in the New World.
6: Between 1450 and the late 1800's, it is estimated that between 10-15 MILLION Africans were kidnapped and sold into slavery. The expanding European empires in the New World, in North, South, and Central America, lacked a major resource - workers. At first, the European colonists attempted to use Native Americans as a work force, but that did not work very well. Native Americans could slip away, and return with others to punish those who tried to enslave them. | The Slave Trade was incredibly profitable and incredibly cruel. It ripped families apart. People would come home from a hunt or from the fields and find their families missing. In some cases, entire villages were captured. The people in an entire village were rounded up and traded as slaves. For over 300 years, slaves were captured along the west coast of Africa, often with the active help of African kings and merchants.
7: Slavery was illegal in the United States after the Civil War, but slaves continued to be traded in Central and South America for another 40 years until finally slavery was declared illegal in Central and South America as well. The slave trade was responsible for major disruption to the people of Africa. Women and men were taken young, in their most productive years, thus damaging African economies. | The physical experience of slavery was painful, traumatic and long-lasting. We know this from the written evidence of several freed slaves. Captivity marked the beginning of a dehumanising process that affected British attitudes towards African people. The slave trade developed into a complex system that included many different groups and interests.
8: The transatlantic movement of enslaved Africans to the Americas was the defining migration of the African diaspora. Between 1500 and 1860, approximately 11.8 million people are known to have left the shores of Africa destined for the Americas or Europe. Despite heavy loss of life during the "Middle Passage," Africans constituted the great majority of people moving from the Old World of western Europe and Africa to the New World before the nineteenth century, and even then the enforced African migration continued to move many people to Brazil and Cuba. The movement across the Atlantic, while initiated by European countries, resulted in the migration of many more Africans than Europeans in the early centuries of the colonization of the Americas, including North America. The movement across the Atlantic, while initiated by European countries, resulted in the migration of many more Africans than Europeans in the early centuries of the colonization of the Americas, including North America.
9: many more African females arrived in the Americas than European women, and it is African women, therefore, who were most crucial in the demographic growth of the Americas. African women were more likely to have mothered the generation born in the Americas than European women, because of the relative imbalance. Enslaved Africans, therefore, were essential in the settling of the Americas in the wake of the demographic upheaval of the European conquest of the Americas. The movement of people of African descent to the Americas was the central dynamic of the resettlement of the Americas in the wake of the disastrous decline in the native American population.
10: The consequences of the slave trade have been profound and are hardly lessening as time passes. The most serious legacy is the endurance of racialism in various forms that keep changing, but do not seem to dissipate. As a result of this continuing attack on the human rights of black people, many parts of Africa and the Americas that were incorporated into a global world order. | Sources-http://www.inmotionaame.org-http://africa.mrdonn.org/slavetrade.html- http://africanhistory.about.com