Exploration in Africa

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Exploration in Africa

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I. The Age of EuropeanExploration Colonization

• Western European countries expand during 15th
  century
• Explore, conquer, and colonize
• Trade
• Eastern markets of India, China, and Japan
• New World
• Demand for laborers led to Atlantic slave trade

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II. The Slave Trade in Africa

• African kingdoms and Islamic nations conduct
  brisk commerce
• Not race based
• Arab merchants and West African kings imported
  white slaves from Europe

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The Slave Trade in Africa CONT

• West African slave trade dealt mainly in women
  and children who would serve as concubines and
  servants
• European demand for agricultural laborers changed
  slave trading patterns

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III. Growth of the Atlantic Slave Trade

• Demand for labor in 16th century
• Spanish gold and silver mines
• Portuguese sugar plantations
• Tobacco, rice and indigo

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The Atlantic Slave Trade Where?
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65
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30
35
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Estimated Slave Imports by Destination, 14511870
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TRIANGLE TRADE
North America
Rum, and Weapons
Molasses
Africa
The Caribbean
Slaves
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• In this late-eighteenth-century drawing, African
  slave traders conduct a group of bound captives
  from the interior of Africa toward European
  trading posts.

SOURCE Culver Pictures, Inc.
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The African-American Ordeal from Capture to
Destination (cont.)

• High mortality
• Exhaustion, suicide, murder
• Long, forced marches from interior to coast
• Factories served as
• Headquarters for traders
• Warehouses for trade goods
• Pens or dungeons for captives

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The Crossing

• Canary Islands to the Windward Islands
• 40 to 180 days to reach the Caribbean
• Pirates attacked Spanish ships
• Frightening experience

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New York docks.
Economic reasons even up until the 1800s.
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Shipping rates fell from 25 per ton in the early
1850s, to 11 in 1857. Increased domestic
manufacturing lessened the need for overseas
imports. The ships also began aging, and
required more money to be properly maintained.
There was a glut of sail in the late 1850s,
and ship-owners were eager to make money any way
they could.
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The Slavers

• Small and narrow ships
• Most captains were tight packers
• Ignored formula in the name of profits

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The Slavers (cont.)

• Crowded, unsanitary conditions
• Slaves rode on planks 66 x 15
• only 20 25 of headroom
• Chained in pairs
• High mortality rates
• One-third perish between capture and embarkation

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Provisions trouble
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British Slave Ship

• Plan of the British Slave Ship Brookes, 1788.
  This plan, which may undercount the human cargo
  the Brookes carried, shows how tightly Africans
  were packed aboard slave ships.

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Provisions for the Middle Passage

• Slaves fed twice per day
• Poor and insufficient diet
• Vegetable pulps, stews, and fruits
• Denied meat or fish
• Ten people eating in one bucket
• Unwashed hands spread disease
• Malnutrition, weakness, depression, death

The diseased were thrown overboard.
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Sanitation, Disease, and Death

• Astronomically high before 1750
• Poor sanitation
• No germ theory
• Malaria, yellow fever, smallpox, dysentery

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African Women on Slavers

• Less protection against unwanted sexual attention
  from European men
• African women worth half the price of African men
  in the Caribbean markets
• Separation from male slaves made them easier
  targets

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VI. Landing and Sale in the West Indies

• Pre-sale
• Bathed and exercised
• Oiled bodies to conceal blemishes and bruises
• Hemp plugs

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VII. Seasoning

• Creoles
• slaves born in the Americas
• worth three times price of unseasoned Africans
• Old Africans
• Lived in the Americas for some time
• New Africans
• Had just survived the middle passage
• Creoles and Old Africans instruct New Africans

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Seasoning Cont

• Slaves seasoned in Barbados
• Worked out to see if they could handle the new
  climate, and environment
• Work day and Night in slave camps
• Than were sold and shipped to parts of the
  Caribbean and the Americas

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VIII. The End of Journey

• Survival
• One-third died
• Men died at a greater rate than women
• Adapted to new foods
• Learned a new language
• Psychological no longer suicidal
• Africans retained culture despite the hardships
  and cruel treatment
• Created bonds with shipmates that replaced blood
  kinship

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IX. The Ending of the Atlantic Slave Trade

• Cruelties help end Atlantic slave trade
• Great Britain bans Atlantic slave trade in 1807
• Patrols African coast to enforce
• United states congress outlaws slave trade in
  1808
• Guinea and western central African kingdoms
  oppose banning slave trade

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Conclusion

• Nine to eleven million Africans brought to the
  Americas during three centuries of trade
• Millions more died
• Most arrived between 1701 and 1810
• Only 600,000 reached the British colonies of
  north America

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Consequences of the Atlantic Slave Trade

• In Africa, numerous cultures lost generations of
  their strongest members, both men and women.
• The slave trade introduced guns to the African
  continent
• African slaves contributed greatly to the
  cultural and economic development of the
  Americas.
• Africans brought their culture to the Americas

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