The Atlantic Slave Trade

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The Atlantic Slave Trade

• Nothing, which has happened to man in modern
  times has been more significant than the buying
  and selling of human beings.W.E.B. DuBois

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History of Slavery

• Slavery involuntary servitude
• Used since ancient times

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Slavery Within Africa

• How/why?
• Prisoners of war
• Punishment for crimes
• Pay debt
• Not hereditary or life-long
• Slaves had rights
• Often adopted into owners family
• Could achieve high status

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Arabs Slave Trade

• Muslim traders raided N. Africa adopted
  trans-Saharan trade
• African empires Ghana, Mali, Songhai
  coordinated trade w/Arabs
• Contributed to powerful African states
• Led to increase in tribal ethnic warfare

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Effects of Arab Involvement in Slave Trade

• Spread of Islam
• Swahili culture
• Strengthened slave-trade networks

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Europeans Slave Trade Why?

• Exploration!
• Desire for wealth
• Competition among European countries
• Plantations in American colonies
• Need for cheap labor
• Africans were immune to Euro illness, could not
  escape

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• Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade part of Triangular
  Trade

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The Middle Passage

• Crowded, unsanitary, disease spread
• High mortality rate before reaching Americas
• Most slaves went to Brazil/South America and the
  Caribbean

Plan of the British Slave Ship Brookes, 1788.
This plan shows how tightly Africans were packed
aboard slave ships.
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Slavery in the Americas

• Much harsher than slavery in Africa
• Worked on sugar, rice, tobacco, and cotton
  plantations
• 18 hour days, sunrise to sunset
• Encouraged to have many children in order to
  increase labor force
• Racism and brutal treatment, life-long,
  hereditary
• Known as chattel or property lost rights as
  human beings

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Resistance
Revolt on a Slave Ship, before 1851From William
Fox, A Brief History of the Wesleyan Missions on
the West Coast of Africa Courtesy of the Milton
S. Eisenhower Library, The Johns Hopkins
University
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Impact on Africa

• Slavery in Africa became centralized institution
• Depopulation due to wars starvation
• Transformation of relationships

• Decentralization of African nations
• Undermined traditional values
• Left Africa vulnerable to imperialism