West Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade

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West Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade
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Background to Atlantic Slavery

• Ancient institution, flourished in Greece Rome
• By AD 1500 moribund within most of Europe
• But survived in the Mediterranean in Spain
  Portugal
• Spread to the Americas as part of Europes
  general political commercial expansion between
  the 15th19th centuries

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Background of slavery

• Economic expansionism incorporated systems of
  unfree labor in colonies beyond the continent
• Growth of slavery on the European periphery made
  provision of slave labourers a central part of
  international commerce
• European states were drawn to sources in Africa
• Forms of domestic dependency known as slavery
  existed across much of the African continent, but
  these institutions did not involve the same
  scale, market orientation, or social alienation
  that characterized New World slavery systems

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Background of slavery

• The international demand for ever-increasing
  numbers of blacks transformed the character of
  slavery within certain regions of Africa as at
  the same time it produced a new order of
  unfreedom in the Western Hemisphere
• Africans responded to European demand for labor
  by creating a much-expanded internal market in
  humans
• Particularly in West Africa, tribal national
  conflict erupted specifically over the effort to
  seize war captives for sale to European traders

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First Atlantic System

• Portuguese explored west coast of Africa by 15th
  century, colonizing before 1480 islands of the
  Azores, Madeira, Cape Verde in the Atlantic,
  Sao Tome in West Africa
• Established trading station at El Mina on Gold
  Coast of Africa in 1481, expanding to Brazil in
  early 16th century, where they established sugar
  plantations

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First Atlantic System
The First Atlantic system (c. 1502 -1580) was
the trade of enslaved Africans to South American
colonies of the Portuguese and Spanish empires
it accounted for slightly more than 3 of all
Atlantic slave trade. In 1580 Portugal was
temporarily united with Spain. After the union,
Portugal came under Spanish legislation that
prohibited it from directly engaging in the slave
trade as a carrier, and it become a target for
the traditional enemies of Spain, losing a large
share to the Dutch, British and French
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Spanish slaves washing gold in Mexico
By 1650 some 250,000 300,000 Africans had been
imported to Spanish America, primarily to Mexico
and Peru to undertake mining, farming and textile
manufacturing
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Campeche earliest African slave burials in New
World
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Campeche burials

• The strontium in the teeth showed that the
  individuals had been were
• born and spent their early years in West Africa.
  Some of their teeth were filed
• and chipped to sharp edges in a decorative
  practice characteristic of Africa.
• Evidence indicated that the cemetery was in use
  around AD 1550

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The Second Atlantic System
The Second Atlantic System was the trade of
enslaved Africans primarily by British,
Portuguese, French and Dutch traders. The main
destinations of were the Caribbean colonies and
Brazil, as nations built up slave-dependent
colonies in the New World
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The Middle Passage
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The Triangular Trade
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British Slavery

• English involvement began in 1560s but initially
  not very interested ended up getting slaves in
  Virginia in 1619 from a Dutch trader
• By the 17th century, however, the trade to North
  America was dominated by London-based companies
  such as the English Royal African Company
• By end of the 17th century, England was the
  largest of traffickers in slaves in the western
  world, shipping 68,000 slaves per year to the
  Americas (twice as many as the Dutch)
• During first half of the 18th century, shipped
  over 20,000 persons per year, for the remainder
  of the trade, from 3045,000 persons/year
• Between 16981807, over 11,000 ships were fitted
  out in England, chiefly in Liverpool, London, and
  Bristol
• Over 3 million slaves imported to the Americas in
  the 18th century

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Outfitting a slave ship

• Crew of 40 to 50
• Provisions for the Middle Passage
• Cargo of trade goods for barter
• Indian fabrics
• Manchester cottons
• Copper brass wares produced in Ironbridge
• Beads
• Liquor
• Firearms
• Gunpowder
• Return cargo of sugar, rum, c.

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French slave ship Marie-Séraphique
Slave ship Sultana
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Close-packing spooning
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Shackles irons
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Slave ship insurrections
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Where did the slaves come from?

• Senegambia (present-day Senegal and Gambia)
• Upper Guinea Coast (Guiné-Bissau, Sierra Leone,
  Guinea, Liberia)
• The Gold Coast ( Ghana and eastern Ivory Coast)
• The Bight of Benin or Slave Coast (Togo,
  Benin, parts of Nigeria)
• The Bight of Biafra (the Niger River Delta and
  part of Cameroon)
• West Central Africa (Equatorial Guinea, Gabon,
  Congo, Zaire, Angola)

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Percentages of slaves sent to the Americas

• West Central Africa 40
• Bight of Benin 17-20
• Bight of Biafra 17-20
• Gold Coast 8-10
• Other areas 10

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The Kongo
In the three hundred years from the date the
kingdom was founded by Ne Lukeni Kia Nzinga until
its destruction in 1665 by the Portuguese, Kongo
was an organized stable, politically centralized
society based upon a subsistence economy. The
Kongo is significant in exploring the historic
contexts of African American heritage because the
majority of all Africans enslaved in the Southern
English colonies were from West Central Africa
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Christopher Fennell, University of Illinois,
Urbana
BaKongo symbols identity in the
Americas Argued that BaKongo religion was a
reservoir of core symbols that were used in a
broad spectrum of expressive modes across
Americas. There was continuity in ritual from
West Africa, more than the shreds and tatters of
an old religion
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BaKongo cosmogram
Pottery made in South Carolina
The land of the living is a mountain over a
watery barrier separating this world from the
land of the dead beneath. Each day the sun rises
over the earth and proceeds in a
counter-clockwise direction, across the sky to
set in the water. During night time, the sun
illuminates the underside of the universe, the
land of the dead, until it rises again in the
northeast. The cycle represents the continuity of
life birth, death, and rebirth
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Gold coast
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Elmina
The Portuguese began to built a castle between
1482-1486 It was surrendered to the Dutch in
1637 It was destroyed by the British in 1873
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Elmina
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• By the seventeenth century, the material
  signature of the Atlantic
• Economy had become ubiquitous across West Africa
• Cowrie shells
• Venetian glass beads
• Bottles and glass objects
• Objects of copper
• Iron tools
• Smoking pipes
• Chinaware
• Firearms paraphernalia

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Ecological impacts
Introduction of American cultigens transformed
African agriculture and diets Maize (cob
impressions used to decorate pottery) Cassava Toma
to Papaya Beans
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Christopher de Corse Syracuse University
how the Elmina people thought about the trade
materials they used, viewed the buildings they
occupied, and conceived their religious
life suggests resilience rather than
sequaciuosness, continuity rather than change in
African befiefs and identity De Corse examined
more than 100,000 artefacts from 30 structures,
including imported artifacts ceramics, glass,
metal goods, beads, etc
30
Ann B Stahl University of Victoria, BC, Canada
Making History in Banda (Ghana) Looks at
endogenous historicity Tries to move beyond
western accounts which silence African views
Africans have their own competing versions of the
past Whereas classic world systems theory
focused on the agency of Europeans and created a
Europe-centred view, Stahl focuses on African
agencies and internal African dynamics
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Banda
Attacks by Asante warriors de-populated the
Banda area and increased the risk of enslavement
in the 18th century
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Frederiksborg
Fort Fredensborg, was constructed between
1736-42. The fortress was located on the Gold
Coast for strategic reasons to prevent
competition from the Dutch and English forts in
Accra, and to enable trade exchanges with
Portuguese and French ships in particular. Fort
Fredensborg played a key role in Danish-Norwegian
trade during the eighteenth century. The fort was
described by contemporary observers as one of the
most beautiful buildings on the coast.
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Fort Christiansborg
Fort Christiansborg is in Osu, Accra, on the
coast of Guinea. The first substantial fort was
built by the Danish in the 1660s, though the
castle has changed hands between Denmark,
Portugal, the Akwamu, the British, and finally
post-Independence Ghana
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Danish slave ship en route for the Caribbean
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Summary Atlantic Slave Trade

• Over its four centuries of existence, the
  Atlantic slave trade between Africa the
  Americas is estimated to have involved not just
  12 million Africans who were shipped westward,
  but perhaps as many who died in Africa from the
  cruelties of capture initial enslavement
• The Atlantic slave trade constituted one of the
  largest forced movements of population in
  recorded history
• The present-day U.S. was the northernmost
  destination of a trade that flourished in the
  Caribbean within a decade after Columbuss
  voyage by the middle of the 16th century Brazil
  was populated with sugar workers
• Early importations involved mainly the Spanish
  the Portuguese, who had also used slave labour on
  Old World plantations such as Cyprus, Madiera,
  and Sao Tome