The Atlantic Slave Trade: The Impact of the Slave Trade on Africa and Its People

Today slavery is widely considered illegal and immoral, but for many centuries everywhere in the world, it was a common practice. The question that I am going to be answering throughout this paper is what impact the Atlantic Slave Trade had on Africa and its people. The Atlantic Slave Trade was the forced trade of over 15 million African people across the Middle Passage which was from western Africa, across the Atlantic Ocean, and to the Americas or Caribbean. This horrific journey that took over 2.5 million lives would last from the 16th century until the 19th century, and even today Africa and the people of Africa are still affected by this. The Atlantic Slave Trade greatly held Africa back, but it also in a way moved it forward. In the next three paragraphs, I will be discussing the negative impact that the slave trade had on the people, and country of Africa, and the positive effects of it.

The negative impacts of the slave trade on the People of Africa were immense; these impacts can be seen on many levels including family and personal. In this paragraph, I will be discussing one of the negative effects the slave trade had on the people and families of Africa. Slavery in many ways made family life difficult, if not possible (Williams). Africans and black Americans were considered property, between the 16th century and 19th century and even past then, African people or people from that descent weren’t able to be married because of this. Not only were people not allowed to be married, families were often separated. Slavery inflicted harm against many African/black families, and although slavery is over, we still suffer from that harm today. We can still see the trauma of slavery today in stereotypes and historical and cultural...

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...had is the fact that it benefited the New World. The New World or what we know today as America would never even exist without the help of slaves. It was because of the slaves, that America had money and progressed economically. Another positive effect that the slave trade had on Africa is that it increases trade, which created more money. One more positive effect of the slave trade on Africa is the exchange of cultures, traditions, and customs. An example of this is the country Liberia in Africa. During slavery, some of the slaves were given the opportunity to go back to Africa. The freed slaves that did choose to go back to Africa created Liberia a colony, which was for former African American slaves and their free black descendants. By creating this country, so many customs, cultures, and traditions were exchanged, people learned American and African cultures.