The African Slave Trade in the Atlantic World was a dark time. Many African people were ripped from their homeland and sent in a very crowded ship to live in service of a rich European jerk, because said European found them convenient. They had awful living conditions, and many died after 3 years of service, if they even made it across the ocean. The institution of slavery has forever messed with the lives of those slaves, and their descendants. Because of a need for labor in the new world, the African Slave trade in the Atlantic World invented racism and caused a whole host of problems for the African people.
Europeans came west seeking another route through which to trade with Asia, to cut out the middleman and get better prices. When they stumbled upon the new world, they began colonization. They sought to make a profit off of this land that nobody else had ever touched, aside from the natives. To do that, they needed labor. But of course, they couldn’t do it themselves. Too much work. So they attempted to enslave the native peoples, and get indentured
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servants. However, when the natives and indentures ran away, or died from diseases, they decided they needed a workforce that wouldn’t run away or die from diseases like the other two. They racked their brains and realized that enslaving Africans might work. There was already an established slave trade, they just needed to buy some. As long as these people weren’t christian, they were allowed to go right ahead and enslave them. It was perfect for the Europeans. These African people had developed resistance to both the diseases of the Europeans and the tropical diseases such as Malaria. They didn’t know the new land, and couldn’t blend in, so they couldn’t really escape. They had agricultural experience, and knew how to tend livestock. They could be worked very hard in mines, plantations, or in domestic households. As the Triangular Trade grew, slaves got easier to get. Goods and weapons were traded for slaves with the full cooperation of the rulers of that area. Gradually, slavery of anyone but Africans dwindled. At the time, the only effects were the degradation of the African people, and some productive colonies. The Africans began to be seen as more of objects than people. Slaves were considered property, not human beings. They had no basic rights. You could whip them, starve them, even kill them, and if they were yours, there were no repercussions. The population of Africans in Africa had declined because of the massive slave trade. The colonies boasted huge plantations that produced cotton, tobacco, and other cash crops. The economy was thriving. Life was good for the Europeans and slave traders, and everyone except the slaves. One of the longest lasting effects, still noticeable today, is racism.
There was a whole war that was fought over abolishing slavery, known as The Civil War. The southern states seceded because they didn’t want to lose their precious slaves and have to pay them and give them rights. These people had grown up with racism heavily rooted in them. They believed truly with all their hearts that the Africans were not human, but property. After the north won the war, they didn’t give up this belief. They created laws restricting the freedom of the Africans, like the Jim Crow laws, and segregated schools, restrooms, and drinking fountains. Even after those were done away with, the African people are still discriminated against today, albeit more subtly. They are statistically more likely to be shot by police while committing a crime, more likely to be in poverty, and more likely to be homeless than white
people. All of the horrors of slavery happened because the European colonists decided that African people were convenient. Racism and all the problems associated with it occurred merely because the Europeans decided they didn’t feel like doing their own work, and decided enslaving people was a good idea. Just because of a need for labor, the African Slave Trade in the Atlantic World was allowed to wreak havoc upon the lives of many African people and their descendants.
... The Economic History Review, by Behrendt, Stephen D. David Eltis, David Richardson that stated, “…second impact of Africans that goes beyond violence on slave ships followed from the natural Africans assumption of equal status in the trading relationship…came in the wake of holding Europeans…”(Source 9). The result of considering the equal status between the Africans and the Europeans from Africa’s point of view was the Atlantic slave trade which millions of African people’s live had been jeopardized and their fate had been seal to work in the fields for the rest of their lives.
I want to start with the history of slavery in America. For most African Americans, the journey America began with African ancestors that were kidnapped and forced into slavery. In America, this event was first recorded in 1619. The first documented African slaves that were brought to America were through Jamestown, Virginia. This is historically considered as the Colonial America. In Colonial America, African slaves were held as indentured servants. At this time, the African slaves were released from slavery after a certain number of years of being held in captivity. This period lasted until 1776, when history records the beginning of the Middle Passage. The Middle Passage showed the increased of African slaves were bought into America. The increase demand for slaves was because of the increased production of cotton in the south. So, plantation owners demanded more African slaves for purchas...
The absence of humanitarian concerns influences the treatment of slaves during the slave trade tremendously. At first glance, one can simply pick up the fact that Africans were treated as subhuman. This did not begin as a result of difference in appearance to those in settling in America, the inhumane torture actually started back in their homeland. There were always slaves in Africa, however, due to the constant need of non-Christian slaves in America the slave trade became a booming business in Africa. Any person, any day had the likelihood of being kidnapped and taken to a faraway land to be treated as mere possessions. The lack of civilized concerns towards the Africans during the times of the Slave Trade resulted in the callous behavior
Not only was slavery damaging to America, as well as any other country who engaged in it. It was also damaging to Africa and its people. William Wilberforce once said, “Does anyone suppose a slave trade would help their civilization? Is it not plain, that she must suffer from it? Does not everyone see that a slave trade carried on around her coasts must carry violence and desolation to her center?” Africans suffered greatly from being removed from their homeland. Many resisted or preferred death to transportation. Many more died on the voyage to because of the harsh and terrible
During the time of reconstruction, the 13th amendment abolished slavery. As the Nation was attempting to pick up their broken pieces and mend the brokenness of the states, former slaves were getting the opportunity to start their new, free lives. This however, created tension between the Northerners and the Southerners once again. The Southerners hated the fact that their slaves were being freed and did not belong to them anymore. The plantations were suffering without the slaves laboring and the owners were running out of solutions. This created tension between the Southern planation owners and the now freed African Americans. There were many laws throughout the North and the South that were made purposely to discriminate the African Americans.
In our past history, African Americans were slaves and were viewed as less important than whites. Still today in our society, people are prejudice and discriminatory against blacks. Many people still look at blacks differently because of how they were treated as slaves. As a result, blacks don’t get the same opportunities as whites with housing, education, employment and healthcare. The white people in the southern states are not as accepting to blacks and discrimination is more common there because that is where a lot of slavery was in history.
The Transatlantic Slave Trade was a service that transported around twelve and a half million men, women, and children to be bought and sold as slaves by countries mostly in the New World, like the United States of America. (The Transatlantic Slave Trade) The Portuguese were the first to bring African slaves over to the new world, but it quickly caught on over the years. Around 80% of the slaves that came across the Atlantic ended up in Brazil or the Caribbean Islands while only 7% wound up in the United States.(Ross) With the climate being completely different in South America, Europeans found it extremely hard to work and were not used to the living conditions so they contracted diseases. Unlike Europeans, the African slaves were capable of handling the climate and were used to working hard. (How Many Slaves Came to America? Fact vs. Fiction.) The reason the Transatlantic Slave Trade worked for many years was because it had a triangular trade form where Africa would send slaves over to America who would send the products of the slave labor over to Europe who would send ammunition and weapons back to Africa. There have been over 30,000 documented trips from Africa to the Americas. The trip from Africa to America lasted about three months by ships. This was called the middle passage, where a large amount of slaves died from malnutrition
The Africans slaves were treated just as badly as the Native Americans if not worse. They were forced to work hard gruesome hours in a fields, never feed or kept in good health, they were branded like common farm animals and brutally tortured at any signs of disobedience and resistance. As European crops and materials grew in demand, more African slaves were brought to the New World for work, thus beginning the Atlantic slave trade Europeans justified the Atlantic slave trade, which was the buying and selling of African slaves, in different ways. Three commonly used excuses being one: “ Apologist for the African slave trade long argued that European traders purchased African who had already been enslaved and who otherwise would have been put to death.Thus, apologists claimed the slave trade actually saved lives.” As well as two: “ In the Christian world, the most important rationalization for slavery was the so called ‘Curse of Ham’ According to the doctrine, the Bible figure Noah had cursed his son Ham with blackness and the condition slavery.” The last justification was that Europeans, full of greed and power, needed more people that weren't of European descendent to do all the dirty, hard and dangerous work for them. All of
From the early 17th century Africans were shipped to North America to be sold. as slaves, against their freewill. Slavery continued to expand even after 1808, when it was declared illegal. African slave trading became the main problem dividing Americans, and could even be a factor. of many, which led to the American Civil War.
This slave trade brought about a different type of racism. It was the color of your skin that determined whether a person would be a free citizen or be enslaved for life. This slave trade also devastated African lives and their heritage. Some slaves were sold and traded more than once, often in a slave market. Families were torn apart, children hysterically cried while they said their goodbyes....
African-Americans used to be treated very poorly by the rest of the United States. They were still treated as though they were slaves until the end of the Jim Crow laws. Even after that, southern states still attempted to keep African-Americans from being equal to the rest of Americans. Taxes were put up in order to vote, which kept African-Americans from doing so because most were very poor. They still did not have equal opportunity in the workforce either.
To wrap it up, African Americans lived an unfair past in the south, such as Alabama, during the 1930s because of discrimination and the misleading thoughts towards them. The Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow Laws and the way they were generally treated in southern states all exemplify this merciless time period of the behavior towards them. They were not given the same respect, impression, and prospect as the rest of the citizens of America, and instead they were tortured. Therefore, one group should be never singled out and should be given the same first intuition as the rest of the people, and should never be judged by color, but instead by character.
European traders worked closely with African merchants to gain their human cargo. Where once they had traded textiles and alcohol for gold and ivory, Europeans now traded muskets, metalware, and linen for men, women, and children. Originally many of those sold into slavery were war captives. But by the time British and Anglo-American merchants became central to this notorious trade, their contacts in Africa were procuring labor in any way they could. The cargo included war captives, servants, and people snatched in raids specifically to secure slaves. Over time, African traders moved farther inland to fill the demand, devastating large areas of West Africa, particularly the Congo-Angola region, which supplied some 40 percent of all Atlantic slaves.
Slavery is defined as a person being owned by someone, a state of bondage, servitude, or work performed under harsh conditions for little or no pay. Both continental African slavery and external commercial slavery deprived people of freedom. Continental slavery focused on adding people to a group to be productive members of the society and for other reasons beside monetary benefits. External slavery consisted of obtaining slaves for monetary means while inducing physical, emotional as well as psychological detriment to ensure compliance (Reader, 1997). With the emergence of European colonies, a system of trade with American Indians was created ...
This class was filled with riveting topics that all had positive and negative impacts on Africa. As in most of the world, slavery, or involuntary human servitude, was practiced across Africa from prehistoric times to the modern era (Wright, 2000). The transatlantic slave trade was beneficial for the Elite Africans that sold the slaves to the Western Europeans because their economy predominantly depended on it. However, this trade left a mark on Africans that no one will ever be able to erase. For many Africans, just remembering that their ancestors were once slaves to another human, is something humiliating and shameful.