Atlantic Slave Trade Dbq

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The Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade
In the 1500’s to the 1900’s African slaves would be put through traumatizing events such as being taken from their families, abused both mentally and physically, and were treated as animals instead of human beings, all because of trade. This began when Christopher Columbus, a Spanish explorer, tried to go west instead of east to the Spice Islands and he found South America. Spain travels to this land and finds many empires and tribes and soon sends more explorers like Hernan Cortes. Cortes was a very terrible man, he ruined the Aztec empire with smallpox and greed, all because they had gold. Hernan began to use the Aztecs as slaves to look for gold. He returns back to the King and Queen that sent him. …show more content…

Along the African coast, Africans would be taken away from their families and tribes/clans to be transported onto a boat. Offobah Cugoano expresses his abduction and journey to the new world, he was kidnapped and brought to a neighboring town, then put into a prison. Inside the prison, he heard the groans and cries of others who were kidnapped. “It was a most horrible scene;” is how he described his time on the ship, all he could hear was the chains, whips, groans, and cries (Doc #3). The point of view of the author describes this moment in their life to be very bleak and gloomy. Their lifestyle was just taken from them and now they’re being put through very disturbing events. Some slaves would die while being transported to their destination. On slave ships, slaves would be forced under the deck of the boat and left there for weeks to months (Doc #8). This historical situation shows how many would potentially die under there. They probably weren’t fed a great deal of food. It is truly ghastly. Over 12 million slaves were brought over to the Americas. Since they brought so many slaves they wouldn’t have enough rations for all of them and with the Europeans spreading …show more content…

Their freedom was stripped from them. Slavery was one way of treating people poorly and benefiting from it. Slaves would be used as a tool instead of people. If a slave would die they would just replace that slave with another. They didn’t have the right to heritage and they didn’t have the right to start a family (Doc #2). The point of view of the author describes how worthless the Portuguese made the slaves seem yet they did so much for them. In North America, they actually invited less African slaves so that they could start families, so more people could be brought into slavery. In South America, more slaves would be brought there if slaves did die. Their lives didn’t matter one bit to them, they were basically trash. They didn’t have the right to anything and this lead to many revolts. Not a lot of blood would be shed, but sometimes they would succeed (Doc #6). This historical position describes what the slaves were willing to do to obtain their freedom back, they wanted to escape their

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