The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Esme Tyler 5/8/14 Research Paper Esme Tyler 4/7/14 The Trans-Atlantic slave trade was the largest long-distance suppressed movement of people in history. The African Slave trade movement during the 17th century was instrumental for Europe’s suffering work force, as every aspect/stage of slave trade benefitted merchants. Because Africans had a reputation of being hard working, agriculturally knowledgeable, adaptable to climate, and resistant to disease, they were objectified and stripped of their identity as humans, and pushed to work without consent. The trans-Atlantic slave trade was a process of dehumanizing a group of people, in order to revamp the European economy. Before the slave trade began, Europeans had ideas about Africa, before discovery, which varied with “time and pace” (Davidson, 23). Africa was extremely foreign to Europe, as the only information they has was from a memoir written by a traveler titled “Inner Africa” in 1447. The information in the memoir is known as “caravan gossip” which was picked up by a traveler named Antonio Malfante, was wildly untrue. Malfante told Europeans that in the south of Tuat and the deserts surrunding Tuate: “there are black people who have innumerable great cities and territories” (Davidson, 24). He explained further that Africans were “carnal, and “act like beasts” he even told some that they were cannibals. It is because of these sorts of misconceptions lead on by “travelers” like Malfante, that Europeans built false understandings of places less traveled, like Africa. It became a known to most people in the 15th century that outside forces rarely conquered the “old states of Africa”. Some writers of the Colonial period c... ... middle of paper ... ...century. In 1730, 180,000 guns from the British, which included flintlocks and muskets, were traded along the West African coast. 1750-1800 British merchants shipped between 283,000 and 394,000 firearms to West Africa. It is estimated that 20 million guns were traded with and sold to African merchants by European merchants. In the early 19th century, England traded and sold 22,000 metric tons of gunpowder every year. The firearm output for the British increased slave trade significantly, as they were able to offer firearms, which were in such high demand by African traders, and in return, the ability to fill vessels and increase output of slaves to the Americas (Lovejoy, 107). Despite the slave trade having a positive effect on the European economy as well as the African economy, the Trans-Atlantic slave trade was executed brutally in treatment of African people.
The Tran-Atlantic slave exchange established the framework for present day entrepreneurship, creating riches for business endeavors in American and Europe society. The exchange added to the industrialization of a numerous continents’ surrounding the Atlantic area. Several of the areas where located in northwestern Europe, also the western part of Europe, the North, and South, and the Caribbean Islands. According to assign readings and observing other resources providing, the slave trade revealed deceptive inequity toward the people in America and European. There was other culture considered besides black that was residing within the domains of these state and continents. If an individual was not considering white, it is believed that the
One of the major questions asked about the slave trade is ‘how could so Europeans enslave so many millions of Africans?” Many documents exist and show historians what the slave trade was like. We use these stories to piece together what it must have been to be a slave or a slaver. John Barbot told the story of the slave trade from the perspective of a slaver in his “A Description of the Coasts of North and South Guinea.” Barbot describes the life of African slaves before they entered the slave trade.
In this article, Hawthorne examined some scholars who as written about the African slave trade with information produced from the Slave Ships record .e.g. David Eltis, Stephen Behrendt, David Richardson, and Herbert Klein’s 1999 The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the postmodern inventory records in Maranhao from 1767 to 1832. In the course of examining the scholarly articles, Hawthorne concluded that the information in those articles didn’t give details of where precisely in Africa Slaves came from. Information recorded in the Slave
Though the Atlantic Slave Trade began in 1441, it wasn’t until nearly a century later that Europeans actually became interested in slave trading on the West African coast. “With no interest in conquering the interior, they concentrated their efforts to obtain human cargo along the West African coast. During the 1590s, the Dutch challenged the Portuguese monopoly to become the main slave trading nation (“Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade”, NA). Besides the trading of slaves, it was also during this time that political changes were being made. The Europe...
Europe, in the late 1800’s, was starting for a land grab in the African continent. Around 1878, most of Africa was unexplored, but by 1914, most of Africa, with the lucky exception of Liberia and Ethiopia, was carved up between European powers. There were countless motivations that spurred the European powers to carve Africa, like economical, political, and socio–cultural, and there were countless attitudes towards this expansion into Africa, some of approval and some of condemnation.
In the “Interpretive Essay”, Kenneth Banks discuses the consequences of the Atlantic slave trade. The negative effects on the Africans due to the Atlantic slave trade range from the influence on Africans societies and warfare, inhumane and atrocious living and working conditions, decrease of their population, and the long-term impact of bigotry. During the Atlantic save trade’s peak, the movement to abolish slavery started because it went against certain religious beliefs, several thinkers saw it as inefficient, and was unethical.
Discuss the transatlantic slave trade, how it operated and its consequences on the African continent.
In the final analysis, we can observe that the African slave trade was influenced negatively by the absence of humanitarian concerns because of the need for cheap labor, the interest in gaining profit, and assertion of European dominance. Had the slave trade never been used, we might not have had any racial discrimination among Africans and
African encounters with European nationals affected the Africans immensely—yet what affected the Africans had far-reaching effects on the Europeans as well. Case in point: ammunition boxes. Had Arabs and Europeans not made inroads into Africa and the lives of its people with technology, language, religion, and culture Africa would still be the “Dark Continent” and the rest of the world would be in the dark as well. After all, we would not have peanut butter.
The transatlantic slave trade has had a devastating impact on enslaved Africans in many ways, with insistent and longer lasting effects and some more instant and shorter effects. This essay will examine both of these and some of the significant effects that they have had on Africans both short term and long term.
...ts of the Slave Trade on Africa." StudyMode. N.p., Feb. 2011. Web. 23 Jan. 2014. .
The establishment of a trade system between Europe, Africa, and the Americas, better known as the Triangular Trade, allowed for an increase in slave labor in the Americas, and in turn sent raw materials and finished products to Europe and Africa, respectively. Although the American colonies had always had interaction with Europe, there was no interaction with Africa before this time, especially not between Africa and the colonies. However, when the need for increased slave labor arose, so did the need...
However, this encounter with the Europeans turned into a huge consequence when the slave trade was introduced. This slavery resulted in many unbearable challenges to the Africans. The main consequence of that slave trade was the depopulation of African people. Shillington (1995) stated that millions of Africans were taken captives for slavery (p. 171). Moreover it has been noted that those that were taken into slavery were the young most productive peo...
Reid argues in his book, A History of Modern Africa: 1800 to the Present, that “commercial power” had become synonymous with “military power.” The only major way to participate in the economy was to trade slaves in exchange for weapons, specifically guns. With this militaristic shift occurring in trade, men who were successful in this private enterprise also obtained significant military power. In essence, certain elites who were able to gain power commercially (and therefore militarily) controlled the economy and eventually political
The New Imperialism and the Scramble for Africa 1880-1914. Jeff Taylor, n.d. Web. 19 Mar. 2014.