Transatlantic Slave Trade Essay

The Atlantic Slave Trade was one of, if not the largest scale movements of human beings from one part of the world to another by sea and could have been considered a mobile killing machine because of the horrible conditions. The numbers were so large that the slaves who came by slave trade were the most Old-World immigrants in the world. Even though there were only races of people enslaved during the Atlantic Slave Trade, African Americans were the most numerous. Records show 34,941 voyages during the time of the slave trade. The Transatlantic Slave Trade took place across the Atlantic Ocean in the 16th century and lasted till the 19th centuries. The way that the Atlantic Slave Trade came about was cruel but not unthinkable. The capture and enslavement of African Americans was inevitable, the only question was when. A lot more slaves were taken to the South America than to the North America because the South “needed” them more. The South Atlantic economic system was based on producing crops, making goods and other things to sell. The enslaved people didn’t just skip into the ship with smiles on their faces. The Spanish colonists asked the King of Spain for permission to bring slaves to The New World to provide for them. Spanish Colonists were currently forcing Native Americans to do their labor for them but they were dying in large numbers because of diseases and lack of care from the colonists. The King of Spain gave approval to the colonists to import Africans and from then on Africans were transported there for use and labor and other needs of the Spanish colonists. During this time many African American slaves were transported. An estimated twelve to fifteen million African Americans were shipped throughout the world includ...

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..., Virginia in 1619. These first kidnapped Africans were classed as indentured servants and freed after seven years. Chattel slavery was codified in Virginia law in 1656, and in 1662, the colony adopted the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, by which children of slave mothers were slaves, regardless of paternity. Irish immigrants took slaves to Montserrat in 1651, and in 1655, slaves were shipped to Belize.

In Britain, America, and Portugal and in parts of Europe, opposition developed against the slave trade. Davis says that abolitionists assumed "that an end to slave imports would lead automatically to the amelioration and gradual abolition of slavery". However, a vibrant illegal trade continued to ship large numbers of enslaved people to Brazil and also to Cuba until the 1860s, when British enforcement and further diplomacy finally ended the Atlantic trade.