Preview

Atlantic Slave Trade Essay

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
646 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Atlantic Slave Trade Essay
My initial research question, "To what extent did Africa contribute to the Atlantic Slave Trade", can be answered by the two scholarly sources I had picked out. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade had been taught in schools over many, many years. Many people would had inferred that the Europeans were the ones to blame, but after more extensive research into that topic, it would appear not so. It had been concluded that Africa's own inhabitants and Portuguese had contributed to the famous Atlantic Slave Trade. So, that left me with the question, "To what extent did Africa contribute to the Atlantic Slave Trade"? My two scholarly sources ("Forced Migration: The Impact of the Export Slave Trade on African Societies" and “A Brief Overview of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade”) had aided in proving that Africa …show more content…
They had agreed that the Africans used their self-interest to push themselves into the Slave Trade and that slavery existed before the Europeans came. Some points that these two sources may disagree on is that the scholar Eltis ("Forced Migration: The Impact of the Export Slave Trade on African Societies") had written this article with purpose of informing his readers that the trans-Atlantic slave trade grew from a strong demand for labor in the Americas, because Amerindians died in large numbers, it ensured that the labor would comprise mainly slaves from Africa. The agency of Africans comprised a fourth major influence, and the African merchants who traded slaves on the coast to European ship all had strict conceptions of what made an individual eligible for enslavement. Among such criteria were constructions of gender, definitions of criminal behavior, and conventions for dealing with prisoners of war (Eltis 4-6). In the other source, by Hakim Adi, he didn’t mention the idea that the dying numbers of other slave tribes had contributed to the
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Ap European Slave Trade Chapter 1 Summary
    • 278 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Ap European Slave Trade Chapter 1 Summary

    These legacies of the slave trade are prominent through the idea of race, as “Atlantic slavery came to be identified wholly with Africa and with blackness” (689) Racism was used in this time period to justify actions, as through racism, “Europeans were better able to tolerate their brutal exploitations of Africans” (690). This racial discrimination became a reoccurring theme that has lasted well into the twenty-first…

    • 278 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Chapter 26 Essay
    • 1394 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Chapter 26 Essay

    The Portuguese brought a few slaves home from Africa, but found that they were impractical for use in Europe with its small, family-based farms and town life. However, it soon was clear how slavery could be readily adopted in the Americas. Like the overwhelming majority of preindustrial societies, African kingdoms practiced slavery, and when Europeans offered to trade their goods for slaves, African traders accommodated them. As a general rule, African slave hunters would capture Africans, generally from other groups than their own, and transport them to trading posts along the coast for European ships to carry to the New World. However, despite the fact that slavery already existed in Africa, the Atlantic trade interacted with and transformed these earlier aspects of slavery. Before the Atlantic slave trade began, slavery took many forms in Africa, ranging from peasants trying to work off debts to those that were treated as "chattel," or property. The Atlantic trade emphasized the latter, and profits from the trade allowed slaveholders both in Africa and the Americas to intensify the level of exploitation of labor. African slaves were traded to two areas of the world: the Western Hemisphere and Islamic lands in the Middle East and India. Fewer slaves crossed the Sahara than the Atlantic, but the numbers were substantial. Whereas most slaves that…

    • 1394 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Atlantic Slave Trade Dbq Essay
    • 495 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Atlantic Slave Trade Dbq Essay

    People in power often dictate recordings of history, but the Atlantic slave trade found an exception to this pattern. Documents from both enslavers and enslaved of this time regarding management of captives provide an insight on the treatment of slaves in the middle passage. Data from both parties clearly illustrates slave trading as a massive industry, and one where enslavers valued efficiency over the well-being of captives to garner the maximum possible profit. Conditions illustrated in these primary documents two and three demonstrate the extremely poor quality of life which slaves faced at the hands of clearly apathetic enslavers within the middle passage.…

    • 495 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Black People In A White People's Country Summary
    • 484 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Black People In A White People's Country Summary

    Gary Nash’s “Black people in a white people’s country” is an article that provides us with insight into the overall development of the international slave trade and slavery of West Africa beginning in the late fifteenth century and continuing. The economic influences, impact of the stages of transport on the slave ships especially that of the “middle passage”, and the impact on white or the Europeans society as African slavery became not only more prominent but also more institutionalized in the Americas.…

    • 484 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    What Role Did Slavery Play In The Cotton Industry
    • 801 Words
    • 4 Pages

    What Role Did Slavery Play In The Cotton Industry

    Accessed 22 Mar. 2024. The. Hazard, Anthony. “The Atlantic Slave Trade: What Too Few Textbooks Told You - Anthony Hazard.” www.youtube.com, 22 Dec. 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NXC4Q_4JVg&authuser=0.…

    • 801 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Africa And The Atlantic World Chapter Summary
    • 1435 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Africa And The Atlantic World Chapter Summary

    Africa and the Atlantic world explores the trials and tribulations of Africans being forced from their homeland and sold into slavery. Africans endured such hardships and conditions that their souls vanished with the site of mother Africa. Europeans sold and forced slaves to cultivate sugar plantations for their own profits. The Americas, Europe and Africa were involved in a cross continental system of human trafficking. African men, woman and children were shipped across the Atlantic to the Americas. Africans who survived being rapped, malnutrition, dehydration and being tortured on the voyage were sold to European masters and forced to be slaves on plantations.…

    • 1435 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Similarities and Differences That Took Place in Sub-Saharan Africa and Central and South America as an Outcome of European Contact
    • 448 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Similarities and Differences That Took Place in Sub-Saharan Africa and Central and South America as an Outcome of European Contact

    Parts of the Sub-Saharan Africa continent were greatly affected by the Europeans. Unlike the Americas, however, people from Europe did not colonize in Africa. This was because of the African governments along the Gold and Slave coasts. The Europeans recognized that they had great power and strong African trading customs. These factors prevented them from colonizing, which is opposite of what happened in the Americas. Although Europeans were not willing to colonize in Africa, they were interested in trading with their peoples. Gold was one of Africa’s exports, with slaves being the most important. Most slaves that were traded by African kings and merchants were prisoners of war. They were traded in return for textiles, hardware, and guns. However, as the demand for slaves rose so did the price the Europeans had to pay for them. The overall effect that European contact had on Sub-Saharan Africa was beneficial for both Europeans and Africans. This type of contact was not of colonization, like with the Americas, but of new trading networks.…

    • 448 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    What Was The Impact Of The AST On African Americans
    • 798 Words
    • 4 Pages

    What Was The Impact Of The AST On African Americans

    Although Africans were not strangers to slave trade or to the keeping of slaves before the 15th century, the tragic voyage across the Middle Passage to America strongly impacted the role of African slaves to a cruel degree. As the demand for slaves in America increased, an outstanding number of slaves were transported to America for four centuries. When the opportunity granted itself to pursue freedom, Africans took a stand to gain justice and equality by joining the war and executing impactful roles in society. The impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade (AST) on African Americans introduced a destructive turn of events, however after centuries of torture and inequality, African Americans took a stand to gain equal rights and opportunities in "the land of the free". It is safe to say that the impact of the AST was an absolute tragedy.…

    • 798 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Essay On The Transatlantic Slave Trade
    • 795 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Essay On The Transatlantic Slave Trade

    History is host to a seemingly countless number of atrocities. Our knowledge of these events is limited to the records left behind for historians to study. One of history’s greatest recorded atrocities is the transatlantic slave trade that occurred from the fifteenth century to the eighteenth century. The incredible amount of records that exist about the transatlantic slave trade provides great insight into its participants, functionality, and eventual end.…

    • 795 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Transatlantic Slave Trade Impact On African Americans
    • 867 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Transatlantic Slave Trade Impact On African Americans

    Over the course of more than three and a half centuries, the transportation of at least twelve million men, women, and children from their African homelands to the Americas changed forever the face and character of the modern world. The slave trade was brutal and horrific, and the enslavement of Africans was cruel, exploitative, and dehumanizing. Together, they represent one of the longest and most sustained assaults on the very life, integrity, and dignity of human beings in history. In the Americas, the importation and subsequent enslavement of the Africans would be the major factor in the resettlement of the continents following the disastrous decline in their indigenous population. Although victimized and exploited, they created a new, largely African, Creole society and their forced migration resulted in the emergence of the so-called Black Atlantic.…

    • 867 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Transatlantic Slave Trade In Africa
    • 955 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Transatlantic Slave Trade In Africa

    The transatlantic slave trade was the largest horrific forced migration of Africans from their homelands to western hemisphere from 15th to 19th Century. Over twelve million men, women and children became the victim of this extreme exploitation. It was one of the terrific assaults in the human history which greatly influenced Africa’s Political and economic state. The purpose of the slave trade was to obtain profit and goods from European traders .Europeans used the slaves for plantations in Americas and also imported them to Brazil.…

    • 955 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Role Of Slavery In Africa
    • 1496 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Role Of Slavery In Africa

    While some may assume that any African could be subjected to slavery, there were usually specific circumstances that resulted in their enslavement. The majority of slaves, both those in Africa and those sold to different countries, were victims of wars between African tribes. For the losing sides of these quarrels, a future of bondage was almost definite. “While no enemy was left standing in the outside world, the conquered enemies were left to serve in Africa” (Africans did not sell their own people into slavery).…

    • 1496 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    African American Slavery Essay
    • 561 Words
    • 3 Pages

    African American Slavery Essay

    The slave trade had most of the enslaved Africans transported to the New World through the Atlantic Ocean. West African slave traders sold slaves to European slave dealers who shipped slaves to the New World. The pioneers of the trade were the Portuguese in the 16th century and were the highest buyers in terms of volume followed by the Brits, French, and Dutch.…

    • 561 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Middle Passage
    • 592 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Middle Passage

    The authors makes it clear right away, that Europeans did not originate the idea of exporting slaves along the African coast. This had been a practice of the merchants of Timbuktu & the Moorish kingdoms north of the Sahara. There had also been a long history of transatlantic slave trade. Negroes (as called during this time peroid,refers to the African Americans of today) were in Santo Domingo by 1503, & the first 20 slaves were sold in Jamestown,Virgingia in 1619.…

    • 592 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Slavery Essay
    • 1977 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Slavery Essay

    From the 17th century until the 19th century, almost twelve million Africans were brought to the New World against their will to perform back-breaking labour under terrible conditions. The British slave trade was eventually abolished in 1807 (although illegal slave trading would continue for decades after that) after years of debate, in which supporters of the trade claimed that it was not inhumane, that they were acting in the slaves’ benefit, etc. Slavery was a truly barbaric, and those who think that they can control what another group of people eat, where they sleep, whether they are to live or die, or even whether they are to be bought or sold, are acting on a totally inhumane level. Slaves in the British colonies in the Caribbean worked on the sugar plantations which helped make the empire rich. Portugal and Britain were the two most ‘successful’ slave-trading countries accounting for about 70% of all Africans transported to the Americas. Britain was the most dominant between 1640 and 1807 when the British slave trade was abolished. It is estimated that Britain transported 3.1 million Africans (of which 2.7 million arrived) to the British colonies in the Caribbean, North and South America and to other countries. The early African companies developed English trade and trade routes in the 16th and 17th centuries, but it was not until the opening up of Africa and the slave trade to all English merchants in 1698 that Britain began to become dominant. The slave trade was carried out from many British ports, but the three most important ports were London (1660-1720s), Bristol (1720s-1740s) and Liverpool (1740s-1807), which became extremely wealthy. Under the1799 Slave Trade Act, the slave trade was restricted to three ports.…

    • 1977 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More

Related Topics