Atlantic Slave Trade Research Paper

For 366 years the Atlantic economies of European Imperial powers were fueled by the Atlantic Slave Trade. The slave trade dominated life in the Atlantic world influencing the political, economic, cultural and demographic aspects of life. Beginning with the Portuguese in the 1400s, European powers competed to expanded their spheres of influence both formally and informally through colonization in the New World and through economic exploration of slave labour from western Africa. Africans were forcible removed from their homes and transported across the Atlantic to colonies in the Americas where they were coerced into working in extremely difficult conditions on sugar plantations in the Caribbean and tobacco and cotton plantations in North America.
While slavery had been prominent in many western African societies for a very long time, previously Africans were not be removed from the own country. The Atlantic Slave Trade that initiated by Europeans saw captives being completely removed from their African societies and sold in job markets that had harsh conditions, short life expectancy and no way to return home. The slave trade would be filled with captives of war from the interior of Africa, where many city states were at war due to expansionist campaigns. However even some of the waring city states roots of discontent can be traced back to European involvement as slavers and communities often sold war captives into slavery to acquire guns for themselves. The fear of being the next community to be subjected to war for the slave trade promoted many African communities in engage in the act itself so they could acquire rifles from the European traders in the hopes of protecting their own communities. The African communities there were involved in the intense waring of the slave trade also saw a large drop in their productivity potential because so many people were being taken away from the communities, as opposed to in African slavery where the conquering ruler could have
Imperialism and the eventual colonialism that followed would leave many African countries economically and political unsound following the end of formal colonialism in the 20th century. The effects of the slave trade on the Atlantic economy and the African people were both economically and socially