The Atlantic system and Africa, 1550-1800

Plantations in the West Indies

Plantation Life in the Eighteenth Century

Creating the Atlantic Economy

Africa, the Atlantic, and Islam

Learning Objective:

After reading and studying this chapter you should be able to discuss:

1. Be able to discuss the development and structure of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in Central and South America.

2. Be able to compare and contrast the English and French colonies of North America with each other, as well as with the Spanish and Portuguese colonies.

3. Be able to discuss the connection between sugar production in the West Indies and the growth of the Atlantic slave trade, list the factors that combined to create the Atlantic economy, and describe the participation of Africans in the Atlantic economy.

4. Be able to describe some of the key elements of the Columbian exchange and assess the impact of such transfers.

Focus Questions:

How important was sugar production to the European colonies of the West Indies and to the expansion of the African slave trade?

What effect did sugar plantations have on the natural environment and on living conditions?

What was the relationship between private investors and European governments in the development of the Atlantic economy?

How did sub-Saharan Africa's expanding contacts in the Atlantic compare with its contacts with the Islamic world?

Plantations in the West Indies

Spanish attention shifted from exploitation of the region to

colonizing the American mainland

English colonization societies founded small European

settlements

English colonies prospered first, largely by growing tobacco for

export

Colonization Before 1650

Two changes improved the colonies’ prospects.

One was the formation of *chartered companies

France and England gave groups of private

investors monopolies over trade to their West Indies colonies in exchange for the payment of annual

fees

By 1600 Brazil was the Atlantic world’s greatest

sugar producer

The dutch were fighting for their independence from the Spanish crown, which then

ruled Portugal and Brazil. As part of that struggle, the

Dutch government chartered the *Dutch West India

Company in 1621 to carry the conflict to Spain’s overseas

possessions

The company prospered by supplying the plantations with

enslaved Africans and European goods and carrying the sugar back

to Europe

From African coasts the Dutch shipped slaves to Brazil and the

West Indies

By 1654 Portuguese armies had driven the last of the Dutch sugar planters from Brazil. Some of the

expelled planters transplanted their capital and knowledge of sugar production to small Caribbean

colonies

Sugar and Slaves

The English colony of Barbados best illustrates the dramatic transformation that sugar

brought to the 17th century Caribbean

Exported 15,000 tons of sugar a year

During the first half of the 17th century, 10,000 slaves arrived

from Africa a year

“Slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the

consequence of slavery”

The shift from European labor and African labor was the initial lower cost of the

latter

Indentured Servants—Poor European men and women

were willing to work for little in order to get to the

Americas

Plantation Life in the Eighteenth Century

The technological, environmental,

and social transformation of

these island colonies

illustrates the power of the new Atlantic system

Technology and Environment

What made the sugar plantation a complex investment was that it

had to be factory as well as a farm

The process from cane to raw sugar

Jamaica specialized so heavily in sugar production that the island had no import most of its food

Repeated cultivation of a single crop resulted in depletion of the

soil

The plantations of this period were not a stable form of

agriculture but rather gradually laid waste to the

landscape

By the 18th century, all domesticated animals and

cultivated plants in the Caribbean

Many of these new animals and plants were useful additions to the islands

Slaves’ Lives

Power resided in the hands of a *plantocracy, a small number of very rich men who owned most of the

slaves and most of the land

The profitability of a Caribbean plantation

depended on extracting as much work as possible from

the slaves.

On a typical Jamaican plantation about 80 percent of the slaves

actively engaged in productive tasks

Only 2 or 3 percent of the slaves were house servants

Women often formed the majority of the field laborers

Skilled slaves received rewards of food and clothing or time off for

good work—some privileged slaves acted as “drivers”

Rebellious slaves who refused to work—flogging, confinement in irons, mutilation, “iron muzzle”

Life expectancy for slaves in 19th century Brazil was only 23 years

(m) and 25.5 years (f)

The harsh conditions of plantation life played a major role in

shortening slaves’ lives

The greatest killer was disease from contaminated food and

water

*Seasoning — the period of adjustment to the new

environment

One-third, on average, died of unfamiliar diseases

Slaves also brought malaria

Such high mortality greatly added to the volume of the Atlantic slave trade—new

slaves needing to be bought every year or two to replace

the dead

Slaves on most West Indian plantations were African-born. As a result, African religious

beliefs, patterns of speech, styles of dress and adornment, and

music were prominent parts of West Indian life

European planters tried to curtail African cultural traditions

French and Portuguese sought encouraged to adopt Catholic

religious practices

Free Whites and Free Blacks

Free people fell into three distinct groups

—“great whites” grands blancslarge plantation owners

— “little whites” petits blancs retail merchants

— Free blacks—similar occupations as the petits blancs

A surprising number of the more prosperous black artisans and small

land owners also owned slaves

The richest planters put their plantations under the direction

of managers and lived in Britain

*Manumission—a grant of freedom to an individual slave

or group of slaves

The largest group of freed slaves had purchased their freedom, especially France,

Spain, and Portugal—a right protected by the courts

Creating the Atlantic Economy

Changes in the type and number of ships crossing the Atlantic illustrate the rise of this new

system

Two European innovations enabled private investors to fund the rapid growth of the Atlantic

economy

Capitalism—the ability to manage large financial resources,

particularly banks and stock markets

Capitalism and Mercantilism

The capitalism of these centuries was buttressed by

*mercantilism, policies adopted by European states

to promote their citizens’ overseas trade and

accumulate capital in the form of precious metals,

especially gold and silver

Chartered companies were one of the first examples of

mercantilist capitalism

Dutch East India Company and Dutch West India Company

In 1672 a royal charter placed all

English trade with West Africa in the

hands of a new *Royal African

Company (RAC)

French and English governments also

used military force in pursuit of commercial dominance, especially

to break the trading advantage of Dutch

in the Americas

Military and diplomatic pressure

also forced Spain after 1713 to grant England

and later France monopoly rights to

supply slaves

In the 1660s England passed a series of

Navigation Acts that confined trade with its

colonies to English ships and cargoes

The Atlantic Circuit

At the heart of this trading system was a clockwise network of

sea routes known as the *Atlantic Circuit

Europe—Africa—the Americas—back to

Europe

Prevailing winds and currents drove the

circuit

Middle Passage—the section of the Atlantic

Circuit from Africa to the Americas

European interests dominated the Atlantic

system

People spooned sugar into popular new beverages—tea, coffee, and chocolate—driving up the demand

The flow of sugar to Europe depended on

another key component of the Atlantic trading

system: the flow of slaves from Africa

17th century mercantilist policies placed much of

the Atlantic slave trade in the lands of chartered

companies

Although it was in the interests of the captain and crew to deliver their slave cargo in good condition

whippings, beatings, and even executions were used

to maintain order

Crew members in close contact with the slaves

were exposed to the same epidemics and also died in

great numbers

Africa, the Atlantic, and Islam

The Gold Coast and the Slave Coast

European visitors to Africa’s Atlantic coast were interested more in trading

than in colonizing or controlling the continent

African kings and merchants sold slaves

the growing slave trade did not lead to substantial European colonization

Although preferences for merchandise varied, Africans’

greatest demands were for textiles, hardware, and guns

Most slaves were prisoners of war, which were sold by the victors as their war profits

Europeans, both Scottish and Irish, were brought into

slavery in the Americas as well

The Bight of Biafra and Angola

The densely populated interior of the Bight of

Biafra brought

Prisoners usually seem to have been a byproduct of African wars rather than

the purpose for which the wars were fought

Severe droughts also brought more Africans

into slavery

The organization of the Atlantic trade was

based on a partnership between European and

African elites