Atlantic Slave Trade

Causes of the Slave Trade

• Europeans needed cheap laborers in South and Central America because many of the Native Americans had died due to European diseases

Advantages to using Africans

• Immunity to many European diseases

• Experience in farming

• Unfamiliar with the land- could not escape

Triangular Trade

• Europeans transported manufactured good to Africa- exchanged for slaves

• Africans sold in West Indies and South America

• Merchants then bought coffee, sugar and tobacco and sailed back to Europe

Triangle Trade

Middle Passage• Route from Africa

to the Americas by boat across the Atlantic Ocean

• Fill-up ships…the more slaves, the more money you make

• Cramped spaces

• Little air circulation and light

• Smell, diseases, rats, even death!

Middle Passage

There is no movement. You are chained down and together. Image if you were underneath the top bunk…what if someone above you threw up or went to the bathroom?

Affect on Colonial Economies

• Immensely profitable

• Economies thrived especially (shipbuilding, fishing, sugar, tobacco)

• Major cities developed around port cities because of the economic benefits

African Resistance to Captivity

• Many tried to take over the ship to return to Africa

• Many committed suicide believing that in death they would return to their home country

Affect on Africans

• African cultures lost

• African families torn apart

• War and conflict in Africa (due to guns)

• African populations in the Americas

Affects of Slave TradePOSITIVE

• *some slaves became educated

• *made people rich• *economy grew (Europe

and Americas)• *industrialization

increased• *Africa got other goods

for the slaves• *Europe got raw materials• *trade increases

NEGATIVE

• *Africans lost their culture• *torture on the Middle Passage• *turned tribes against each other• *population in Africa decreased• *broke up families• *slaves had to be “fixed”• *added more conflict in Africa• *women were raped • *slaves seen as animals/property• *abuse on plantations• *strong of Africa were taken

(warriors)