Slavery and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

• ESSENTIAL QUESTION:

What do you think might have happened on the African continent if the European slave trade had not taken place?

Why Africa?

• Growing cane sugar demands much labor.• The small Native American population, much

of which had died of diseases imported from Europe, could not provide the labor needed.

• Believed Africans were physically suited to hard labor, especially in hot, humid climates

• Thus, African slaves were shipped to Brazil and the Caribbean to work on the plantations.

Growth of Slave Trade• Before the coming of Europeans in the fifteenth century,

most slaves in Africa were prisoners of war. • When Europeans first began to take part in the slave trade,

they bought slaves from local African merchants at slave markets on the coasts in return for gold, guns, or other European goods.

• As demands for slaves increased they had to move further inland to find victims.

• Local rulers who traded slaves viewed them as a source of income. Many sent raiders into defenseless villages in search of victims?

What do you think?

• Does the fact that Africans participated in enslaving other Africans make the European involvement in the slave trade any less wrong?

Triangular Trade1. European merchants carried

European manufactured goods such as guns, knives, swords, cloth and rum to Africa, where they were traded for a cargo of slaves.

2. The slaves were then shipped across the Atlantic to various Caribbean Islands or the Americas and sold.

3. Enslaved Africans were sold and the money was used to buy sugar, molasses, cotton, sugar tobacco, molasses and shipped them back to Europe to be sold in European markets.

Middle Passage• The journey of slaves from

Africa to Americas.• Brutal and degrading

– Chained together in the crowded ‘hold’ of the ship.

– Little food or water and no sanitary facilities.

– In the darkness and stifling heat, many Africans suffocated or died of diseases.

King Afonso is concerned !• In 1526 Afonso wrote two letters concerning the slave trade to the king

of Portugal, complaining of Portuguese complicity in purchasing illegally enslaved people.

• In one of his letters he writes "Each day the traders are kidnapping our people - children of this country, sons

of our nobles and vassals, even people of our own family. This corruption and depravity are so widespread that our land is entirely depopulated. We need in this kingdom only priests and schoolteachers, and no merchandise, unless it is wine and flour for Mass. It is our wish that this Kingdom not be a place for the trade or transport of slaves."

Many of our subjects eagerly lust after Portuguese merchandise that your subjects have brought into our domains. To satisfy this inordinate appetite, they seize many of our black free subjects.... They sell them. After having taken these prisoners [to the coast] secretly or at night..... As soon as the captives are in the hands of white men they are branded with a red-hot iron.[1]

The Way Europeans ‘’Saw It’”

• Their livelihood? • Large cargo = large profits• Africans were inferior

Effects of the Slave Trade

• Depopulation of some areas

• Deprived many African communities of their youngest and strongest men and women

• Increased Warfare

An enslaved person’s life

• Slaves Auctioned• Sold as laborers• Diseases• Rebellion

Exit Ticket

1. How did the European discovery of the Americas and the planting of sugarcane in South America and the Caribbean change African slavery?

2. Describe what the Middle Passage was like for enslaved Africans.

3. In what ways can you support the view that the slave trade slowed the development of the African continent?

4. How would the colonies have been different if Europeans had not used slave labor?