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Atlantic slave trade

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</div>The Atlantic slave trade was the purchase of people in and transport from West Africa and Central Africa, and to a lesser degree East Africa, into slavery in the New World. It is sometimes called the Maafa by African and African-American scholars, meaning holocaust or great disaster in Kiswahili. The slaves were one element of a three-part economic cycle—the Triangular Trade and its Middle Passage—which ultimately involved four continents, four centuries and millions of people.

Research published in 2006 reports the earliest known presence of African slaves in the New World. <ref>"Skeletons Discovered: First African Slaves in New World". January 31, 2006. LiveScience.com. Accessed September 27, 2006.</ref> A burial ground in Campeche, Mexico, suggests slaves had been brought there not long after Hernán Cortés completed the subjugation of Aztec and Mayan Mexico. Contemporary historians estimate that some 10 to 12 million individuals legally arrived from Africa to Europe, North, Central and South America and the Caribbean Islands. [citation needed] However some put the number taken/lost from Africa from 25 to 40 million. <ref name="Walter Rodney on population">"How Europe underdeveloped Africa". "Walter Rodney". Retrieved on 1972-10-01.</ref>

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[edit] Triangular Trade

Building the New World was obviously going to be a difficult feat to take on. The Europeans realized that they needed help expanding their empire. Many of the natives of the New World were not useful because they were either sick or dying from the diseases that the Europeans brought over.[citation needed] Europeans needed to find an exploitable workforce elsewhere. They chose African slaves for a number of reasons: They were hard workers, used to the climate and were immune to the diseases. [citation needed] The first side of the triangle was the export of goods from Europe to Africa. A minority of African kings and merchants took part in the trading of slaves from 1450 to about 1900.[citation needed] For the slave the African kings would receive a variety of goods from Europe. Many of them were confronted with the dilemma of trade with Europe or be slaves of Europe. This is because the slaves were exposed to new diseases and also because of malnutrition. Five times the amount of slaves were transported to the Americas compared to those transports to Europe.[citation needed] The third and final part of the triangle was the return of goods to Europe from the Americas. The goods were the products of slave-labor plantations and included cotton, sugar, tobacco, molasses and rum.

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. 2006. About.com. 5 November 2006.

[edit] How Many

The widely accepted view of the arrival of 10 million neglects to state how many left. Estimates range from 40 million to 100 million from both the Arab Slave trade and the Transatlantic trade. (see Arab slave trade). It has been estimated that the population of Africa in the mid 19th century would have been 50 million instead of 25 million had Slavery not taken place. But many more died in the villages fighting their enslavers, many more died in the dungeons and many died aboard the ships. Many Africans either committed suicide or were thrown over board to lighten the ship or to make insurance claims. It is estimated that the Portuguese trade was under estimated by 50% and the British trade by a 1/3. Then there were those who died by the indirect actions of the slavers, those left to starve, those who died of European diseases. <ref name="Walter Rodney on population">"How Europe underdeveloped Africa". "Walter Rodney". Retrieved on 1972-10-01.</ref>

An often-neglected study within history is the value of population demographics as a function of time. 30 million people 500 years ago is not equivalent to 30 million people today because the percentage of the world population represented 500 years ago is far greater than what it represents today. It is estimated that by the height of the slave trade the population of Africa unlike the rest of the World had stagnated by 50% <ref name="Walter Rodney on population">"How Europe underdeveloped Africa". "Walter Rodney". Retrieved on 1972-10-01.</ref>. Not only was the trade of demographic significance, in aggregate population losses but also in the profound changes to settlement patterns, epidemiological exposure and reproductive and social development potential.<ref name="Legacy of the African Holocaust">"African Holocaust: Dark Voyage audio CD". "Owen 'Alik Shahadah". Retrieved on 2005-04-01.</ref>.

[edit] Labour and slavery

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade originated as a shortage of labour in the American colonies and later the USA. The first slaves used by European colonizers were Indigenous peoples of the Americas 'Indian' peoples, but they were not numerous enough and were quickly decimated by European diseases, agricultural breakdown and harsh regime. It was also difficult to get Europeans to immigrate to the colonies, despite incentives such as indentured servitude or even distribution of free land (mainly in the English colonies that became the United States). Massive amounts of labour were needed, initially for mining, and soon even more for the plantations in the labour-intensive growing, harvesting and semi-processing of sugar (also for rum and molasses), cotton and other prized tropical crops which could not be grown profitably — in some cases, could not be grown at all — in the colder climate of Europe. It was also cheaper to import these goods from American colonies than from regions within the Ottoman Empire. To meet this demand for labour European traders thus turned to Western Africa (part of which became known as 'the Slave coast') and later Central Africa into a major source of fresh slaves.

[edit] African slave market

Europeans bought slaves who were captured in wars between African kingdoms and chiefdoms. African slaves were transported from these markets to the coast and sold at European trading ports in exchange for muskets and manufactured goods such as cloth or alcohol.

Europeans did not enter the interior of Africa, due to fear of disease and tribal people. Africans would capture other Africans and bring them to coastal outposts where they would be traded for goods. Enslavement also became a major by-product of war in Africa as nation states expanded through military conflicts. During such periods of rapid state formation or expansion (Asante or Dahomey being good examples), slavery formed an important element of political life long before the coming of Europeans. Conviction of a crime was another way to become a slave. Since most of these nations did not have a prison system, convict slaves were often sold.

The majority of European conquests occurred toward the end or after the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. An exception to this is the conquest of Ndongo and Kongo in Angola where warriors, citizens and even nobility were taken into slavery after the fall of the state.

[edit] African versus European slavery

Slavery in the rigid form which existed in Europe and throughout the New World was not practiced in Africa nor in the Islamic Orient. "Slavery", as it is often referred to, in African cultures was generally more like indentured servitude: "slaves" were not made to be chattel of other men, nor enslaved for life. African "slaves" were paid wages and were able to accumulate property. They often bought their own freedom and could then achieve social promotion -just as freedman in ancient Rome- some even rose to the status of kings (e.g. Jaja of Opobo and Sunni Ali Ber). Similar arguments were used by western slave owners during the time of abolition, for example by John Wedderburn in Wedderburn v. Knight, the case that ended legal recognition of slavery in Scotland in 1776. Regardless of the legal options open to slave owners, rational cost-earning calculation and/or voluntary adoption of moral restraints often tended to mitigate (except with traders, who preferred to weed out the worthless weak individuals) the actual fate of slaves throughout history.

[edit] African Kingdoms of the era

There were over 173 city-states and kingdoms in the African regions affected by the slave trade between 1502 and 1853, when Brazil became the last Atlantic import nation to outlaw the slave trade. Of those 173, no fewer than 68 could be deemed "nation states" with political and military infrastructures that enabled them to dominate their neighbors. Nearly every present-day nation had a pre-colonial forbear with which European traders had to barter and eventually battle. Below are 38 nation states by country with populations that correspond to African-Americans:

There were eight principal areas used by Europeans to buy and ship slaves to the Western Hemisphere.

The number of slaves sold to the new world varied throughout the slave trade. The minimum and least disputed number is 10 million. As for the distribution of slaves from regions of activity, the most widely accepted statistics [citation needed] claim Senegambia provided about 5.8%, Sierra Leone 3.4%, Windward Coast 12.1%, Central Africa 14.4%, Bight of Benin 14.5%, Bight of Biafra 23%, Gold Coast 25% and Southeast Africa 1.8%.

Ethnic groups The different ethnic groups brought to the Americas closely corresponds to the regions of heaviest activity in the slave trade. Over 45 distinct ethnic groups were taken to the Americas during the trade. Of the 45, the ten most prominent according to slave documentation of the era are listed below.

  1. The Gbe speakers of Togo, Ghana and Benin (Adja, Mina, Ewe, Fon)
  2. The Akan of Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire
  3. The Mbundu of Angola (includes Ovimbundu)
  4. The BaKongo of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola
  5. The Igbo of Nigeria
  6. The Yoruba of Nigeria
  7. The Mande speakers of Upper Guinea
  8. The Wolof of Senegal
  9. The Chamba of Nigeria
  10. The Makua of Mozambique

[edit] New World destinations

African slaves were brought to Europe and the Americas to supply cheap labour. Central America only imported around 200,000. Europe topped this number at 300,000, North America, however, imported 500,000. The Caribbean was the second largest consumer of slave labour at 4 million. South America, with Brazil taking most of the slaves, imported 4.5 million before the end of slavery.[citation needed]

[edit] European competition

The trade of enslaved Africans in the Atlantic has its origins in the explorations of Portuguese mariners down the coast of West Africa in the 15th century. The first Europeans to use African slaves in the New World were the Spaniards who sought auxiliaries for their conquest expeditions and laborers on islands such as Cuba and Hispaniola (mod. Haiti-Dominican Republic) where the alarming decline in the native population had spurred the first royal laws protecting the native population, (Laws of Burgos,1512-1513). After Portugal had succeeded in establishing sugar plantations (engenhos) in northern Brazil ca. 1545, Portuguese merchants on the West African coast began to supply enslaved Africans to the sugar planters there. While at first these planters relied almost exclusively on the native Tupani for slave labor, a titantic shift toward Africans took place after 1570 following a series of epidemics which decimated the already destabilized Tupani communities. By 1630, Africans had replaced the Tupani as the largest contingent of labor on Brazilian sugar plantations, heralding equally the final collapse of the European medieval household tradition of slavery, the rise of Brazil as the largest single destination for enslaved Africans and sugar as the reason that roughly 84% of these Africans were shipped to the New World. As Britain rose in naval power and controlled more of the Americas, they became the leading slave traders, mostly operating out of Liverpool and Bristol. By the late 17th century, one out of every four ships that left Liverpool harbour was a slave trading ship [citation needed]. Other British cities also profited from the slave trade. Birmingham was the largest gun producing city in Britain at the time, and guns were traded for slaves. 75% of all sugar produced in the plantations came to London to supply the highly lucrative coffee houses there.

Image:Slave Auction Ad.jpg

The slave trade was part of the triangular Atlantic trade, then probably the most important and profitable trading route in the world. Ships from Europe would carry a cargo of manufactured trade goods to Africa. They exchanged the trade goods for slaves which they would transport to the Americas, where they sold the slaves and picked up a cargo of agricultural products, often produced with slave labour, for Europe. The value of this trade route was that a ship could make a substantial profit on each leg of the voyage. The route was also designed to take full advantage of prevailing winds and currents: the trip from the West Indies or the southern U.S. to Europe would be assisted by the Gulf Stream; the outward bound trip from Europe to Africa would not be impeded by the same current.

Even though since the Renaissance some ecclesiastics actively pleaded slavery to be against the Christian teachings, as now generally held, others supported the economically opportune slave trade by church teachings and the introduction of the concept of the black man's and white man's separate roles -- black men were expected to labour in exchange for the blessings of European civilization, including Christianity.

[edit] Economics of slavery

Slave trade routes

Slavery was involved in some of the most profitable industries of the time: 70% of the slaves brought to the new world were used to produce sugar, the most labour intensive crop. The rest were employed harvesting coffee, cotton, and tobacco, and in some cases in mining. The West Indian colonies of the European powers were some of their most important possessions, so they went to extremes to protect and retain them. For example, at the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763, France agreed to cede the vast territory of New France to the victors in exchange for keeping the minute Antillian island of Guadeloupe.

Slave trade profits have been the object of many fantasies. Returns for the investors were not actually absurdly high (around 6% in France in the eighteenth century), but they were higher than domestic alternatives (in the same century, around 5%). Risks -- maritime and commercial -- were important for individual voyages. Investors mitigated it by buying small shares of many ships at the same time. In that way, they were able to diversify a large part of the risk away. Between voyages, ship shares could be freely sold and bought. All these made slave trade a very interesting investment (Daudin 2004).

By far the most successful West Indian colonies in 1800 belonged to the United Kingdom. After entering the sugar colony business late, British naval supremacy and control over key islands such as Jamaica, Trinidad, and Barbados and the territory of British Guiana gave it an important edge over all competitors; while many British did not make gains, some made enormous fortunes, even by upper class standards. This advantage was reinforced when France lost its most important colony, St. Dominigue (western Hispaniola, now Haiti), to a slave revolt in 1791 and supported revolts against its rival Britain, after the 1793 French revolution in the name of liberty (but in fact opportunistic selectivity). Before 1791, British sugar had to be protected to compete against cheaper French sugar. After 1791, the British islands produced the most sugar, and the British people quickly became the largest consumers of sugar. West Indian sugar became ubiquitous as an additive to Chinese tea. Products of American slave labour soon permeated every level of British society with tobacco, coffee, and especially sugar all becoming indispensable elements of daily life for all classes. [citation needed]

[edit] End of the Atlantic slave trade

Image:BrotherSlave.jpg

In Britain and in other parts of Europe, opposition developed against the slave trade. Led by the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and establishment Evangelicals such as William Wilberforce, the movement was joined by many and began to protest against the trade, but they were opposed by the owners of the colonial holdings. Denmark, which had been very active in the slave trade, was the first country to ban the trade through legislation in 1792, which took effect in 1803. Britain banned the slave trade in 1807, imposing stiff fines for any slave found aboard a British ship. That same year the United States banned the importation of slaves. The Royal Navy, which then controlled the world's seas, moved to stop other nations from filling Britain's place in the slave trade and declared that slaving was equal to piracy and was punishable by death.

Image:SisterSlave.jpg

For the British to end the slave trade, significant obstacles had to be overcome. In the 18th century, the slave trade was an integral part of the Atlantic economy: the economies of the European colonies in the Caribbean, the American colonies, and Brazil required vast amounts of man power to harvest the bountiful agricultural goods. In 1790, the British West Indies islands such as Jamaica and Barbados had a slave population of 524,000 while the French had 643,000 in their West Indian possessions. Other powers such as Spain, the Netherlands, and Denmark had large numbers of slaves in their colonies as well. Despite these high populations more slaves were always required.

Harsh conditions and demographic imbalances left the slave population with well below replacement fertility levels. Between 1600 and 1800, the English imported around 1.7 million slaves to their West Indian possessions. The fact that there were well over a million fewer slaves in the British colonies than had been imported to them illustrates the conditions in which they lived.


[edit] British influence

After the British ended their own slave trade, they felt forced by economics to induce other nations to do the same; otherwise, the British colonies would become uncompetitive with those of other nations. The British campaign against the slave trade by other nations was an unprecedented foreign policy effort. Denmark, a small player in the international slave trade, and the United States banned the trade during the same period as Great Britain. Other small trading nations that did not have a great deal to give up, such as Sweden, quickly followed suit, as did the Dutch, who were also by then a minor player.

Four nations objected strongly to surrendering their rights to trade slaves: Spain, Portugal, Brazil (after its independence), and France. Britain used every tool at its disposal to try to induce these nations to follow its lead. Portugal and Spain, which were indebted to Britain after the Napoleonic Wars, slowly agreed to accept large cash payments to first reduce and then eliminate the slave trade. By 1853, the British government had paid Portugal over three million pounds and Spain over one million pounds in order to end the slave trade. Portugal had abolished slavery on the 12 February 1761, from this date onwards any slave entering in Portugal would be given freedom. However, the banning of slavery in the Portuguese colonies faced much opposition by the plantation owners who would have their profits reduced, and the law that was being enforced in Portugal did not take effect in the colonies where it faced opposition. Brazil, however, even after its independence, did not agree to stop trading in slaves until Britain took military action against its coastal areas and threatened a permanent blockade of the nation's ports in 1852.

For France, the British first tried to impose a solution during the negotiations at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, but Russia and Austria did not agree. The French people and government had deep misgivings about conceding to Britain's demands. Britain demanded that other nations ban the slave trade and that they had the right to police the ban. The Royal Navy had to be granted permission to search any suspicious ships and seize any found to be carrying slaves, or equipped for doing so. It is especially these conditions that kept France involved in the slave trade for so long. While France formally agreed to ban the trading of slaves in 1815, they did not allow Britain to police the ban, nor did they do much to enforce it themselves. Thus a large black market in slaves continued for many years. While the French people had originally been as opposed to the slave trade as the British, it became a matter of national pride that they not allow their policies to be dictated to them by Britain. Also such a reformist movement was viewed as tainted by the conservative backlash after the French Revolution. The French slave trade thus did not end until 1848.

[edit] See also

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[edit] References

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[edit] Further Reading

  • Anstey, Roger: The Atlantic Slave Trade and British abolition, 1760-1810. London: Macmillan, 1975.
  • Clarke, Dr. John Henrik: Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan Holocaust. Slavery and the Rise of European Capitalism
  • Daudin, Guillaume: "Profitability of slave and long distance trading in context : the case of eightheenth century France", Journal of Economic History, 2004.
  • Diop, Er. Cheikh Anta: Precolonial Black Africa: A Comparative Study of the Political and Social Systems of Europe and Black Africa
  • Drescher, Seymour: From Slavery to Freedom: Comparative Studies in the Rise and Fall of Atlantic Slavery. London: Macmillan Press, 1999.
  • Emmer, P.C.: De Nederlandse slavenhandel 1500-1850 [The Dutch Slave Trade 1500-1850]. Amsterdam and Antwerpen: Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers, 2000.
  • Franklin, John Hope: From Slavery to Freedom
  • Rodney, Walter: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Howard University Press; Revised edition, 1981.
  • Thomas, Hugh: The Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440 - 1870. London: Picador, 1997.
  • Williams, Chancellor: Destruction of Black Civilization
  • Williams, Eric: Capitalism & Slavery. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.

[edit] External links

nl:Transatlantische slavenhandel

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