Transatlantic slave trade

TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE TRADEThe Door of No Return

Transatlantic Slave Trade• Why?

• European colonization of Americas• Spain• Portugal • England

• Europeans thirst for New World (Americas) items fuels growth of plantations• Sugar • Tobacco• Cotton• Molasses• Rum

• Disease, overwork kills millions of Native Americans; new labor force needed

Why Africans?• No written language• Some disease resistance; already exposed to Europeans

through trade activities, attempts “civilize”• No muskets, gunpowder • Slave trade already existed on the continent

• Prisoners of war• Some sold themselves into slavery during famines• Treated as servants rather than property• “A slaves who knows how to serve inherits his master’s property”

• Between 1450 and 1800 historians estimate 10-20 MILLION Africans were kidnapped and sold into slavery

• 5% brought to North America

How?• Africans became enslaved mainly through four ways:

• criminals sold by the chiefs as punishment; • free Africans conducted raids for African and European gangs • domestic slaves resold • prisoners of war.

Source: Adu Boahen (University of Ghana)

“The Door of No Return” – Goree Island, Senegal

Cape Coast Castle, West Africa

What was Triangular Trade?• Three leg route

• Europe• Africa • America

• Europe to Africa• Cloth, firearms, beads, • spirits, tobacco

• Africa to Americas• “Middle Passage” • Slaves

• Americas to Europe• Raw materials: cotton, • Sugar, rum, tobacco

Triangular Trade

Middle Passage• Slaves loaded on ships • Horrific conditions

• Diseases including small pox, dysentery• Those too sick to continue journey thrown overboard

• Literally stripped of humanity • No clothes • No dignity• Treated as cargo• Hands/feet chained together• Fed only once daily, sometimes not at all

• Clip from the movie “Amistad”• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo-JejTp7O4

Middle Passage: Tight Pack

Tight pack meant as many as 400 slaves: high deaths but high profits

Middle Passage: Loose Pack

A loose pack meant fewer slaves: lower deaths and lower profits

Coping with Captivity• Occasionally, revolts took place on ships

• Often quickly put down as slaveholder had advanced weapons• La Amistad revolt (1839)

• Ship’s captain and much of crew killed• Remaining crew trick Africans – end up in America• President John Quincy Adams championed their cause

• US Supreme Court rules in favor of Africans; allowed to return home

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W9N44PixDk

Coping with Captivity• Life in the Colonies

• Caribbean • Spain• Sugar plantations

• Brazil• Portugal• Mining

• North America (West Indies & colonies)• England: dominated slave trade by 1600’s• Cotton, craft workers, domestic servants

• Long hours, brutal conditions, no freedoms• To cope kept cultural traditions alive, turned to religion, slowed

work pace, occasionally rebelled

African Diaspora• Diaspora: from the Greek, means “spreading out”• Movement of Africans and their descendants to places

throughout the world• the America• Europe • Middle East

• Caused the spread of African culture to Americas, Western Europe