Slave trade in africa economical impact

Economical impact

"The past is what makes the present coherent," said Afro-American writer James Baldwin, and the past "will remain

horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly."

Recent research suggests that without the slave trades, 72% of Africa’s income gap with the rest of the world would not exist today

99% of the income gap between Africa and the rest of the underdeveloped world would not exist

4 slave trades Between 1400 and 1900: Trans-Atlantic (began in XV century) + trans-Saharan + Red Sea + Indian Ocean (musulim arabic older – domestic needs)

Nathan Nunn. Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of British Columbia: the areas from which the largest number of slaves were taken in the past. http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/779

The most development countries supplied largest number of slaves

The industrial revolution was at least in part funded by agricultural profits from the Americas

Slave trades impeded the formation of broader ethnic groups - ethnically fragmented – weak political structures.

The continent’s human resources were kidnapped

H. Thomas, a Historian: at least 13 million Africans were illegally transported from the shores of West Africa to the Western Hemisphere. Murder of approximately 13% of the cargo.

Depopulation - destabilizing effect on the continent setting back a lot of progress made in most African societies.

Population growth- major role in European development: labor, markets and the pressures which led to further advance (Japanese, China)

Other areas overpopulated - long term environmental effects.

Social violence – Walter Rodney (from outside and inside)

Self image – self estime Racism “When you make men slaves, you deprive them of

half their virtue, you set them, in your own conduct, an example of fraud, rapine, and cruelty, and compel them to live with you in a state of war; and yet you complain that they are not honest or faithful! You stupefy them with stripes, and think it necessary to keep them in a state of ignorance. And yet you assert that they are incapable of learning; that their minds are such a barren soil or moor, that culture would be lost on them.”