The Atlantic Slave Trade
The Atlantic Slave Trade was the most destructive phenomenon to ever hit the African continent, the effects it had on the societies living there can still be felt today. The New World colonies of North and South America were producing large quantities of sugar, tobacco and cotton and as these farming economies grew, so did their need for cheap labor.
At first, before the 1500’s, slavery wasn’t uncommon and many different cultures around the globe would deal or trade in slaves. These slaves were typically captured soldiers from feuding societies. These slaves, once sold, typically had more freedom then the slaves from the future Atlantic slave trade. Depending on the society they lived, slaves could hold military and political positions. At the same time, depending on where they lived, their children had the possibility of being born free. During this time, slave trading was done on a much smaller scale and it wasn’t until the mid-fifteenth to the mid-nineteenth century that the slave trade became big business. The slave labor had dried up in Southern Russia, so Africa became the target of slave traders. Africans made great slaves because they were immune to tropical and European diseases, non-Christians and black. An historian wrote, “That it is easy to tolerate the brutal exploitation of Africans, by imagining that these Africans were an inferior race, or better still, not even human.” (p.552 WW)
The most noticeable impact the colonies had on the slave trade was the increase in volume and it is “estimated that 11 million people” (p. 449 WW) that were shipped from Africa and brought to the Americas. The slaves that made it to the Americas were considered the lucky ones because millions of more people died during the long journey across the Atlantic Ocean or died while trying to avoid capture. Unlike the slaves before them, the New World slaves didn’t have any freedoms and were limited in the positions they could hold. Slaves of the New World were treated like “dehumanized property, lacking any rights in the society of their owners.” (p.450 WW)
It was the Africans themselves that sold their country man to the slave trader. Societies in Africa at the time were very scattered. Africa was mainly made up of little tribes or clans distributed thought out the continent. Africans, at the time, didn’t have a sense of community outside of their own tribe; they had “no concept of an African identity.” (p. 455 WW) Africans had no problem selling someone from outside their tribe; typically these people would be “prisoners of war, criminals and debtors” (p. 455 WW). Examples have been found that show large more powerful tribes attacking a neighboring tribe for the sole purpose of taking prisoners to be sold as slaves. The slave trade caused tribal conflicts throughout Africa, which hurt the development and stability of the continent. Africans should have been unifying their continent; instead, they were busy fighting each other, trying to make a profit.
Today, in Africa you can see the side effects of a continent that has been exploited over and over again. The Atlantic slave trade was just the beginning. The slave trade opened the door for other countries to come in and take advantage of the African people and Africa’s natural resources.
References
1. Robert W. Strayer, (2009) Ways of the World, A Brief Global History.
Boston, MA: Bedford’s / St. Martin’s
2. Website: http://africanhistory.about.com/od/slavery/tp/TransAtlantic001.htm
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