American Slave Trade After 1550

There had been slavery in Africa for a very long time but it was only minor in certain regions of Africa. When Islam spread through Africa in the seventh century there was a sudden increase in slavery and slave trade. There were prisoners of war in Africa and Muslim rulers said non Muslim prisoners can be bought and sold as slaves. Affecting 17 million African slaves to be transported to Muslim lands such as North Africa and South Asia.

In the 15th century, the Portuguese started to explore the coast of Africa. The Portuguese began to transport African slaves to Portugal and Spain, thus initiating the popularity of buying and selling slaves. In the 16th century, Europeans began to trade African slaves across the Atlantic Ocean. Slavery was not a new concept to Africa. Many African leaders prior to popularized slave trade had traded other Africans to the Arabs as slaves. Most people that were sold into slavery were forced into it because they had committed a crime. However, many were sold into slavery because they were captured in raids. Europeans did not intentionally search for slaves, but if they came across Africans that could be captured, they took them. Africans brought slaves to the coast in efforts to trade goods for cheap labor.

Before Europeans joined the African slave trade, slavery was widespread throughout Africa, and slaves served to pay off debts, sold by their kin in exchange for goods during famine, or as war captives. The slaves were central to the trans-Saharan trade, and on occasion the slaves would be freed from servitude. Once the Europeans began to exploit the slave trade, they created a forced migration of African slaves into the

The transatlantic slave trade began in the 15th century, after the Portuguese started exploring the coast of West Africa. This had a long term effect on Africa because even though it started out benefiting the upper class in Africa, the long term effect was devastating. When Europeans started to enter Africa, they enjoyed “the triple advantage of guns and other technology, widespread literacy, and the political organization necessary to sustain expensive programs of exploration and conquest”(Doc 4). Africa’s relations with Europe depended on common interests, which Europe did not share. Europe’s contact with Africa, involving economic exchanges and political relationships, was not mutually beneficial.

During the mid-fifteenth century, the transatlantic slave trade occurred throughout the world and lasted well over four hundred years. Oversea trade between Africa and the Portuguese, along with other European kingdoms, formed, which began what is known as the transatlantic slave trade. Along with a variety of goods, copious amounts of slaves, roughly twenty-five million, were traded between the continents of Europe and Africa. Driving the trade were politics, economics, religion, business, and a desire for profit. Along with the majority of the African population being traded elsewhere in the world, the overwhelming amount of deaths and low fertility rate among the indigenous people neared the African culture to distinction. Among the documents provided, all can be grouped into two main groups: attitudes and impact. During the years 1450 to 1800, the Europeans showed a large amount of varied opinions towards the Transatlantic Trade slave and the impact of the trade towards the included civilizations.

European expansion led to a dramatic increase in the slave trade. Traffic of enslaved people was not new. As in other areas of the world, slavery had been practiced in Africa since ancient times. However, the demand for enslaved Africans increased with the European settlement of the Americas in the 1490s and the planting of sugarcane there.

The first African slaves were believed to have landed in Portuguese in 1442, the Portuguese merchants of this time were known to trade goods for slaves with Nigerians. The Portuguese were well known for trading slaves prior to the Europeans discovering America in 1492. According to an article titled The Transatlantic Slave Trade, “By 1490 approximately more than 3,000 slaves a year were being transported to Portugal and Spain from Africa”. Once Europeans colonized American land this began the three-way slave trade between Europe, Africa, and America. Majority of the slaves during this time came from slave traders in Nigeria, which was known to be majorly controlled by the Aro, Oyo, and Hausa groups. These slave trade groups were often under heavy pressure of the slave economy to constantly provide slaves for trading which resulted in war amongst the groups.

Slaves were purchased from West Africa around the 1500s, which started the most repulsive act of injustice on Africans and the creation of slave societies. By this time, the Europeans had realized that Africans were the most credulous targets and would serve as best laborers that this New World exceedingly needed. This slave trade of Africans was driven by Africans rulers need to make more money and therefore increase their power. The kings basically threw their people to the wolves for extremely selfish reasons. This basically perceived the Africans as weak,

European merchants had already been keen on African countries and kingdoms, for example, Ghana and Mali, because of their complex exchanging systems. Brokers then needed to exchange individuals. They took oppressed individuals from western Africa to Europe and the Americas. At first this was on truly a little scale yet the Slave Trade developed amid the seventeenth and eighteenth hundreds of years, as European nations vanquished a significant number of the Caribbean islands and quite a bit of North and South America. Europeans who settled in the Americas were baited by the thought of owning their own particular land and were hesitant to work for others. Convicts from Britain were sent to take a shot at the ranches yet there were never enough thus, to fulfill the enormous interest for work, grower bought

. Before the first Africans arrived in British North America in 1619, more than half a million African captives had already been transported and enslaved in Brazil. By the end of the nineteenth century, that number had risen to more than 4 million. Northern European powers soon followed Portugal and Spain into the transatlantic slave trade. The majority of African captives were carried by the Portuguese, Brazilians, the British, French, and Dutch. British slave traders alone transported 3.5 million Africans to the Americas.

The cause of the african slave trade in the atlantic world happen way back in the year 1500 it would all start when they would use muslim prisoner to go in war they would sell them for cheap so they can go in for war and at first they thought it was a dumb idea because they thought they wouldn't of made any profit because they wouldn't of sold any slaves but it turned out to be one of the thing that made them profit.

In the 1500s to 1900s, Africans were taken from Africa and brought across the Atlantic Ocean where they were traded and sold for labor in the New World, which included the Caribbean Islands, and North and South America. Around the 1600s, the Europeans captured and bought slaves, which began the Atlantic Slave trade and the forced migration of about 24 million people from Africa.

Since the beginning of the 1400’s the European countries became associated with slavery in Africa. International agreement for the suppression of white slave traffic was signed in 1904 as to protect white women and

The history of slavery comes from many cultures, nationalities, and religions from ancient times to the present day. The social, economic, and legal positions of slaves were significantly different in systems of slavery and in different times. However, Portugal started the European slave trade with Africa. Prince Henry sent a trading expedition to Africa, which explored the continent in 1441, and by 1444, a cargo of 235 enslaved Africans had been brought to Lagos in Portugal. The Portuguese used slaves to work on sugar plantations off an island in Africa, by 1460. The Portuguese built the first slave fort in 1481, on the coast of modern Ghana. This was called Elmina Castle, which was the headquarters of the Portuguese slave traders. In the early seventeenth century, Portugal was a major trader in enslaved Africans. By this time, Portugal had permission to supply the Spanish colonies with slaves. This meant that the Portuguese were not only buying slaves for themselves, but for Spanish as well. This added to the total number of slaves that Portuguese ships carried. Records show the number of slaves imported from Africa was 4,650,000 slaves (i.e., footnote 1).

Slavery has played a strong role in African society from as early as prehistoric times, continuing to the modern era. Early slavery within Africa was a common practice in many societies, and was very central to the country’s economy. Beginning around the 7th century, two groups of non-African slave traders significantly altered the traditional African forms of slavery that had been practiced in the past. Native Africans were now being forced to leave the country to be used as slaves. The two major slave trades, trans-Saharan and trans-Atlantic, became central to the organization of Africa and its societies until the modern era. Slavery and the slave trade strongly affected African society, and