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North American Slave Trade Essay

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Sugar cane, tobacco, and cotton plantations in the New-World were labour intensive and took a lot of manpower to cultivate. To meet that demand for labour, European countries such as Portugal and Britain sailed their ships to West African shores with weapons, manufactured goods and rum to give to the natives in exchange for slaves. The slaves would then be crammed into the ships and made to live in subhuman conditions so they would be taken to the Americas. More than 20% of the slaves wouldn't survive the arduous journey, some of them would commit suicide to avoid further suffering, some would die of disease and some would even be thrown overboard as a mean of discipline.
The slave trade has had many long and short term effects, in fact I’d …show more content…

To justify slavery, Europeans claimed that Africans were biologically different to “normal” humans and they’re destined to be slaves. This aspect of slavery is seldom mentioned in text books and is overlooked by many which is odd as racism is still a part of North American and European culture.
The slave trade made Britain very rich which in turn lead to the Industrial Revolution. The crops grown by the slaves were luxury products such as tobacco, cocoa, and sugar. This allowed the British to have very high profit margins when selling them to their colonies. It’s estimated that Britain made £3.8M (£450M adjusted for inflation) from slave based agriculture and £60M(£8 BILLION adjusted for inflation) from slave sales. These profits helped finance everything from cotton factories to James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine.
To conclude, the slave trade has had a huge impact on our world and and had more effects than any other trade route. It has a played a massive role in shaping the world we live in and we can still see its effects hundreds and hundreds of years after it

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