North African Slave Trade

And it was natural to consider imported blacks as slaves,...". Gaining more profit and land was their only objective. Europeans took over African countries and captured the African Americans. African American slaves were transported through packed slave ships, killing millions in the process. Eventually, they were bought and sold throughout America and were forced to do

A few years later the practice was arrogated by western Europeans. During "new slavery", millions of Africans were shipped in appalling surroundings across the Atlantic. The African slaves faced different forms of dehumanization. In 1450, the Spanish and Portuguese built huge slave-labor plantations that were located on their islands in the Mediterranean and Atlantic. The slaves were worked and sold on the islands until their cruel deaths.

Slavery, an institutional system that dehumanizes all the people, such as the Africans and inhabitants of the new world, through hard agricultural labor and harsh treatment. It originated in the European continent. Slavery then was brought to the new world to be used as a working force. The main customers for the slaves were the people amongst the Spanish and American colonies. The slaves were brought to these colonies for similar reasons, for example, agricultural labor.

African Elites often teamed with Portugal to strengthen slave trade relationships. They traded slaves to Portugal in exchange for European guns, cattle, and horses. Both the Africans and Portuguese are responsible for exchanging slaves and exporting goods. (Document. 14.3).

The European discovery of the Americas quickly led to the establishment of plantations to grow cash crops such as sugar, coffee and cotton. To generate the largest profit possible, slaves were used to cultivate these crops. Most of these slaves were taken from Africa. Soon, a system of triangular trade was formed. Goods and rum were shipped to Africa in exchange for enslaved people.

Economic factors created an enormous market for African slaves. Slave traders found it very profitable to send slaves to the New World, where slaves were needed to work on the farms. Without laws in place to prevent this trade, slavery became crucial.

The use of slaves has always been present in the world since the beginning of civilization, although the use and treatment of those slaves has differed widely through time and geographic location. Different geographies call for different types of work ranging from labor-intensive sugar cultivation and production in the tropics to household help in less agriculturally intensive areas. In addition to time and space, the mindsets and beliefs of the people in those areas affect how the slaves will be treated and how “human” those slaves will be perceived to be. In the Early Modern Era, the two main locations where slaves were used most extensively were the European dominated Americas and the Muslim Empires. The American slavery system and the

Europeans in the times of the slave trade from time to time vindicated enslavement of Africans by indicating that slavery by that time occurred on that continent. African communities established many forms of slavery and confinement that mixed from a kind of labor position to something that is more like slavery in which human beings are measured as things. Slavery has been around since the beginning of time. The intentions of slavery is mainly financial, slaves were affordable and non- essential. They were often shipped form poverty- stricken areas with an outstanding source of labor at a low price.

The Europeans abused the slave trade in order to gain the work they need to prosper in the new world around the 1680s (Jones, 86). The African slave trade was very dispersed across the coast because each of the slave trading points were controlled by different European powers which did include both Spain and England (Jones, 86). Even though both of these countries abused the slave trade, the Spanish was a lot more interested in the slave trade more than the English. Economic gains of the Spanish and arguably the southern colonies of the England were revolved around the African Americans used as slaves, however the northern parts soon found out that it was immoral to have slavery decades later. So generally they did not want to have any part of the slave trade and left that piece of economic growth to the South.

Initially these slaves were not from Africa but indentured servants or white slaves who had voluntarily mortgaged themselves for a better life in America. At the beginning of the 1700’s there were 100,000 white slaves in the southern colonies working for landowners that came to dominate the agriculture and commerce. This system was misused and once free little or no land was available as promised. This in turn led to dissent, rebellion and a great deal of tension. When there were no longer any willing whites to enslave these landowners turned their eyes toward Africa.

With the conquest of the newly-found Africa, came the introduction of slavery, which led to the enslavement of nearly 7.7 million African slaves by Europe between 1492 and 1820. The Europeans believed that this New World would provide them with the riches that couldn’t be found in Europe. Along with these riches, Europeans were also in search of religious and further social equality.

In the New World of freshly established British colonies in America, European settlers felt they could justify enslaving Africans because of their dark skin and different culture. The ignorant colonists told themselves it was acceptable to treat Africans as animals of a different species and to dismiss their sense of humanity by putting themselves above the Africans in their minds and in the social hierarchy of colonial America. From 1619 to 1750 when the American colonies were in need of a larger labor force, it was easier for the colonists to enslave Africans because they viewed the darker-skinned race as being inferior and uncivilized. Europeans ignorantly turned their heads away from the similarities between African and colonial societies

Only three percent of the international slave trade arrived in the new colonies. Many African was sold into slavery because their family owed a debt and they had no other means to pay for it. Sometimes an individual voluntarily enter into a service contract, so they can pay off debt. Furthermore the individual would work for a specified period then eventually gain their freedom. When the first Africans slaves came to the new colonies they operated under a similar arrangement.

Slavery has existed for as long as we know. Many people assume it started with Europeans bringing Africans to the Americas. Then assuming this was done due just to the fact that they were black. However, there have been slaves of all colors across the world. “The basis, of the Atlantic economy was the slave trade and the new products it enabled.”

It is merely the motivation that has changed over time, as compared to the commencement of the same. As analysed by Marcus Rediker in his magnum opus, ‘The Slave Ship’ ; Africans would enslave people for different reasons contrary to the modern stereotype, profit. He highlights how war was a major source of slaves in West Africa, and had gone on much before the arrival of the Europeans. The memoirs of an Italian born French slave trader, Captain Theodore Canot, can testify to this claim.