Summary: The Causes Of Slavery In The World

It was seen as necessity for a country to have slaves now since they needed them to do the work since the newly converted Christians had protection from slavery from the crown. Merrick Whitcomb describes this in his, Gold of the Indies (Doc 1). Whitcomb also goes on to describe how the Europeans treat the slaves imported from Africa. This is the first shift in the gradual switch to more humanitarian ideals.

The African slave trade was very harsh for many reasons. This is because the idea of capture/sale was inhumane, blacks were kept in cages, conditions of ships were horrible, and one out of every three blacks died on the way over. By 1800, ten to fifteen million blacks had been transported as slaves to the Americas; while in Africa, fifty million human beings lives' were lost to death and slavery in those years. Blacks were easier to enslave than whites and Indians, but still were trouble to keep under thumb. These Afro-Americans rebelled by often running away and attempt to find family or sabotaging their work.

The enslaved Africans were viewed as property, meaning they could be sold and shipped off across the sea for work and labor. The Transatlantic slave trade expanded despite the consequences for the enslaved africans because of economic success, transportation of new goods to new places, and

These enslaved people were taken to the Americas in a deadly journey known as the Middle Passage. The Americas then traded cash crops and raw goods for these slaves. This trade system became known as the Atlantic Slave Trade System. The Atlantic Slave Trade System during the period of 1550 CE to the 1700s CE caused the displacement Africans from their native lands,

Furthermore, these slaves were transported on a “slave ship” which tightly held 562 slaves and were infiltrated with life-threatening diseases (Document 7). While aboard the ship, the slaves were branded with their owner’s mark and were crammed so tightly into the ship that they couldn’t even slightly change their position (Documents 7 & 8). Since European ports facilitated goods entering by sea, slaves were traded in these crowded ports and were then taken to the New World (Document 6). The slave trade not only had an impact on Africa as it caused small African states to disappear and new powerful kingdoms to arrive, but also affected the economic development of the New World and introduced debilitating diseases there as

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 institution of slavery almost instantly developed between 1607 and 1750 because the source of labor shifted its roots from indentured servants from Europe to slaves from Africa was founded on a religious base with the objective of converting more people to Christianity and slaves were easily seen as property. Slavery expanded and developed between 1608 and 1750 because the source of labor changed from indentured servants to cheap and reliable slaves. Indentured servants many white and European began to realize the unjustified system of labor in the colonies so they began to revolt against their masters. (Document 5) Plantation owners were upset with servants who thought dependently so they switched to a different source of labor, slaves mostly from Africa, in hopes of enforcing more restrictions and buying slaves for cheap. Evidently, this thinking became popular among plantation owners because eventually, the system of slavery overtook the indentured servants.

The Europeans had such a high demand for slaves, they packed them in by the hundreds to sell them to those overseas. It did not matter that some died along the way; all that mattered to the Europeans was that they made money of off the sale and work of the slaves. James Ramsay wrote in the Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies that “In the place of decency, sympathy, morality, and religion; slavery produces cruelty and oppression” (Document 7). This quote describes how the slaves were treated. For something as small as not working or eating the sugar sane, the slaves were brutally punished.

In the early 17th century, colonists in North America turned to slaves as an inexpensive and abundant work force. Because slaves aided in the production of lucrative crops such as cotton, slaves became important to the economic foundation of America. Yet by the 1790s, slavery was in decline due to land exhaustion and the coming of the Second Great Awakening. From 1775 to 1830, many African Americans were emancipated, yet during this same time period the institution of slavery expanded hugely. This seemingly paradoxical trend occurred predominantly as a result of differences in two geographic regions.

The Atlantic Slave Trade caused many political, social, and economical effects on the US. There are debates over reparations, and whether the confederate flag should be hung up. It also affected the Civil Rights Movement greatly and contributed to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and contributed to racism. First of all, what was the Atlantic Slave Trade?

Only twenty slaves came over on the first ship, that number would slowly increase to nearly 5 percent of inhabitants by 1675. By 1750, that mire 5 percent would drastically multiply to nearly 40 percent in Virginia alone. One major influence of the “slave

Chapter 3, The “Giddy Multitude”: The Hidden Origins of Slavery, in the book A Different Mirror focused the development of slavery in the Americas. Throughout the chapter, Takaki makes many references to Shakespeare’s, “The Tempest”, and relates much of what happened in this time period to the play. Takaki starts outs explaining the arrival colonists coming over as indentured servants. Although they were white, indentured servants were being outcasted by the wealthy white men. Their intentions of finding wealth and land were soon confuted by the discrimination they received.

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.

The scope of slavery varied based on how practical and profitable slaves would be in that time period and location. Slavery had many impacts on society as a whole and influenced political, economic, and cultural aspects which all demonstrate the development of slavery in the 17th and 18th century. By the 17th century many Indians had been killed off by diseases and many white indentured servants no longer were willing to work (Foner, pg. 94). At first, the majority of slaves were sent to Brazil and the West Indies with less than 5% sent to the colonies (Foner, pg. 98).

Men were chained by each other’s packed in cargo they had to lie in each other’s blood and urine. The development of the Atlantic slave trade enslaved far greater numbers of Africans and increased exploitation of slave labour from Africa to New World. Slaves were exported from Africa to America for a hard work firstly had to endure inhuman conditions in