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Trans Atlantic Slave Trade

1450-1867
Essential Questions
• What motivated Europeans to take Africans?
Portugal: Foundation of Slave Trade in
Africa
• Starts transporting slaves 50 years prior to
Columbus
• Prince Henry= goes to African coast for gold as
well as to chart sea route to Asia in 1442
– Gold dust is found and 10 Africans are transported
to Portugal in 1442.
– Trading port is established on Guinea coast (gold,
ivory and eventually the export of slaves)
Differences between Slavery in the Old
and New Worlds
• Africa Americas
– Slavery is NOT •Slavery is forced and
hereditary herditary
•Initially, all Africans in
– Existed in Africa for
the New World are
1,000s of years
slaves
What motivations to take Africans?
Dominance or Greed?
• “Captured by sword,
partly by means”- John
Hawkins

• Interest in Africans:
experience in farming,
strangers in a strange
land, less likely to flee
Slaves in Europe

• Africans, mostly from


Senegambia, could be
found in Spain as early
Juan de Pareja
as 1447.
• King Ferdinand grants
the first license to carry
Africans to the Americas
in 1510.
The Atlantic Slave Trade
The Atlantic Slave Trade
• By the beginning of the 16th century, almost
200,000 Africans had been transported to
Europe and the Caribbean Islands
Plantations in the new world
• New markets of sugar and
tobacco

• Workers are needed


• Native Americans that
were used as forced
labor either succumbed
to disease or fled to the
country side
Triangular
Trade
Triangular Trade
1. Manufactured goods from Europe to west
Africa (weapons/iron)
2. Traders exchange goods for Africans
3. Cross Atlantic with Slaves
4. Sugar, Tobacco, and Rum is grown, processed
and sold to Europe.
African Leaders
• Tribal leaders: Often
“give” tribal members to
merchants in exchange
for iron, guns, knives
brought from Europe
• African Merchants:
benefit economically.
• Both leaders and
merchants play a willing
role for guns, gold, goods
Middle Passage: Africa to Western
Hemisphere
• 20 percent die during journey
• Less than 5 feet of head room, can’t lift, turn
head.
• Air is unfit for breathing
• Many went on hunger strike, those who did
were tortured.

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