Atlantic slave trade

[26] In the 15th century, however, new European developments in seafaring technologies, such as the invention of the caravel, resulted in ships being better equipped to deal with the tidal currents, and could begin traversing the Atlantic Ocean; the Portuguese set up a Navigator's School (although there is much debate about whether it existed and if it did, just what it was).

Additionally, there was the desire to create an alternative trade network to that controlled by the Muslim Ottoman Empire of the Middle East, which was viewed as a commercial, political and religious threat to European Christendom.

[40][41][42] Since the fall of the Western Roman Empire, various systems of slavery continued in the successor Islamic and Christian kingdoms of the peninsula through the early modern era of the Atlantic slave trade.

[43][44] In 1441–1444, Portuguese traders first captured Africans on the Atlantic coast of Africa (in what is today Mauritania), taking their captives to slavery in Europe, and established a fort for the slave trade at the Bay of Arguin.

[65][66] In 1493, Pope Alexander VI issued a papal bull called Inter Caetera which gave Spain and Portugal rights to claim and colonize all non-Christian lands in the Americas and enslave Native Americans and Africans.

Through these and other writings, European writers established a hitherto unheard of connection between a cursed people, Africa and slavery, which laid the ideological groundwork for justifying the transatlantic slave trade.

[91] A reminder of this practice is documented in debates over the trade in the British Parliament in 1806: "All the old writers ... concur in stating not only that wars are entered into for the sole purpose of making slaves, but that they are fomented by Europeans, with a view to that object.

[100] As historian John Thornton remarked, "the actual motivation for European expansion and for navigational breakthroughs was little more than to exploit the opportunity for immediate profits made by raiding and the seizure or purchase of trade commodities".

The Guyanese historian Walter Rodney (1972) has argued that it was an unequal relationship, with Africans being forced into a "colonial" trade with the more economically developed Europeans, exchanging raw materials and human resources (i.e. slaves) for manufactured goods.

[150] The Atlantic slave trade was the result of, among other things, labour shortage, itself in turn created by the desire of European colonists to exploit New World land and resources for capital profits.

"[154] In a 2015 paper, economist Elena Esposito argued that the enslavement of Africans in colonial America was attributable to the fact that the American south was sufficiently warm and humid for malaria to thrive; the disease had debilitating effects on the European settlers.

For example, the Akan, Etsi, Fetu, Eguafo, Agona, and Asebu people organized into the Fante coalition and fought African and European slave raiders and protected themselves from capture and enslavement.

To revisit the issue of intent already touched on: If an institution is deliberately maintained and expanded by discernible agents, though all are aware of the hecatombs of casualties it is inflicting on a definable human group, then why should this not qualify as genocide?

"[212] Hartman highlights how the Atlantic slave trade created millions of corpses but, unlike the concentration camp or the gulag, extermination was not the final objective; it was a corollary to the making of commodities.

[158] Some African groups proved particularly adept and brutal at the practice of enslaving, such as Bono State, Oyo, Benin, Igala, Kaabu, Ashanti, Dahomey, the Aro Confederacy and the Imbangala war bands.

[217][218][page needed] In letters written by the Manikongo, Nzinga Mbemba Afonso, to the King João III of Portugal, he writes that Portuguese merchandise flowing in is what is fueling the trade in Africans.

It is the source and the glory of their wealth ... the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery ...[226][227]In 1807, the UK Parliament passed the Bill that abolished the trading of slaves.

For example, historian Martha Santos writes of the slave trade, female reproduction, and abolition in Brazil: "A proposal centered on the 'emancipation of the womb', authored by the influential jurist and politician Agostinho Marques Perdigão Malheiro, was officially endorsed by Pedro II as the most practical means to end slavery in a controlled and peaceful manner.

The 1677 work The Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indians, for example, documents English colonial prisoners of war (not, in fact, opposing combatants, but imprisoned members of English-allied forces) being enslaved and sent to Caribbean destinations.

It has been estimated that the profits of the slave trade and of West Indian plantations created up to one-in-twenty of every pound circulating in the British economy at the time of the Industrial Revolution in the latter half of the 18th century.

Patrick Manning has shown that the slave trade did have a profound impact on African demographics and social institutions, but criticized Inikori's approach for not taking other factors (such as famine and drought) into account, and thus being highly speculative.

These arguments do not refute the main body of the Williams thesis, which presents economic data to show that the slave trade was minor compared to the wealth generated by sugar and slavery itself in the British Caribbean.

[343][342][344][page needed] Karl Marx, in his influential economic history of capitalism, Das Kapital, wrote that "... the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signaled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production".

In addition to the depopulation Africa experienced because of the slave trade, African nations were left with severely imbalanced gender ratios, with females comprising up to 65 percent of the population in hard-hit areas such as Angola.

[347] Walter Rodney argued that the export of so many people had been a demographic disaster which left Africa permanently disadvantaged when compared to other parts of the world, and it largely explains the continent's continued poverty.

[410] Prime Minister Palmerston detested slavery, and in Nigeria in 1851 he took advantage of divisions in native politics, the presence of Christian missionaries, and the maneuvers of British consul John Beecroft to encourage the overthrow of King Kosoko.

[424] Historians João José Reis, Sidney Chalhoub, Robert W. Slenes and Flávio dos Santos Gomes proposed that another reason for the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade to Brazil was the Malê Revolt in 1835.

The more "recent" argument of a "moral shift" (the basis of the previous lines of this article) is described by Hardt and Negri as an "ideological" apparatus in order to eliminate the sentiment of guilt in western society.

[2] At a UN conference on the Atlantic slave trade in 2001, the Dutch Minister for Urban Policy and Integration of Ethnic Minorities Roger van Boxtel said that the Netherlands "recognizes the grave injustices of the past."

[459][460] On 24 February 2007, the Virginia General Assembly passed House Joint Resolution Number 728[461] acknowledging "with profound regret the involuntary servitude of Africans and the exploitation of Native Americans, and call for reconciliation among all Virginians".

Reproduction of a handbill advertising a slave auction in Charleston , British Province of South Carolina , in 1769
Portuguese mariners used caravel ships and traveled south along the West African coast and colonized Cape Verde in 1462. [ 33 ]
The Spanish corsair Amaro Pargo , a well-known privateer of the Golden Age of Piracy , participated in the African slave trade in Hispanic America .
A map of the Spanish Empire (red) and Portuguese Empires (blue) in the period of their personal union (1581–1640)
Noah curses Ham by Gustave Doré – the curse of Ham was used as a justification to enslave Africans. [ 70 ]
A depiction of enslaved people transported across the Sahara Desert
Enslaved Africans in chains marched to the East coast of Africa by Arab slavers
Elmina Castle in the Guinea coast , present-day Ghana , was built in 1482 by Portuguese traders and was the first European-slave trading post in Sub-Saharan Africa. [ 96 ] [ 97 ]
Established in Ghana by the Swedish African Company , Cape Coast Castle was built in 1653 as a trading post that later expanded to other European nations. With the arrival of British colonization, Cape Coast Castle became the headquarters of British colonial administration. "Throughout the 18th century, the Castle served as a 'grand emporium' of the British slave trade ." [ 102 ] [ 103 ] [ 104 ]
Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba fought against the expansion of the Portuguese Empire and their slave trade in a thirty-year war in present-day Angola.
Map of Meridian Line set under the Treaty of Tordesillas
The Slave Trade by Auguste François Biard , 1840
A slave market in Brazil
Island of Gorée, Senegal
Portrait of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo (Job ben Solomon) , painted by William Hoare in the 18th century
Wedgwood anti-slavery medallion , produced in 1787 by Josiah Wedgwood
Slaves embarked to America from 1450 until 1866 by country
Slave traders in Gorée , Senegal, 18th century
A slave market in Dahomey
Boukary Koutou 's Mossi cavalry returning with captives from a raid, Ouagadougou -
Burning of a Village in Africa, and Capture of its Inhabitants. To escape slave raids some Africans escaped into swamp regions or to other areas.
On July 1, 1839, enslaved Mende people aboard the Amistad revolted and took control of the ship. This incident led to a Supreme Court case in 1841 . [ 177 ]
A slave being inspected
Major slave trading regions of Africa, 15th–19th centuries
Slave trade out of Africa, 1500–1900
Diagram of a slave ship from the Atlantic slave trade. From an Abstract of Evidence delivered before a select committee of the House of Commons in 1790 and 1791.
Diagram of a large slave ship. Thomas Clarkson : The cries of Africa to the inhabitants of Europe , c. 1822
A Liverpool Slave Ship by William Jackson. Merseyside Maritime Museum
Enslaved people inside a sugar boiling house on the island of Antigua in 1823
Afro Cubans working in a sugar plantation
Enslaved people working on a coffee plantation in Brazil
Advertisement from J. M. Wilson for sale of Maryland and Virginia slaves. Maryland and Virginia sold thousands of enslaved people to the Deep South .
The Gulf of Mexico was utilized by privateers in Florida, Louisiana, and Texas to smuggle enslaved Africans from Cuba.
These anti-malarial pills were used by travelers or people living in areas where malaria was common. This photo is a bottle of 100 anti-malarial pills from London, England in 1891.
Charles II of Spain
A sugarcane plantation in Trinidad , 1836, lithograph. In 1834, Britain abolished slavery in its colonies. [ 288 ]
Bunce Island in Sierra Leone exported tens of thousands of Africans to the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia. Gadsden's Wharf in Charleston, South Carolina, received the majority of imported slaves from Bunce Island. [ 302 ] African Americans in the Sea Islands can trace their ancestry to Sierra Leone. [ 303 ] [ 304 ]
A slave sale transaction in Rio de Janeiro
West Central Africa was the most common source region of Africa, and Portuguese America (Brazil) was the most common destination.
Slaves processing tobacco in 17th-century Virginia
Cowrie shells were used as money in the slave trade.
Slaving guns (Birmingham History Galleries). In the second half of the 18th century, Europeans sold 300,000 rifles a year in Africa, maintaining the endemic state of war in which men, who were taken prisoner, were sold to supply the demand for slaves. [ 334 ]
This map argues that import prohibitions and high duties on sugar were artificially inflating prices and inhibiting manufacturing in England. 1823
A Linen Market with enslaved Africans. West Indies, c. 1780
Elmina Castle was a slave fort in Ghana built in 1482 by the Portuguese and later used by the British colonial administration as its headquarters from 1872 into the 20th century, following which they used it as a prison to incarcerate African citizens. [ 352 ]
Africa before and after colonization
West Indian Creole woman, with her black servant, circa 1780
Scientific racism
"Am I not a woman and a sister?" antislavery medallion from the late 18th century
Olaudah Equiano was a member of the ' Sons of Africa ' an abolitionist group of 12 African men that campaigned against slavery and the slave trade. [ 386 ] [ 387 ]
William Wilberforce (1759–1833), politician and philanthropist who was a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade
Abolition of Slavery The Glorious 1st of August 1838
Capture of slave ship El Almirante by the British Royal Navy in the 1800s. HMS Black Joke freed 466 slaves. [ 415 ]
The image contrasts two scenes: Abraham Lincoln advocating equality with a worker, while McClellan shakes hands with Jefferson Davis, representing the Southern slave system.
Haitian Revolution
Slave dungeon inside Osu Castle in Ghana
Cape Coast slave castle in Ghana
Slave Port in Badagry, Lagos State Nigeria