The Trans-Atlantic Slave

Trade
By Andrew hall
How did the trans-Atlantic
slave trade begin?

Why did Europeans
choose Africans?
Origins of the trans-Atlantic
Slave Trade
Begin with the Age of Explorationthe
Portuguese, not Columbus!
African and Middle Eastern science and
technology were central
Portuguese explore west coast of Africa,
looking for Asia
Long-distance trading throughout this area, including slaves
European Invasion and
Occupation of the Americas
1441 Portuguese in West Africa
1492 Columbus
1498 Vasco de Gama
1500 Cabral to Brazil
1517 Spain gives Portugal 1
st
Asiento
1542 only African slaves in Spanish
colonies

WHY DID EUROPEANS
NEED SLAVES?

SUGAR AND GOLD
MINING AND MONOCULTURE CASH CROPS
http://www.mariner.org/exploration/mm_images/F2131E26_vol2_p248_MoulinASucre_large.jpg
Slave exports from
Africa
1450-1600 376,000 3.1%
1601-1700 1,868,000 16.0
1701-1800 6,133,000 52.4**
1801-1900 3,330,000 28.5
Total 11,698,000

**This is also the century that most Americans can trace their African ancestors
to.
Destination of Slaves
Europe 2%
U.S. (Mainland North Am.) 5%
Caribbean 42%
Brazil 38%
Spanish Am. 13%
Why did Africans sell
slaves to Europeans?

Were they selling their
own people?
Africans did NOT sell
their own:
Slavery in most of Africa
(and rest of the world!)
Long-distance trading
No racial or national identity
Local and/or lineage loyalty
Prisoners of War or other outsiders
African resistance occurred, but infrequent
How do we depict
the trade?

What do we need the trade
to be?

http://www.nps.gov/history/ethnography/aah/aaheritage/histContextsA.htm
http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/SlaveTrade/collection/large/D001.JPG
http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/SlaveTrade/collection/large/barbotcrevecoeur.JPG
http://exploringafrica.matrix.msu.edu/images/slave_routes.jpg
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/england/1718422.stm
Places in the slave trade
Liverpool
Senegambia
Dahomey
Kongo
Rio de Janeiro
Jamaica
Cuba
Charleston
Boston
Goree Warehouses,
Liverpool
Where the ships were
headed
Goree Island,
Senegal

Omar Ibn Sayyid, 1770-1864
Charleston, South Carolina
1807
Venture Smith, 1729-1805
Born in West Africa
Enslaved at age 6
Marched to the coast
Sold to Rhode Island
ship
Lived in colonial New
England
Purchased self and
family
Africans in America DVD
Chicago and the slave
trade???
Many Black Chicagoans whose families moved here in
the late 19
th
or early 20
th
century came from Mississippi

These Americans may have had ancestors who
experienced the INTERNAL SLAVE TRADE, 1820-1860,
having been marched or shipped from the Upper
South
AND/OR they may have been brought directly in to
the Lower Mississippi by the French during the colonial
period, probably from Senegambia.
Resources for teaching:
Africans in America 4-part video/DVD and
web site http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/

http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/ for narratives
of Africans

http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/ind
ex.php for images of slave trade (also AIA
above)

http://exploringafrica.matrix.msu.edu/teach
ers/curriculum/m7b/activity1.php lesson
plans and overview of slave trade

Book Resources for Teachers
Lindsay, Lisa (2008)
Captives as Commodities:
The Transatlantic Slave
Trade
Thomas, Hugh (1997) The
slave trade : the story of
the Atlantic slave trade,
1440-1870
Klein, Herbert (1999) The
Atlantic Slave Trade
Diouf, Sylvaine A. (1998)
Servants of Allah: African
Muslims Enslaved in the
Americas
Wright, Donald (2000)
African Americans in the
Colonial Era, 2
nd
Ed.
Hine et al. (2006) The
African American
Odyssey (Textbook)