TRANSATLANTIC SAVERY.

Slavery the barbaric ritual of owning human beings as one’s property began after
the emergence of great explorers who discovered the new world of the North,
Central and South America. One of these great explorers was Christopher Colombus,
son of a Spanish weaver and an Italian mother.
Colombus was born in the sea fearing city of Genoa, and as a young man went on
trading voyages. But his main aim was to find a way to the riches of the East,
that Marco Polo and the rest had, described by sailing west across the Atlantic
Ocean. After many failed attempts of gaining support for his journey; Colombus
still determined moved to Spain, where he got the approval of queen Isabella and
king Ferdinand.
Fainally his journey began on third August 1492, although others had almost
certainly gone before him, for Colombus the Atlantic voyage was a great leap into
the unknown. After an exciting though difficult journey he found the new world and
discovered the riches of gold, silver and vast fertile land which would be good
for future plantations.
From 1493 onwards a huge numbers of Europeans left their countries to move to
the place the called the new world. After Christopher Colombus died in 1506, many
rich traders took advantage of the land, and that was the start of something that
would change history for ever.
Africa in the fifteen hundreds was a continent with many kingdoms and empires
the richest African rulers commanded trade in gold, ivory and slaves these goods
attracted European traders who gathered to do business in Timbuktu, a city at the
southern edge of the Sahara desert. At this era the desert was the center of
trade.
The continent of Africa had a long history of slavery, but until the early
sixteenth century this act was being practiced, on a small scale. Egyptian
pyramids were built by thousands of slaves who were convicts or people who could
not pay their debts, but that was the ancient times. Before this event, most
people who were captured were taken as prisoners of war or as punishment of crime.
Some of these prisoners were sold to Arab traders who sold them on as servants for
higher profits, at this stage the situation began to change because the Europeans
started to visit the coast of Africa.
The Dutch who now had power over the African people on the southern tip of
Africa could not supply adequate labour supply from the Khoi who were the natives.
The Dutch then forced them to resort to slavery, but in this case these slaves
were treated quite well. More effort went into educating them, than into educating
the Dutch children.
Elsewhere, Europeans colonized America and enslaved the natives to do their
farm work for them. But bad conditions and diseases wiped the native people, so
the Europeans had to replace the locals with convicts who eventually died with the
same conditions as the natives. The traders then looked to Africa for slaves and
that is when slave trade began in a large scale.
Soon many innocent Africans from the interior were captured Chained together
so that they would not get away and were forced to march to the coast. Eventually
these slaves were sold to European slave traders who put them on ships which were
specially designed to carry more than four hundred people packed in as tightly as
possible on a two month voyage from West Africa to the Americas.
Conditions on board the ship were terrible, with not enough light, air, food or
water. The slaves were chained together and crammed and stuffed in a small chamber
in which they could not move about.
Whippings and other harsh tortures were common practices aboard the ship.
More then twenty million Africans were captured and sold in slavery over a period
of three hundred years one fourth of these two million never reached the Americas.
They died on board the ship and their bodies were thrown into the sea.
The ones who survived were brought to the plantations and these plantations
were commonly large rice, sugar, tobacco or cotton plantations which were all
money making instruments at the age of discovery. These slaves also worked in
ports to offload and load very heavy goods. They were often separated from their
families and were sold to different slave owners to prevent the slaves from making
plans to escape.
These slaves faced hard times on the plantations where the work was heavy and
the hours were long. Their accommodation was poor and they were badly fed .Slaves
had to wear a heavy collar to stop them from lying down and to make sure that they
would not rest whilst working.
Many slaves were whipped or beaten for the smallest mistakes and many died
soon after arriving on the plantations .Even the strongest rarely survived for
more then ten years and very few ever saw home again.
In Brazil export production of sugar in the sixteen and seventeen centuries
depended entirely on slave labour.While the Brazilian gold boom of the seventeenth
century brought many European traders to the country, and the processing and
extracting of the gold depended completely on African slave trade. This brought a
devastating impact on African societies and it destroyed entire kingdoms in Africa
as others grew to their peaks.
The slave trade reached its peak in the eighteen hundreds, where between
thirty to forty million people were shipped from West Africa to America. By now
about ninety percent of Jamaica’s populations were of African origin. But by now
people were coming to their senses and were campaigning against slavery but it was
just the beginning.
Slavery in the new world lasted for almost four hundred years. In1713
Great Britain took control of the profitable slave trade from Spain. Through out
the years of slavery, there were numerous slave revolts, most rebellions failed
but some slaves did gain their freedom. In the 1790’s slaves on the islands of
Haiti led a successful rebellion to gain their freedom. Haiti had the first
government led by blacks in the Americas.
It was not until 1865 after a bitter civil war that the four million African
American slaves were freed; and from that day on Abraham Lincoln the sixteenth
president of the United States of America abolished slave trade and never had
human kind seen freedom given at once to so many. Five years later in 1870 slave
trade ended in the Americas and in the next two years it vanished from the face of
the earth.
As the Lord created Adam and Eve, they lived in peace and harmony with
every other living the creature whether in the deep slumbering ocean or the vast
and mystic land as it was a command by the Lord. So all man whether black or
white, old or younge from East to West and from north to south have an equal right
to live in this world!!