Africa+and+the+Atlantic+Slave+Trade

The Atlantic Slave Trade M.I: The Portuguese was solely responsible for the Atlantic Slave trade. It began with them trading goods such as gold and pepper with African kingdoms such as Benin and soon they developed diplomatic relations with them. They then began taking the ruler’s subject under enslavement and then began raiding for slaves eventually they discovered that trading slaves with local lords was more secure and profitable.

Trend toward Expansion M.I There is a lot of speculation about how many slaves were exported from Africa and how many slaves were taken by each nation because they were needed and supplied all over the world by both Christians and Muslims. From 1450-1850 millions of slaves would be exported to the new colonies which were needed to replace the loss of population within the slave community. · The number of slaves increased not only by the century but mostly by year. It is believed that in the 1th century alone the number of slaves increased by 16,000 per year. As it turned out slaves were needed everywhere from the British North America to the Caribbean. · During the Atlantic slave trade, majority of the slaves came from the Senegambia region but it soon shifted to Central Africa. Wars were a protagonist for the slave trade in Benin 10,000 slaves were exported per year. · About 12 million slaves were exported in all but only 11 to 10 million slaves made it to the new world. The number also involves the slaves exported by the Atlantic Ocean. It excludes exports made by the older trans-Saharan, Red Sea and east African trades that occurred at the hands of the Muslim. Demographic Patterns M.I: As the slave trade was in effect, the population of west and central Africa was reduced by about one-half to its full potential. Crops such as maize and manioc were then introduced to Africa and helped the continent recover from its losses to the slave trade. women were valued more in North Africa and the Middle East · Majority of the trans-Saharan slave trade consisted of women to be used as concubines and domestic servants in North Africa and the Middle East. · Mother and Children who were spared were usually enslaved by their captives in Africa but some were used to extend existing king groups. · The Atlantic slave trade focused more on males because owners wanted workers for heavy labor for plantations and mining and buying children risked high levels of mortality so they were spared. Organization of the Trade
 * Portuguese ships established factories along the coast of the Cape of Good Hope. Among them El Mina was the most important of all because it was located in the heart of the gold- producing region of the forest zone. The new comers were allowed to exercise some control with only a few personnel. Since they could not overpower the larger African states they built forts with the consent of local lords who benefited from European Commodities and at times their military support in local wars.
 * The success of the Portuguese was the result from their ability to penetrate existing African trade routes. The Portuguese also provided the rulers with slaves in return for goods such as ivory, pepper, animal skins and gold when they first came on the coast of Africa.
 * The new comers looked at Africans as if they were savages and pagans but who were capable of being civilized while the Africans who at first didn’t know what to make of them but tried their best to fit them into their everyday lives and used their influence in portraits and monuments.
 * Before there had taken over Kongo they had passed by small states in the Senegambia region in which they weren’t impressed by anything but whom they also feared due to the fact that they were traditional enemies, for they were Muslims.
 * Attempts to civilize the Africans involved missionary efforts which were made to convert the rulers of Benin, a kingdom that had impressed them both by the power of the ruler and the magnificence of his court. Soon attempts were made to Europeanize the kingdom after the royal family was converted and diplomatic relations were developed in which Portugal and Kongo exchanged ambassadors and dealt with each other of equal terms. This all came to an end when the ruler Nzinga Mvemba was forced to end all sorts of connection with the new comers since they had enslaved his subjects but attempts to stop them were only partially successful due to the fact that Portugal had control over Kong’s ability to communicate with the outside world and also dominated over Kongo’s trade. Soon Luanda was a permanent settlement established by the new comers in the 1570s and the basis Portuguese colony became Angola. They also established an outpost on Mozambique Island and then secured bases at Kilwa, Mombasa, Sofala, and other ports that gave them access to the gold trade from Monomatapa.
 * Portuguese settlers in east Africa were minimal and the effort was primarly commercial and militaristic but accompanied by a strong missionary effort.
 * The system of fortified trading stations, combination of force and diplomacy, alliances with local rulers and the predominance of commercial relations continued as the principal pattern of European contact with Africa. Since in the 17th century, the Dutch, English, French and others choose to adopt the Portuguese strategy and soon were competing with them.
 * The trans-Saharan slave trade had brought a small number of black Africans into the Mediterranean and now the Portuguese had opened a direct channel to Sub- Saharan Africa. The fist slaves set foot in Portugal in 1441. The slave trade began to grow and soon slaves from Africa became the primary plantation laborers as countries such as Brazil were beginning to develop. The slaves worked on sugar plantations on the Atlantic Islands of Madeira and the Canaries and Sao Tome but they were soon sent to the Americas and worked on other crops with no restraint which satisfied the owners.
 * For a long time the Portuguese had set foot in Africa with the intent to colonize and receive goods abut soon there new goal was accelerated to slaves and the first Europeans raided slaves but found that trade was more secure and profitable and as a result the number of slaves that set foot in Portugal became multiplied by 10.

M.I: During the slave trade, there was no clarity of who was in control and it wasn’t really clear if all the profits were worth the risk that were reduced to as low as 10% in some countries.


 * The Portuguese at first controlled the slave trade for about a century and a half until it was rivaled by the by the Europeans on the African Coast. Major loss was the capture of El Mina by the Dutch in 1637. They supplied slaves to their colony in Brazil and Spanish settlements in America.
 * The growth of slave-based plantations colonies in the Caribbean and elsewhere led to a competition between Portugal and the Other European nations.
 * The English chartered the Royal African Company that helped them have their own source of slaves for their colonies in Barbados, Jamaica, and Virginia, this pretty soon led to every nation trying to get a fort that provided them with slaves.
 * Having a fort on Africa also proved a death sentence to the newcomers since of tropical diseases such as malaria vacated the place.
 * The Spanish developed a paying system in which a healthy man was called an Indies piece and women and children were sold at fractions of that value.
 * There was also a triangular trade that existed. In this trade the slaves were carried to America; sugar, tobacco and other goods were carried to Europe and then European products were sent to Africa and the triangle soon began again.
 * The slave trade contributed to the emerging of the capatalism world in the Atlantic because it was essental in the late 1800's to the economy, and the importance of slaves was increasing them, it was profitable enough for merchants and an antagonist for the expansion of western Europe and in a way this was a way for Africa to be linked to the intergrated economy of the world. 