Facts
New World – Colonial America
Old World – most of Europe Especially England
Slave Background
- Has been going on for very long time
- Can be dated back to Ancient Egypt
- One of biggest roles that slavery had in a civilization would have been in Rome
- Very important in growing food in latifndias
- Also in colonial America it wasn’t just Africans as slaves, Natives were also tried but colonists had better luck with Africans
Atlantic Slavery Trade
- Many historians compare this event to the Holocaust
- Start in mid-16th century and continued to 19th century
- Current estimate of the number of slaves that were actually shipped across the Atlantic is roughly 12 million even though historians think that more were purchased
Triangular Trade
- Was a trading network that was established in the late 16th century to early 19th century
- Trade network consisted of the New World including West Indies, old world, and Africa
- Some of best exports
- Africa – slaves
- Old World – manufactured goods
- New World – cash crops (tobacco)
Middle Passage
- Term used to refer to event/setting of sending the slaves across the Atlantic to Colonial America
- Conditions were terrible Ex: no bathrooms and close quarters
- Some slaves often would commit suicide by either starving themselves or jumping ships and would drown
- If a slave would starve to death, the captain of ship would make friends or family members of slave eat the liver or heart of dead slave
- Around 15% to 20% of the slaves that were shipped over the Atlantic died on the journey there
- Dead slaves would be thrown overboard to help avoid disease even though they were many diseases already being spread on the ships
How they were captured
- Many slaves were actually sold into slavery b other Africans
- Reason for this is due to the fact that European explorers would bribe the Africans with manufactured goods like alcohol and guns
- Generally the European explorers would conduct the coast raids but if they went too much inland the Europeans wanted nothing to do with that
Slaves: Captured
- Once captured, they would walk to the coast and wait for ships. Would sometimes take moths for the European ships to appear
- They would be retrained to avoid the slaves escaping which is very inhumane
- Also Europeans would take variety of slaves from different villages the reason for this is that Africa has many different languages so it was impossible for some of them to communicate
Columbian Exchange
- Focuses more the trade network for the Old World to the New World
- Named after Christopher Columbus
- Many different foods from each side were exchanged which benefitted both sides
- For the most part it was a pretty positive experience except for the disease that it brought both sides
Cause and Effect
- Biggest cause for slavery is that Colonial America was expanding very quickly and the colonists didn’t have the man power to keep up
- Effects
- African villages would struggle because they were losing many of their hunters and gatherers
- Spread of disease
- Racial superiority
- Colonists became lazy
- The economy boomed in the south
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