Ch' 20: Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade

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Ch. 20 Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade
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The Atlantic Slave Trade

• Portugal led the way in exploring the African
  coast
• Established cities/factories for trade
• El Mina
• Luanda
• Other nations followed Portugal, brought
  competition
• Development of sugar plantations need for slave
  labor

El Mina, a Portuguese coastal fortress
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How Many Slaves Were Exported?

• As many as 12 million over four hundred years
• High mortality low birth rates high demand
  for slaves
• Brazil received 42 of slaves
• Trans-Saharan slave trade was mostly in women in
  Islamic lands
• Trans-Atlantic trade took men for agricultural
  labor

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Development of the Slave Trade

• Portugal controlled most of it
• From 1630 on, competition increased
• Dutch seized El Mina
• British Royal Africa Company
• Followed by France
• Purchases of slaves made through local rulers
• Slave prices were based on the healthy male
  Indies Piece
• Triangular trade developed

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African Slave Trade I
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African Societies, Slavery, and the Slave Trade

• Traditions of slavery deeply engrained in
  economic systems and social hierarchy
• In Islam, slavery accepted, but only non-Muslims

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Slavery and African Politics

• Europeans tapped into the established slave trade
  
• Settled along the coast
• Intensified the slave trade
• Warfare typified much of Sub-Sahara Africa
• Ghana and Songhay took advantage became
  intermediaries in slave trade

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West Coast Asante/Dahomey East Coast
Swahili/Sudan

• Serve as examples of the impact of slave trade
• Asante (Ashanti) rose to prominence during the
  slave trade
• Ruled along the Gold Coast
• Ruled for two centuries (1650-1820)
• Dahomey
• Traded slaves for European firearms
• Swahili Coast on the East Coast of Africa brought
  ivory, gold, slaves from the interior

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South Africa

• Bantu peoples in southern Africa were organized
  around small chiefdoms
• Southern expansion brought Dutch contact
• Settlers moving inland from Cape Colony looking
  for farmland
• British control from 1815 led to warfare with
  Bantu
• Boer Great Trek

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African Slave Trade II
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Zulu Rise to Power

• Shaka chief of the Zulu (1818)
• Created a powerful state that survived his death
• All of southern Africa was involved in turmoil
  called mfecane (1815 1840)

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The African Diaspora

• Slave trade not only forcibly brought slaves into
  a different culture, it brought foreign products
  into Africa
• The Middle Passage was traumatic for slaves and
  often lethal
• Africans in the Americans often employed in
  agricultural labor

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Slave Societies in the Americas

• A hierarchy developed distinguishing saltwater
  slaves (newly arrived) from creole descendants
• Creoles could gain more skilled work in better
  conditions
• N. American slave population had a higher birth
  rate
• Less need for new slaves
• More cut off from Africa than slaves in other
  areas

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End of the Slave Trade / Abolition of Slavery

• Abolition resulted from changes outside of Africa
  
• Main change was from European intellectuals
• William Wilberforce
• British stopped the slave trade in 1807
• Slavery was finally abolished in the Americas
  when Brazil stopped the practice in 1888

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