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The Atlantic Slave Trade

Decent Essays

Although the Atlantic Slave Trade (AST, hereafter) enabled a European-dominated international economy to mobilize, diversify, and prosper for centuries; the indigenous populations enslaved to put in the labor to produce assets for said economy experienced a radical change of life, unfathomable turmoil and grief, and in the most wicked cases, as did their offspring. The parameters of this paper will be restricted to: the development of the AST (from its nascence to its peak), the economic implications and advancements, and the ethical conversation that was birthed from such a monstrous phenomenon.
It all began after the 14th century, when the continent of Africa became the fountainhead of a slave trade, where the first outflux of slaves were seized by Arabs along the Swahili coast, and later, European posts were dotted along the western coast. In 1441, on the western Saharan coast, a Portuguese naval captain abducted a pair of Africans to sell them into the Mediterranean market. This is written to be the first stroke out of many transactions that began the AST. Mind you, afterwards, only a relative few slaves were kidnapped by “white raiders”.
The arrangement was originally a joint effort between African rulers and European businessmen where the novel, refined goods that the Africans received from the technologically advanced Europeans granted them a militaristic and modern advantage over their indigenous, neighboring civilizations. Keep in mind, some African states

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