18th Century Slave Trade

Slaves were bought and sold in many places, mostly for laboring farm land. In the Atlantic world during the 1500's and 1600’s there were many causes and effects to African slave trade. Many Europeans needed slaves to labor on their lands.

The African Slave Trade was a massive system of Europeans taking African Americans and selling them into slavery. The African Slave Trade began in the 15th century. This slave trade put Africa in a weird relationship with Europe that cause the depopulation of Africa, but it increased the wealth of Europe.

The slave trade in the North American colonies began to grow in the 1600s. The African slave trade sourced their slaves from many different West African villages and countries. The business of slavery was a growing and profitable field, not only for the slavers, but also for the slaveholders. With the decrease of indentured servants, settlers in the English colonies looked for a new source of labor to satisfy their growing labor demands. The next source was Africa. “By the 1690s slaves outnumbered indentured servants four to one” (45). Europeans largely disregarded the ethical dilemma posed by slavery due to the European view of Africans and their culture as uncivilized, foreign, and heathen (44). The largest forced migration in history (44)

Everyone has their own understanding of what slavery is, but there are misconceptions about the history of “slavery”. Not many people understand how the slave trade initially began. Originally Africa had “slaves” but they were servants or serfs, sometimes these people could be part of the master’s family. They could own land, rise to positions of power, and even purchase their freedom. This changed when white captains came to Africa and offered weapons, rum, and manufactured goods for people. African kings and merchants gave away the criminals, debtors, and prisoner from rival tribes. The demand for cheap labor was increasing, this resulted in the forced migration of over ten million slaves. The Atlantic Slave Trade occurred from 1500 to 1880 CE. This large-scale event changed the economy and histories of many places. The Atlantic Slave Trade held a great amount of significance in the development of America. Africans shaped America by building a solid foundation for the country.

In the United States, slavery had an overwhelming impact on their political, social, and economical. Jamestown, Virginia in 1619, the first African slaves were brought into the United States. Reasons were because the tobacco, sugar, rice, and coffee fields were expanding which led to increasing the demand for labor. The Atlantic slave trade was an inhuman systematic importation of slaves between the African traders, American planters, and the European merchants bargaining over human lives which led to the Middle Passage. 1675-1775, the slaves were the backbone of monoculture labor and so it was put into law to keep the Africans as slaves. “So prevalent was this Italian-operated slave trade that the word “slave” was derived from the word “Slav,” name for people from Slavic countries” (Williams 3). In both seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the African-American slaves helped build the economic foundations of the new nation.

Part of this new act was that any ship found to be carrying slaves would be fined £100 for every discovered slave. If the captains of the slave-ships knew that a British navy ship would be heading their way, they would order the slaves to be thrown overboard in order to reduce their fines. The Royal British Navy, previously the defenders of the Atlantic slave routes, were now the thorn in the side of the slave traders. Likewise Parliament no longer promoted the slave trade but instead began to pave the way for international abolition. From this moment forward the British prided themselves on being one of the first European countries to no longer take part in the slave trade. Overall due to the perseverance and dedication of abolitionists,

Slave trading was a business and “over the four centuries of Atlantic slavery, millions of Africans and their descendants were turned into profits.” (Johnson) The Atlantic trade was highly depended on by slave owners as the life expectancy of a slave working in the sugar cane plantations was about seven years in the Caribbean. Due to the use of slave labor by the 18th century surplus capital was being invested in European industry.

The two majors drivers that led to the transatlantic slave trade was the European desire for the agricultural products of the Americas and the need for laborers to work the land in the Americas. All participants, besides for the slaves, benefited from the trading.

In the beginning Africans would be sold in the colonies as indentured servants. Unfortunately, the need for workers grew, assemblies began to pass laws making slavery legal. Later in time, slavery became a part of their life, in the colonies. In the mid-1700s, slavery was legal in all 13 colonies. These laws said that the children of enslaved people would also be slaves. Saddly, families were normally split up and sold to different owners. Slaves often did whatever they could to resist, act against slavery, brake tools, pretend to be sick, or work slowly. These action were dangerous, slaves had to be careful to avoid punishment.

The 1700s was a time of prosperity for Rhode. Farming and sea trading became a profitable business. Rhode island did slave trades but was the first to prohibit of slave trade. Following the Revolution, industrial growth began in Rhode Island. In 1793, Samuel Slater's mill in Pawtucket became America's first successful water-powered cotton

[x] France for example has created New France in Canada and also down into Florida and Spain had a large portion of Mexico and Southern America. [xi] These new colonizes helped create trade between the New and Old World. Government ventures lended money for explorers to set forth and trade in the West and elsewhere.[xii] This also led to the role of mercantilism in the Atlantic as well. They helped promote overseas trade between a country and its own colonizes.[xiii] As they controlled more trade, different trading companies began to emerge in response to mercantilism. The Dutch West Indian Company and the royal African Company chartered by their motherlands all participated in a system which included other non- European countries as well. This system was known as the Atlantic Circuit which was a clockwise network of trading links that moved goods, wealth and people around the Atlantic system.[xiv] This helped make the slave trade more efficient because now a vast amount of slaves could be transported to their specific destinations as requested by a country. As document 8 shows, the slaves which came from Africa each followed a specific route in the Atlantic Circuit. [xv] tying in with document 4 the work that had to be done on the plantation was a lot and that is why with the help of city ports in Africa they were able to get a large number of slaves to help in the Americas. An example of the type of work they did can be

Slavery in the late 18th and early 19th century caused apprehension among many individuals. Through various images and written texts, it can be concluded that slavery affected slaves and their owners in different ways. Slaves suffered from a constant emotional state of fear, as slave owners took pride in their position of superiority. Around this time period, however, society as a whole seemed to view slavery as a normal way of life, not bothering to interfere in any of the disciplinary treatment slaves endured. In order to escape the merciless treatment and apprehension of punishment from their slave owners, numerous slaves ran away in search of a better lifestyle.

Slave exports grew from 3,600 a years during the early 18th century to almost 80,000 a year during the 1780s. Slightly more than half of all Africans sent to the Americans and a quarter of imports to north America. Roughly 11,836,000 Africans were shipped across the Atlantic, with a death rate during the middle passage reducing this number by 10-20 percent. As a result between 9.6 and 10.8 million Africans arrived in America. About 500,000 Africans were imported into what is now the U.S between 1619 and 1807 or about 6 percent of all Africans forcibly imported into America. About 70 percent arrived directly from Africa. Over 90 percent of African slaves were imported into the Caribbean and South America. About a quarter

Slavery also increased British exports. As a result of the increased productivity and profits made from slavery, the average British consumer had more money to spend on goods that cost less. These forces helped to revive a slowing British economy and increased capital flows throughout the British Empire. Cheap labor resulted in cheaper goods, and the British consumer was rewarded. As British industries gained more profits from slave institutions, they also expanded their markets. With the benefits achieved from slavery, British industry sold more goods to more people in more locations. Sales of commodities also became more common, enabling further economic development. Empirically, the raw tonnage of exports from England increased fourfold from 1715 to 1775. The

In the 18th century, Great Britain had become the world's largest slave trader.[2] During the revolutionary era, all the states banned the international slave trade. This was done for a variety of economic, political, and moral reasons depending on the colony. The trade was later reopened in South Carolina and Georgia.[3]