Slavery In The Gold Coast

The Atlantic Slave Trade was a part of African history that had made one of it's biggest impact on Africa's relation with the world and more importantly on the inner workings of the country itself due to its large-scale involvement of many of the people in the continent. Although the slave trade was so long ago the impact can still be seen in Africa's social workings within the people, its economy in the local and global market, and within the political landscape of the countries.

From the 17th century until the 19th century, almost twelve million Africans were brought to the New World against their will to perform back-breaking labour under terrible conditions. The rationalizations and defences given for slavery and the slave trade were absurd and self-serving. Slavery was a truly barbaric, and those who think that they can control what another group of people eat, where they sleep, whether they are to live or die, or even whether they are to be bought or sold, are acting on a totally inhumane level.

The introduction of Africans to America in 1619 set off an irreversible chain of events that effected the economy of the southern colonies. With a switch from the expensive system of indentured servitude, slavery emerged and grew rapidly for various reasons, consisting of economic, geographic, and social factors. The expansion of slavery in the southern colonies, from the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to just before America gained its independence in 1775, had a lasting impact on the development of our nation’s economy, due to the fact that slaves were easy to obtain, provided a life-long workforce, and were a different race than the colonists, making it easier to justify the immoral act.

Randy Sparks highlights a rare aspect of the history of slavery: the relentless effort of the enslaved to use their privilege to free themselves. Although it is not clear when the European and Africans first encountered each other in Old Calabar, it is evident that the constant trading between both parties built a concrete means of communication. As many individuals who have

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)

There are different experiences of the slave trade that are reflected in these documents such as those of an enslaved person (Olaudah Equiano), a European slave trader (Thomas Phillips – an English merchant), an African monarch (King Jao) whose kingdom and personal authority suffered from the slave trade, and an African monarch (Osei Bonsu) who opposed the ending of the slave trade. Of all the commercial ties that linked the early modern world into global network of exchange, none had more profound or enduring human consequences than the Atlantic Slave Trade. And in all these documents, we can see how people reacted differently to this system based on how they encountered it and how it affected them.

For more than three and a half centuries, the forcible bondage of at least twelve million men, women, and children from their African homelands to the Americas forever changed the face and character of the western hemisphere. The slave trade was brutal and horrific, and the enslavement of Africans was cruel, exploitative, and dehumanizing. The trade represented one of the longest and most sustained assaults on the life, integrity, and dignity of human beings in world history.

“The Slave Ship: A Human History” written by Marcus Rediker describes the horrifying experiences of Africans, and captains, and ship crewmen on their journey through the Middle Passage, the water way in the Atlantic Ocean between Africa and the Americas. The use of slaves to cultivate crops in the Caribbean and America offered a great economy for the European countries by providing “free” labor and provided immense wealth for the Europeans. Rediker describes the slave migration by saying, “There exists no account of the mechanism for history’s greatest forced migration, which was in many ways the key to an entire phase of globalization” (10). African enslavement to the Americas is the most prominent reason for a complete shift in the

The purpose of this book is to offer his perspective on how Africans were treated in the Americas from 1550 to 1812.

When we hear the terms “slave” or “slave trade” the first thing that comes to mind is African Americans. Slave trade a term taught often in history classes has a meaning that has now become synonymous with African American. There term trade summons up images of exchanging goods for service. The sad truth is that this has not become a common sequence, almost like a math equation whose answer is always African American. Some useful ways to talk about slave trade is by restoring humanity to the millions who died under the racial global order. By referring to slave trade as “european slave trade” we are able to disconnect the word african from slave trade however, it gives the audience the wrong idea concerning the awful things these people went through. We need to bring humanity back to the name of the African Americans.

In sharp contrast to what most people think, “only about 6 percent of the slaves imported in Africa ended up in what is now the United States.” Most of those taken from Africa ended up, if they survived the long sea voyage, in the West

In 1619 when the Dutch ship the ‘White Lion’ landed in Jamestown Virginia carrying ten African slaves there was a change in the world that is still felt today. The beginning of slavery wasn’t what they had planned those first slaves thought that they were to receive the same rights as indentured slaves until the productivity of the farming industry in the new world. The only difference was that the indentured slaves were European

By the time that the slave trade had been abolished in Britain and her colonies in 1807 eleven million men, women and children had been snatched from their homes. For historians understanding the factors that led to the abolition of the trade remains an important task. Whilst there is clearly a consensus on the main factors that led to this seismic and historic event there is obviously a difference in opinion on the most important due to the degree of subjectivity the question poses.

This essay will attempt to describe the modalities and consequences of the abolition of the slave trade in early nineteenth century West Africa. We now live in a world where slavery is considered not to be morale since it was abolished however cases of slavery still exist today but are hidden from the public eye so well that no one even knows the exist. Forcing someone to perform various duties like cleaning without any form of payment against their will is considered to be a form of slavery and anyone found to be having slaves or holding anyone against their will these days is punished and possibly sentenced to jail for a very long period of time. We are in the 21st century and slavery is something that is not accepted by

The Atlantic slave trade existed from the 16th to the early 19th century and stimulated trade between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Over 12 million Africans were captured and sold into chattel slavery off the coast of West Africa, and more than 2 million of them died crossing the Atlantic. These outcomes of the slave trade are rarely disputed among historians; the effect of the Atlantic slave trade in Africa, however, is often a topic of debate. Some academics, such as Walter Rodney, insist that Africans were forced to take part in the slave trade, resulting in demographic disruption and underdevelopment in all sectors of Africa. Historian John Thornton acknowledges the negative consequences of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, yet contends that it was merely an expansion of the existing internal slave trade which African rulers engaged in willingly. A final case made by Hugh Thomas completely contradicts Rodney’s thesis, asserting that the slave trade was not solely responsible for decreasing Africa’s population, and furthermore, that it was primarily beneficial to Africa’s economy and politics. The true outcome of the slave trade in Africa lies not entirely in any one of these arguments, but rests rather in a combination of all three. Although the Atlantic slave trade was detrimental to the economic and social development of Africa, the trade benefited a small portion of Africans, who willingly aligned themselves with