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What Events Led To The Atlantic Slave Trade?

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There are a series of events that led to the Atlantic slave trade. At first slaves were indentured servants in Portugal, “but as European powers acquired new territories in the Americas, slaves were needed as a source of labor” Sugar was the biggest need for slave labor and Portugal had plantations located in the Americas. Portugal decided to import slaves from Africa rather than having Native Americans be laborers, because Africans were more efficient.
It is believed that the main reason Atlantic slave trade started to develop is that sugar in the Caribbean was a cash crop that needed mass production, and the only way to do that was to have laborers. Sugar was grown on large plantations and required huge amounts of labor, making forced labor

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