Transcript ARC000321 Lecture 11 West Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade

West Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade
Background to Atlantic Slavery
• Ancient institution, flourished in Greece & Rome
• By AD 1500 moribund within most of Europe
• But survived in the Mediterranean in Spain & Portugal
• Spread to the Americas as part of Europe’s general political &
commercial expansion between the 15th–19th centuries
Background of slavery
• Economic expansionism incorporated systems of unfree labor in colonies
beyond the continent
• Growth of slavery on the European periphery made provision of slave
labourers a central part of international commerce
• European states were drawn to “sources” in Africa
• Forms of domestic dependency known as slavery existed across much of the
African continent, but these institutions did not involve the same scale,
market orientation, or social alienation that characterized New World
slavery systems
Background of slavery
• The international demand for ever-increasing numbers of blacks
transformed the character of slavery within certain regions of Africa as at
the same time it produced a new order of “unfreedom” in the Western
Hemisphere
• Africans responded to European demand for labor by creating a muchexpanded internal market in humans
• Particularly in West Africa, tribal & national conflict erupted specifically
over the effort to seize war captives for sale to European traders
First Atlantic System
• Portuguese explored west coast of Africa by 15th century, colonizing before
1480 islands of the Azores, Madeira, & Cape Verde in the Atlantic, Sao Tome
in West Africa
• Established trading station at El Mina on Gold Coast of Africa in 1481,
expanding to Brazil in early 16th century, where they established sugar
plantations
First Atlantic System
The First Atlantic system (c. 1502 -1580) was the trade of enslaved
Africans to South American colonies of the Portuguese and Spanish
empires; it accounted for slightly more than 3% of all Atlantic slave trade.
In 1580 Portugal was temporarily united with Spain. After the union,
Portugal came under Spanish legislation that prohibited it from directly
engaging in the slave trade as a carrier, and it become a target for the
traditional enemies of Spain, losing a large share to the Dutch, British and
French
Spanish slaves washing gold in Mexico
By 1650 some 250,000 – 300,000 Africans had been imported
to Spanish America, primarily to Mexico and Peru to undertake
mining, farming and textile manufacturing
Campeche earliest African slave burials in New World
Campeche burials
The strontium in the teeth showed that the individuals had been were
born and spent their early years in West Africa. Some of their teeth were filed
and chipped to sharp edges in a decorative practice characteristic of Africa.
Evidence indicated that the cemetery was in use around AD 1550
The Second Atlantic System
The Second Atlantic System was the trade of enslaved Africans
primarily by British, Portuguese, French and Dutch traders.
The main destinations of were the Caribbean colonies and
Brazil, as nations built up slave-dependent colonies in the New
World
The Middle Passage
The Triangular Trade
British Slavery
• English involvement began in 1560s but initially not very interested; ended up
getting slaves in Virginia in 1619 from a Dutch trader
• By the 17th century, however, the trade to North America was dominated by
London-based companies such as the English Royal African Company
• By end of the 17th century, England was the largest of traffickers in slaves in
the western world, shipping 6–8,000 slaves per year to the Americas (twice as
many as the Dutch)
• During first half of the 18th century, shipped over 20,000 persons per year, for
the remainder of the trade, from 30–45,000 persons/year
• Between 1698–1807, over 11,000 ships were fitted out in England, chiefly in
Liverpool, London, and Bristol
• Over 3 million slaves imported to the Americas in the 18th century
Outfitting a slave ship
• Crew of 40 to 50
• Provisions for the Middle Passage
• Cargo of trade goods for barter
• Indian fabrics
• Manchester cottons
• Copper & brass wares produced in Ironbridge
• Beads
• Liquor
• Firearms
• Gunpowder
• Return cargo of sugar, rum, &c.
French slave ship Marie-Séraphique
Slave ship Sultana
Close-packing & ‘spooning’
Shackles & irons
Slave ship insurrections
Where did the slaves come from?
• Senegambia (present-day Senegal
and Gambia)
• Upper Guinea Coast (GuinéBissau, Sierra Leone, Guinea,
Liberia)
• The Gold Coast ( Ghana and
eastern Ivory Coast)
• The Bight of Benin – or ‘Slave
Coast’ (Togo, Benin, parts of
Nigeria)
• The Bight of Biafra (the Niger
River Delta and part of Cameroon)
• West Central Africa (Equatorial
Guinea, Gabon, Congo, Zaire,
Angola)
Percentages of slaves sent to the Americas
• West Central Africa
40%
• Bight of Benin
17-20%
• Bight of Biafra
17-20%
• Gold Coast
8-10%
• Other areas
10%+
The Kongo
In the three hundred years from the
date the kingdom was founded by Ne
Lukeni Kia Nzinga until its destruction in
1665 by the Portuguese, Kongo was an
organized stable, politically centralized
society based upon a subsistence
economy.
The Kongo is significant in exploring the
historic contexts of African American
heritage because the majority of all
Africans enslaved in the Southern
English colonies were from West
Central Africa
Christopher Fennell,
University of Illinois, Urbana
BaKongo symbols & identity in the Americas
Argued that BaKongo religion was a reservoir of core symbols that were used
in a broad spectrum of expressive modes across Americas. There was
continuity in ritual from West Africa, more than the shreds and tatters of an
old religion
BaKongo cosmogram
Pottery made in South Carolina
The land of the living is a mountain over a watery barrier separating this world
from the land of the dead beneath. Each day the sun rises over the earth and
proceeds in a counter-clockwise direction, across the sky to set in the water.
During night time, the sun illuminates the underside of the universe, the land of
the dead, until it rises again in the northeast. The cycle represents the continuity
of life: birth, death, and rebirth
Gold coast
Elmina
The Portuguese began to built a castle between
1482-1486
It was surrendered to the Dutch in 1637
It was destroyed by the British in 1873
Elmina
By the seventeenth century, the material signature of the Atlantic
Economy had become ubiquitous across West Africa:
• Cowrie shells
• Venetian glass beads
• Bottles and glass objects
• Objects of copper
• Iron tools
• Smoking pipes
• Chinaware
• Firearms paraphernalia
Ecological impacts
Introduction of American cultigens transformed African
agriculture and diets:
Maize (cob impressions used to decorate pottery)
Cassava
Tomato
Papaya
Beans
Christopher de Corse
Syracuse University
“how the Elmina people thought about the trade materials they used,
viewed the buildings they occupied, and conceived their religious life…
suggests resilience rather than sequaciuosness, continuity rather than change in
African befiefs and identity”
De Corse examined more than 100,000 artefacts from 30 structures, including
imported artifacts ceramics, glass, metal goods, beads, etc
Ann B Stahl
University of Victoria, BC, Canada
Making History in Banda (Ghana)
Looks at “endogenous historicity”
Tries to move beyond western accounts which ‘silence’ African views; Africans
have their own competing versions of the past
Whereas classic ‘world systems theory’ focused on the agency of Europeans and
created a Europe-centred view, Stahl focuses on African agencies and internal
African dynamics
Banda
Attacks by Asante warriors
de-populated the Banda area and
increased the risk of enslavement in the
18th century
Frederiksborg
Fort Fredensborg, was constructed between 1736-42. The fortress was located
on the Gold Coast for strategic reasons: to prevent competition from the Dutch
and English forts in Accra, and to enable trade exchanges with Portuguese and
French ships in particular.
Fort Fredensborg played a key role in Danish-Norwegian trade during the
eighteenth century. The fort was described by contemporary observers as one of
the most beautiful buildings on the coast.
Fort Christiansborg
Fort Christiansborg is in Osu, Accra, on the coast of Guinea.
The first substantial fort was built by the Danish in the 1660s,
though the castle has changed hands between Denmark,
Portugal, the Akwamu, the British, and finally postIndependence Ghana
Danish slave ship en route for the Caribbean
Summary: Atlantic Slave Trade
• Over its four centuries of existence, the Atlantic slave trade between Africa
& the Americas is estimated to have involved not just 12 million Africans
who were shipped westward, but perhaps as many who died in Africa from
the cruelties of capture & initial enslavement
• The Atlantic slave trade constituted one of the largest forced movements of
population in recorded history
• The present-day U.S. was the northernmost destination of a trade that
flourished in the Caribbean within a decade after Columbus’s voyage; by the
middle of the 16th century Brazil was populated with sugar workers
• Early importations involved mainly the Spanish & the Portuguese, who had
also used slave labour on Old World plantations such as Cyprus, Madiera,
and Sao Tome