Transcript The African Slave Trade - Social Studies

The African Slave Trade
1650-1860
The Largest Forced Migration
• Which country imported the most slaves?
Asian –European trade
fundamental…
• While many are aware of the 'triangular' slave trade between
Europe, Africa, and the Americas in the 18th century, few people
realize that Asian-European trade was also instrumental in
sustaining the exchange of human slaves. For example, French
ships taking European goods to Asia returned with cowry shells and
Indian textiles valued by West Africans.
• On the African coast, traders exchanged these Asian products for
slaves who, in turn, were sent to France's New World colonies. The
circle was completed when sugar and other goods from the
Americas were loaded on board and shipped back to France.
• The Asian-European trading relationship, as a fundamental step in
the African slave trade, thus played a crucial role in the development
of an integrated global economy in the early modern era. –
(YaleGloba )
Triangular Trade
Europeans rarely went inland…
Hunt depicts soldiers from Sokoto
raiding a village to capture slaves
Capture of Slaves
Slave Coffle
Many people died along the way to captivity
…
Barracoons
• Ghana slave traders fort
Slave Ships Crammed
Economics and Prejudice
• With slavery came the development of all kinds of pseudo-scientific,
racist theories designed to justify the enslavement of African
peoples. These, combined with barbarous violence, were crucial for
the slave owners to maintain power. After all, the white slave owners
were a small minority.
• For example, in 1745, 877,000 people lived in the British Caribbean
of whom 85% were slaves. Such were the extremes of prejudice
required by the system of slavery that people were categorized by
the degree of ‘black blood’ in their veins – right down to 1/16th!
(Sexual exploitation of slave women by slave owners meant that
many mixed-race children were born producing more slaves.)
• The racism created by slavery still affects society today. When
slavery no longer suited the purposes of the ruling class, racism was
adapted to justify the subjugation and exploitation of Africa, Asia and
Latin America under colonial rule. Today variants of these theories
linger on and are used to disguise the continued exploitation of the
neo-colonial world.
The need for labor increases
• In the 17th century Europeans began to establish
settlements in the Americas. Crops grown on these
plantations such as tobacco, rice, sugar cane and cotton
were labor intensive. European immigrants had gone to
America to own their own land and were reluctant to
work for others. Convicts were sent over from Britain but
there had not been enough to satisfy the tremendous
demand for labor. Planters therefore began to purchase
slaves.
(At first these came from the West Indies but by the late
18th century they came directly from Africa and busy
slave-markets were established in Philadelphia,
Richmond, Charleston and New Orleans.)
Auctions
Olaudah Equiano
•
“That part of Africa, known by the name of Guinea, to
which the trade for slaves is carried on, extends along
the coast above 3400 miles, from Senegal to Angola,
and includes a variety of kingdoms. Of these, the most
considerable is the kingdom of Benin, both as to extent
and wealth, the richness and cultivation of the soil, the
power of the king and the number and warlike disposition
of the inhabitants.
• This kingdom is divided into many provinces or districts;
in one of the most remote and fertile of which, called
Eboe, I was born in the year 1745, in a charming fruitful
vale named Essaka. The distance of the province from
the capital of Benin and the sea coast must be very
considerable; for I had never heard of white men or
Europeans.”
“Our land is uncommonly rich and fruitful, and produces all kinds of
vegetables in abundance. We have plenty of Indian corn, and vast
quantities of cotton and tobacco. Our pineapples grow with culture; they
are about the size of the largest sugar loaf, and finely flavored. We
have also spices of different kinds, particularly pepper; and a variety of
delicious fruits which I have never seen in Europe; together with gum of
various kinds and honey in abundance. All our industry is exerted to
improve those blessings of nature. Agriculture is our chief employment;
and everyone, even the children and women, are engaged in it. Thus
we all habituated to labor from our earliest years.”
“Our tillage is exercised in a plain or common, some hours walk from
our dwellings, and all the neighbors resort thither in a body. They use
no beasts of husbandry; and their only instruments are hoes, axes,
shovels and beaks, or pointed iron to dig with. Sometimes we are
visited by locusts, which come in large clouds, so as to darken the air,
and destroy our harvest. This however happens rarely, but when it
does, a famine is produced by it.”
• “As our manners are simple, our luxuries are few. The
dress of both sexes is nearly the same. It generally
consists of a long piece of calico, or Muslin, wrapped
loosely around the body, somewhat in the form of a
highland plaid. This is usually dyed blue, which is our
favorite color. It is extracted from a berry, and is brighter
and richer than any I have seen in Europe.
• Besides this, our women of distinction wear golden
ornaments, which they dispose with some profusion on
their arms and legs. When our women are not employed
with the men in tillage, their usual occupation is spinning
and weaving cotton, which they afterwards dye and
make into garments. They also manufacture earthen
vessels, of which we have many kinds.
“ Among the rest, tobacco pipes, made after the same fashion,
and used in the same manner, as those in Turkey.”
“We are almost a nation of dancers, musicians and poets. Thus
every great event, such as a triumphant return from battle, or
other cause of public rejoicing, is celebrated in public dances
which are accompanied with songs and music suited to the
occasion. We have many musical instruments, particularly
drums of different kinds, a piece of music which resembles a
guitar, and another much like a stickado. These last are chiefly
used by betrothed virgins, who play on them, all grand
festivals.”
• Olaudah Equiano (Gustavus Vassa) was kidnapped from his
African village at the age of eleven, shipped through the
arduous "Middle Passage" of the Atlantic Ocean, seasoned in
the West Indies and sold to a Virginia planter. He was later
bought by a British naval Officer, Captain Pascal, as a present
for his cousins in London. After ten years of enslavement
throughout the North American continent, where he assisted his
merchant slave master and worked as a seaman, Equiano
bought his freedom.
• At the age of forty four he wrote and published his
autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah
Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African. Written by Himself,
which he registered at Stationer's Hall, London, in 1789. More
than two centuries later, this work is recognized not only as one
of the first works written in English by a former slave, but
perhaps more important as the paradigm of the slave narrative,
a new literary genre.
Equiano recalls his childhood in Essaka (an Igbo village formerly in
northeast Nigeria), where he was adorned in the tradition of the
"greatest warriors." He is unique in his recollection of traditional
African life before the advent of the European slave trade.
Equally significant is Equiano's life on the high seas, which
included not only travels throughout the Americas, Turkey and the
Mediterranean; but also participation in major naval battles during
the French and Indian War (Seven Years' War), as well as in the
search for a northwest passage led by the Phipps expedition of
1772-1773.
Equiano also records his central role, along with Granville Sharpe,
in the British Abolishionist Movement. As a major voice in this
movement, Equiano petitioned the Queen of England in 1788. He
was appointed to the expedition to settle London's poor Blacks in
Sierra Leone, a British colony on the west coast of Africa. Sadly, he
did not complete the journey back to his native land.
How do you think Olaudah’s life changed
after this early stage?