Before focusing on the components of the African Slave Trade, it is imperative to understand how slavery began in Africa. The Portuguese went to Africa with the intention of trading, just as they did in Asia. From the onset, they strived to establish strong ties with the Africans. The Christian missionaries, on their part, were interested in converting the continents’ people (Meier zuSelhausen, 2019). However, the long-forged ties did not last as the interests of the Portuguese in gold and later slaves became pertinent. The same applies to Europeans who, despite previously being slaves to Byzantine, Arabs and Turkish empires, started using slave labor in their empires. Their attempt to enslave Native Americans did not bear fruit, “the system did not work well due to the devastation of the Native American population caused by disease” (Mancall, 2018, P. 12). Instead, they continued to rely on the enslaved Africans and this how the slave trade grew quickly. It even grew faster after the Portuguese had set up sugar plantations on Island. Most importantly, they subdivided the slave trade into three major components.
The first component of the slave trade was where the European ships brought supplies for sale and trade. Some of these goods, as evidenced in the class readings, include copper, cloth, guns, ammunition and slave trade. Once the ship arrived from a European port to Slave Coast, the goods were either sold or exchanged for slaves (Campbell, 2017). In the second component of slave trade, slaves were transported to West Indies from Africa – they were sold at a profit. Those shipped oversees included men, women and even children. The third and final component of slave trade was the return to Europe with produce obtained from slave-labor plantations. The produce included cotton, sugar, tobacco, and molasses and rum.
Of the three components, the second one, which involved the transportation of slaves, was brutal and degrading. It was often described as the Middle Passage and lasted for even up to three months – slaves were chained in the crowded hold of the ship. This was intended at preventing them from jumping overboard or creating chaos. As described in Campbell’s (2017)article, “they were branded, stripped naked for the duration of the voyage, lying down amidst filth, enduring almost unbearable heat” (p. 25). Some of them were denied food for several days – others died before reaching their destination. At the peak of the slave trade, Campbell (2017)noted that the slave ships were carrying thousands of slaves every year. While this is the case, some of them perished during the dangerous journey.
References
Campbell, G. (2017). Africa, the Indian Ocean world, and the early modern: Historiographical conventions and problems. The Journal of Indian Ocean World Studies, 1(1), 24-37. Web.
Mancall, P. C. (2018). Nature and Culture in the early modern Atlantic. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Meier zuSelhausen, F, (2019). Missions, education and conversion in colonial Africa, Palgrave studies in economic history, In D. Mitch & G. Cappelli (Eds.), Globalization and the rise of mass education. (pp. 25-59). Palgrave Macmillan.