Throughout world history a main topic that comes to mind is slavery. Slavery is something that has plagued our history nearly since the beginning of time. One of the biggest slavery events that has happened in our world, in my opinion, is the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was a massive slave trade that took slaves from Africa to places such as the Caribbean, Brazil, and the United States. This event took place between the 16th century and the 19th century, and involved nearly 12 million African slaves. There were many different causes and effects of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade that I will discuss throughout this paper.
One question that is often brought up about the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade is, “Why did the Europeans rely on Africans instead of the Native Americans that were already there?” There are many different reasons for this. One of the major reasons being that the Europeans were being plagued by diseases, and because of that their populations were dwindling. There was a demand for workers because of this population decrease and the Europeans knew they needed slaves that were not already affected by these diseases that were plaguing them. Other reasons the Africans were being used as slaves instead of the Europeans was because they were being brought to foreign place in which they were unfamiliar, if they were to escape for any reason they would not get very far due to their unfamiliarity to their location and due to the fact that there was a language barrier keeping them from communicating with others outside of the other slaves. Because of all of these factors, the Europeans began to have Africans shipped over to the various different ports on boats.
Among the arrival of the Africans there were many different impacts, the first being an economic impact. The slaves soon became the European’s property. As mentioned in The Atlantic Slave Trade: Crash Course World History #24, “Once in the Americas the surviving slaves were sold in a market very similar to the way that cattle would be sold. After purchase, slave owners would often brand their new possession on the cheeks, again just like cattle” (Green). Slavery became an economic system for the Europeans. Being that some of the slaves were healthier and more immune to disease than the Europeans, the slave population began to grow. The Europeans took full advantage of this by stealing the slave’s children and then proceeding to sale them making large profits.
The second impact was a political impact. The article, Putting it into Perspective: The Slave Trade and Atlantic World Slavery states, “The single identifying political indicator of success in all the colonies was property. Slaves were property and as such, records were kept on everything that was owned” (putting into perspective). Because people began to see the large incomes that was being brought in by the buying and selling that goes on in the slave trade, many people wanted to get involved to make profits for themselves. It became a competitive market and the Europeans became very political in how they acquired the Africans, however it turns out the Europeans were not the only ones that were buying and selling slaves. Back in Africa things such as warfare were going on. The article states, “The most common way of entering the trade was warfare. To the victor goes the spoils: When villages were attacked, they were raided for individuals who would be sold into slavery. Defeated villages would also be sold into slavery” (Putting into perspective). The once unified Africans were now going against each other in an attempt to make money off of the slave trade much like the Europeans were doing. This created a political system of who would stay in Africa and who would be sold into slavery.
The third and final impact I will talk about is the socio-cultural impact that The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade had. The Africans that were sold to the Europeans lost a multitude of things but one thing they did not lose was their culture, in fact, their culture began to flourish even though they were captured slaves. Their religion, songs, and other aspects of their culture integrated into their new societies that they were forcefully placed into. The article, Africa before Transatlantic Enslavement states, “Africans had established their own cultures that had enabled them to make spectacular advances and important contributions to human knowledge” (Africa before Transatlantic Enslavement). With the movement of slavery to the Americas it did bring a great deal of advancement in different cultural aspects that the Americas did not have before the Africans were located there.