Atlantic Slave Trade

I

Introduction

Atlantic Slave Trade, the forced transportation of at least 10 million enslaved Africans from their homelands in Africa to destinations in Europe and the Americas during the 15th through 19th centuries. European and North American slave traders transported most of these slaves to areas in tropical and subtropical America, where the vast majority worked as laborers on large agricultural plantations. See Slavery.

Between 1440 and 1880 Europeans and North Americans exchanged merchandise for slaves along 5600 km (3500 miles) of Africa’s western and west central Atlantic coasts. These slaves were then transported to other locations around the Atlantic Ocean. The vast majority went to Brazil, the Caribbean, and Spanish-speaking regions of South America and Central America. Smaller numbers were taken to Atlantic islands, continental Europe, and English-speaking areas of the North American mainland. Approximately 12 million slaves left Africa via the Atlantic trade, and more than 10 million arrived. The Atlantic slave trade involved the largest intercontinental migration of people in world history prior to the 20th century. This transfer of so many people, over such a long time, had enormous consequences for every continent bordering the Atlantic. It profoundly changed the racial, social, economic, and cultural makeup in many of the American nations that imported slaves. It also left a legacy of racism that many of those nations are still struggling to overcome.

II

Slavery in Africa before the 1500s

Slavery was not unique to African societies. Various forms of human bondage existed from early times. Sumerians in Mesopotamia relied on slave labor before 3000 bc, as did the ancient Egyptians. China had slavery during the Han dynasty (206 bc-ad 220), and the societies of classical Greece and Rome made heavy use of slave labor from the 6th century bc through the 5th century ad.

Most societies in sub-Saharan Africa also used captives and dependents for labor. African slavery typically differed from others, however. Land in Africa tended to be plentiful, owned communally, and parceled out to families according to their needs based on the number of laborers they could marshal. To increase production, families had to invest in more workers. The quickest way was to buy slaves. Thus, in much of Africa, those interested in increasing their wealth through production purchased slaves. Usually, second- or third-generation slaves became recognized members of the household, no longer liable for sale. Slaves of royal families could even serve in offices of state. But no matter how integrated their situation or important their role, in the kinship-based societies of sub-Saharan Africa, slaves remained outsiders, or at least other than full-fledged kin.

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As in most places where slavery existed, Africans obtained slaves by more or less violent means. Warfare was the most common method. Even in wars not fought to gain slaves, prisoners were usually enslaved and sold or put to work. People were also enslaved as punishment for crimes or religious offenses. As the slave trade grew, slavery probably became a more common punishment. And, finally, a few became slaves voluntarily because they could not feed or care for themselves or their families.

African societies that practiced slavery usually traded slaves. Export of slaves from black Africa had roots that preceded the Atlantic slave trade. Peoples in western Africa had been selling slaves across the Sahara to North Africa before ad 700, a trade that continued to the beginning of the 20th century. Between 8 and 10 million slaves crossed the desert in this trans-Saharan trade. Central Africans sold slaves eastward to the Indian Ocean for the same length of time.

When the Atlantic slave trade began, institutions already were in place to provide slaves in exchange for commodities. Only the European shippers and the American destination were different in the beginning. What proved novel about the Atlantic slave trade was its scale: No other exporting of slaves matched the massive, involuntary movement of people out of western and west central Africa between 1440 and 1880. Although the trans-Saharan trade transported nearly as many slaves, the Atlantic slave trade took place over a much shorter period and on average moved much larger numbers of slaves per year.

III

Roots of the Atlantic Slave Trade

The Atlantic slave trade began because a great demand for labor developed on plantations spread about the Atlantic, especially in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere. Most of the plantations produced sugarcane for Europe, but planters eventually grew such other products as coffee, cocoa, rice, indigo, tobacco, and cotton. The Atlantic slave trade became an integral part of an international trading system.

A

Spread of the Plantation System

Europeans craved cane sugar as soon as they encountered it in the 11th century during the early Crusades in the Middle East. Planting, harvesting, and processing sugar cane for export required a sizeable workforce. Because labor in the sugar fields was a strenuous and exhausting task, plantation owners used slave labor. Planters could work slaves in inhuman ways, dawn to dusk, to bring in the cane before it rotted in the fields. Planters could not make similar demands on typical workers of the time. Most of these workers were feudal serfs who were legally bound to work on the land owned by their landlords (see Serfdom). Sugar plantations and a related slave trade developed around the eastern Mediterranean in response to the growing demand for sugar. Among the earliest slaves on these plantations were Slavic peoples—the source of the words for slave in several European languages. As demand for sugar grew, the plantations spread westward, reaching Spain and Portugal by the 14th century.

Portuguese sailors who ventured into the Atlantic in the 15th century enabled plantation agriculture to spread to such tropical Atlantic islands as Madeira, the Canary Islands, and Sao Tome, all of which emerged as major sugar producers. The nearest labor force for these plantations was Africa’s western coast. Eventually plantation agriculture spread to the Americas: After 1550, northeast Brazil became the leading sugar-producing area, and after 1640 the leading position passed to the Caribbean. Eventually, the British colonies of mainland North America imported slaves to grow tobacco, rice, and indigo. Extensive cotton production based on slave labor did not begin in the southern United States until the beginning of the 19th century.

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