Unit 5

Lesson 4
Sugar and the
Transatlantic
Slave Trade
 slavery

bjws.blogspot.com

a system under which people are treated as

property to be bought and sold, and are forced to
work
Activity #1

Click the picture and read the article

How Sugar Changed the World
Then answer the questions on the next slide
Answer the following questions, using the article
How Sugar Changed the World to help you
● In paragraph 1 what does “White Gold” mean?
● In the last sentence in paragraph 1 what does “cash crop” mean? Can you give
other examples of cash crops? (tobacco, cotton, corn etc.)
● From where did sugar cane originally come? What do we call the process when
something from one culture is adopted by another? (Cultural diffusion) Why did
sugar production do well in the Caribbean and South America?
● In paragraph 4 what problems are raised? Why didn’t the Europeans use native
peoples as labor? Why didn’t they simply do the work themselves?
● Paragraph 5 poses two benefits for the solution of using peoples from Africa.
What are they? (more profit; you don’t have to pay slaves; easy to do it is a
continuation of trade network they already had.)
● Look at paragraph 5 line 3. Why was the slave trade called ‘Maafa” in Swahili?
 Middle Passage

the forced voyage of enslaved Africans across the

Atlantic Ocean to the Americas
 Middle Passage

● The process of transporting the captured slave to

the New World was called the Middle Passage
because the initial Passage was the capture in
Africa; the final Passage was the sale to a
plantation owner

● The Middle Passage was cruel and inhuman and

driven by profit.
Activity # 2 Assume the identity of museum
curators and to write a label to put
next to each map in an exhibition.
On a leftside page draw a box the
size of a small index card for each
map

The placard should include the

1. name of the map

2. its purpose
3. the most important things the
audience will learn from the
Click the picture to map

see the maps (3)

 Why was it called the Middle
Passage?
Two reasons (differents people cite different reasons)

1. Middle leg of the triangle trade between England and the

Americas

2. Middle leg of the journey for the slaves

As you work today…

What is the relationship between the

sugar crop and the slave trade?

Would one exist without the other?

Activity #3

Click the picture to read the

article titled Slave trade- The
African Connection
Activity #4

Create a leftside page that explains

the article to someone who has not
and is not going to read it.
Click on the picture to read the

Los Angeles Times article

War & Peace

Activity #5

The article does not deal with a cause. Work on your

own or with one other person to try and think of one?
Discuss the content, author, purpose, and format.
Who is the potential audience? What is the author’s
bias?

** You do not need to write an essay, just a

few sentences to answer the questions **
Activity # 6
Create a cartoon/comic (Similar to political cartoons)
as a leftside page based on the article War &
Peace