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Transatlantic Slave Trade

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The act of selling and buying slaves from one country to another is referred to as the slave

trade. From the seventeenth century, slaves became the focus of trade between Europe and

Africa. The conquering of Europe over nations such as Caribbean islands, North and South

America created more demand for African labourers. Africans were considered the best to work

in tropical condition. All the European nations were responsible and seriously involved in this

trade. This trade is also known as the Triangular Trade because it had three sides involving

voyages from Europe to Africa, from Africa to the Americas and from the Americas back to

Europe. It was referred to as a trade because it involved a form of exchange between all

European countries. But is it that Africans were inferior human beings to be subjected to such

animosity acts.

The transatlantic slave trade was one segment of the global slave trade that transported

around twelve million enslaved Africans through the Atlantic ocean to Europe and the Americas

between the sixteenth and nineteenth century. It was the second of the re-known triangular

trade. It involved the exchange of arms, wine and textiles which were being shipped from

Europe to Africa. In return, slaves from Africa were ferried to Europe. Moreso, sugar and coffee

from the Americas were moved to Europe, completing a triangle named triangular trade.

By 1480, Portuguese ships transported Africans for use as slaves on sugar plantations in

the Cape Verde and Madeira islands in the eastern Atlantic. Spanish took African slaves to the

Caribbean after 1502, but Portuguese merchants continued to dominate the transatlantic slave

trade for another one and half-century. (Barry, Boubacar. ( 1998 ). During this period, they
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operated from the base they had established in Congo and Angola areas in Africa. The Dutch

joined the trade-in 1600. In 1700, the English and the French merchants controlled about half

of the transatlantic slave trade, taking the largest percentage of their human cargo from the

region of West Africa between the Senegal and Niger rivers.

The Slave trade had traumatic effects in Africa. Economic motivations for warlords and

tribes to engage in the slave trade promoted the atmosphere of not following the law and

ViolenceViolence. Depopulation and continued fear of the captives made economic and

agricultural development almost impossible because people feared being attached or capture

and subjected to forced labour(Bates, Robert . ( 2008 ). Many of the slaves taken from Africa

were women in the age of childbearing and young men who had not yet started family life. The

Europeans were not interested in older people and the disabled because they deemed them

unproductive in terms of labour.

Sexual abuse and the atrocities of the enslaved captives were all over. Their monetary

value in the trade as slaves mitigated such treatments. The enslaved also faced problems of

diseases, and many died of the same. Because of the congested conditions they were subjected

to as slaves, contagious illnesses were common, and if they erupted, they resulted in the death

of many of them. The size of the slave trade transformed African societies by bringing negative

impact that led to long term poverty. The trade also contributed to the rise of hatred among

the African communities because each community felt that the other districts were betraying

them. Children were not spared also. Many of them were left as orphans because their parents

had either been kidnapped and ferried to Europe as slaves or died of diseases. Some of them
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even died of hunger and malnutrition. Women were raped and subjected to a hostile

environment as they were forced to ferry goods to ships. Many men lost their lives. Many were

also left with disabilities due to the beatings they were subjected to when working in industries

and farms.

References
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Barry, Boubacar. ( 1998 ). Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

Bates, Robert. ( 2008 ). When Things Fell Apart: State Failure in Late-Century Africa. New
York: Cambridge University Press. ( 2010 ). Prosperity and ViolenceViolence:  e Political
Economy of Development. New York :

Journal of African History, 35 (2): 237 –49. ( 2009 ). Voyages Database. Voyages:  e
Transatlantic Slave Trade Database. http://www.slavevoyages.org (accessed October 1, 2010).

An Economic History of West Africa. New York: Columbia University Press. IIASA. ( 2010 ).
“Global Agro-Ecological Assessment for Agriculture in the 21st Century:Methodologynd
Resultss.” Http://Www.Iiasa.Ac.At/Research/Luc/Gaez/Index.Htm (Accessed October 1,
2010).