What Was One of the Main Reasons the Trans-atlantic Slave Trade Was So Harmful to Africa?

Causes and results of slavery

A primary cause of the trade was the colonies that European countries were starting to develop. In America, for instance, which was a colony of England, there was a demand for many labourers for the sugar, tobacco and cotton plantations. Paid labourers were likewise expensive, and the indigenous people had largely been wiped out by illness and conflict, then the colonisers turned to Africa to provide cheap labour in the form of slaves.

The first shipment of slaves from Due west Africa to the Americas, across the Atlantic Ocean, was in the early 1500s. European, Arab and African merchants were now selling humans as well every bit gold, ivory and spices.

Slave Trade Routes 1650 - 1860 Prototype source

Simply responsibility for the slave merchandise is not simple. On the ane mitt, it was indeed the Europeans who purchased large numbers of Africans, and sent them far away to work in their colonies. On the other hand, Africans bear some responsibleness themselves: some African societies had long had their ain slaves, and they cooperated with the Europeans to sell other Africans into slavery. The Europeans relied on African merchants, soldiers and rulers to become slaves for them, which they then bought, at convenient seaports.

Africans were not strangers to the slave trade, or to the keeping of slaves. In that location had been considerable trading of Africans as slaves past Islamic Arab merchants in North Africa since the twelvemonth 900. When Leo Africanus travelled to West Africa in the 1500s, he recorded in his The Clarification of Africa and of the Notable Things Therein Contained that, "slaves are the next highest article in the marketplace. At that place is a place where they sell countless slaves on market days." Criminals and prisoners of war, besides equally political prisoners were often sold in the marketplaces in Gao, Jenne and Timbuktu.

Mayhap because slavery and slave trading had long existed in much of Africa (though perhaps in forms less brutal than the slavery practised in the Americas), Africans were untroubled by selling slaves to Europeans.

Case report: The kingdom of Kongo and the slave trade

At the same time as Swell Zimbabwe was powerful, there was a large and powerful kingdom forth the Congo River in Central Africa, known every bit the Kongo. Kongo was ruled by a manikongo, or king, and was divided into six provinces, each administered by a governor.

Artists depiction of the Kingdom of Kongo. Picture source: The Abolitionism Projection, abolition.e2bn.org

The kingdom had an organised organization of labour, taxation and trade, especially in fe and salt. It besides had a currency, in the grade of nzimbu shells from a nearby island. The Kongo Kingdom had been in identify for effectually 200 years when the showtime Portuguese arrived on the coast.

In 1482, Diego Cão, a Portuguese explorer, visited the kingdom. The reigning manikongo, Nzinga Nkuwu, was impressed by the Portuguese and sent a delegation to visit Portugal. Every bit a result, Portuguese missionaries, soldiers and artisans were welcomed to Mbanza, the majuscule of the kingdom. The missionaries targeted the Kongo leaders, and managed to convert Nzinga Nkuwu to Christianity. This led to divisions between the new Christians and followers of the traditional religions.

The next manikongo, Alfonso I, was raised as a Christian. He expanded trade links with the Portuguese, which included becoming involved in the slave trade. His people would raid neighbouring villages and states, selling the prisoners to the Europeans for a adept cost. This made the kingdom very wealthy for some years.

All the same, the slave trade eventually took its toll on the Kongo kingdom. Although the slave merchandise made some chiefs enormously wealthy, information technology ultimately undermined local economies and political stability as villages' vital labour forces were shipped overseas and slave raids and civil wars became commonplace. To meet the huge demand for slaves, the Kongolese began raiding further afield, and several groups fought back, including the Téké and the Kuba. This constant conflict distracted them from merchandise and weakened their defences. They shortly became dependent on the Portuguese for assistance, especially in the Jaga Wars of 1568. The Kongo Kingdom never regained its quondam ability. In the years that followed, the Kongo fought both for and confronting the Portuguese, eventually being colonised in 1885.

A breakaway group, the Ndongo, moved southwards. They chosen their kings angola. They were also later colonised by the Portuguese.

The Abolition project, Africa Earlier Transatlantic Slavery visit abolitionism.e2bn.org

Case study: The life of Gustavus Vassa

A good fashion of understanding the slave trade is to read the commencement-hand or eyewitness accounts written by actual slaves, later on some were freed and taught to read and write in European languages. 1 of the most famous of these was written by Olaudah Equiano, who was captured as a immature boy in southern Nigeria and sold into slavery in Europe. The Life of Gustavus Vassa (his slave proper noun) was the commencement-e'er slave autobiography. Here is an excerpt from his autobiography, a master historical source:

Vassa'due south autobiography (above) was funded by abolitionists and helped to further the anti-slavery cause. Source: memory.loc.gov

The starting time object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast, was the ocean, and a slave send, which was then riding at anchor, and waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror, when I was carried on board. I was immediately handled, and tossed up to come across if I were sound, by some of the crew; and I was at present persuaded that I had gotten into a world of bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me. Their complexions, too, differing so much from ours, their long hair, and the language they spoke (which was very unlike from any I had always heard) united to ostend me in this belief. Indeed, such were the horrors of my views and fears at the moment, that, if ten thousand worlds had been my own, I would have freely parted with them all to take exchanged my status with that of the meanest slave in my own land. When I looked circular the send likewise, and saw a big furnace of copper boiling, and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every 1 of their countenances expressing blues and sorrow, I no longer doubted my fate; and, quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I brutal motionless on the deck and fainted. When I recovered a little, I plant some black people about me, who I believed were some of those who had brought me on board, and had been receiving their pay; they talked to me in order to cheer me, but all in vain. I asked them if nosotros were not to exist eaten past those white men with horrible looks, red faces, and long hair. They told me I was not: and one of the crew brought me a minor portion of spirituous liquor in a wine glass, but, being afraid of him, I would not accept it out of his manus. One of the blacks, therefore, took information technology from him and gave it to me, and I took a little down my palate, which, instead of reviving me, as they thought it would, threw me into the greatest consternation at the foreign feeling it produced, having never tasted whatever such liquor earlier. Soon later on this, the blacks who brought me on board went off, and left me abandoned to despair.

[after] Nosotros were conducted immediately to the merchant's yard, where we were all pent upward together, like so many sheep in a fold, without regard to sexual activity or age. As every object was new to me, every thing I saw filled me with surprise. What struck me first, was, that the houses were built with bricks and stones, and in every other respect different from those I had seen in Africa; merely I was even so more astonished on seeing people on horseback. I did non know what this could hateful; and, indeed, I idea these people were full of goose egg but magical arts. While I was in this astonishment, one of my fellow-prisoners spoke to a countryman of his, virtually the horses, who said they were the same kind they had in their country. I understood them, though they were from a afar part of Africa; and I idea it odd I had non seen any horses there; just afterward, when I came to converse with dissimilar Africans, I plant they had many horses amongst them, and much larger than those I and so saw.

We were non many days in the merchant's custody, before nosotros were sold subsequently their usual way, which is this: On a signal given, (as the beat of a drum) the buyers blitz at one time into the m where the slaves are bars, and brand choice of that package they similar best. The noise and bedlam with which this is attended, and the eagerness visible in the countenances of the buyers, serve not a picayune to increment the apprehension of terrified Africans, who may well be supposed to consider them as the ministers of that devastation to which they think themselves devoted. In this fashion, without scruple, are relations and friends separated, virtually of them never to encounter each other again. I remember, in the vessel in which I was brought over, in the men's apartment, there were several brothers, who, in the sale, were sold in different lots; and information technology was very moving on this occasion, to come across and hear their cries at departing. O, ye nominal Christians! Learned you lot this from your God, who says unto you lot, Do unto all men as you would men should do unto yous? Is it not enough that we are torn from our country and friends, to toil for your luxury and lust of gain? Must every tender feeling be likewise sacrificed to your avarice? Are the dearest friends and relations, now rendered more dear by their separation from their kindred, still to be parted from each other, and thus prevented from cheering the gloom of slavery, with the modest comfort of being together; and mingling their sufferings and sorrows? Why are parents to lose their children, brothers their sisters, husbands their wives? Surely, this is a new refinement in cruelty, which, while it has no advantage to absolve for it, thus aggravates distress; and adds fresh horrors even to the wretchedness of slavery.

- Source: The Life of Gustavus Vassa past Olaudah Equiana, London, 1789

Abolition of the slave trade

If you get fourth dimension try to watch the motion-picture show 'Amistad' in class. Movie source: history.sandiego.edu

There was a great bargain of resistance to slavery, even while it was still thriving. Many slaves themselves resisted capture by escaping or by jumping overboard from slave ships.

Examples of resistance include:

• On the send Amistad, a group of slaves rebelled and took command of the transport.
• Queen Nzingha of Angola and Rex Maremba of the Kongo fought against the slave traders
• Many Europeans found the idea of buying and selling homo beings appalling.

The abolitionists and humanitarians in Europe and America were mostly Christian groups who saw the slave trade as a criminal offence against God. They also believed that they could better spread the word of Christianity amidst free Africans.

Years of resistance and pressure level, particularly under the umbrella of the Anti-Slavery Society, eventually led the European governments to abolish slavery and emancipate or free the slaves, although it took a long time for this to happen in practice.

Some historians debate that the abolition of slavery was an economic, not a humanitarian, act. By the early 1800s the new captains of industry in England favoured abolition of slavery because they believed it was an inefficient and plush course of labour. Rather than buying slaves outright, and then having to provide at least a minimum of food and lodging, whether the slaves were productive or not, the English language capitalists preferred to buy only the bodily labour time of the so called free workers.

You tin read more near the Industrial Revolution in Topic 3

Either fashion, Britain passed its Slavery Abolitionism Act in 1833, freeing all slaves in the British Empire, including S Africa. In North America, however, it was just after the American Civil War was fought in the 1860s that the slaves were freed.

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Source: https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/atlantic-slave-trade

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