Atlantic slave trade

Reproduction of a handbill advertising a slave auction in Charleston, British Province of South Carolina, in 1769

The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people to the Americas. European slave ships regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage. Europeans established a coastal slave trade in the 15th century and trade to the Americas began in the 16th century, lasting through the 19th century.[1] The vast majority of those who were transported in the transatlantic slave trade were from Central Africa and West Africa and had been sold by West African slave traders to European slave traders,[2][3] while others had been captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids.[4][5] European slave traders gathered and imprisoned the enslaved at forts on the African coast and then brought them to the Americas.[6][7] Some Portuguese and Europeans participated in slave raids. As the National Museums Liverpool explains: "European traders captured some Africans in raids along the coast, but bought most of them from local African or African-European dealers."[8] Many European slave traders generally did not participate in slave raids because life expectancy for Europeans in sub-Saharan Africa was less than one year during the period of the slave trade because of malaria that was endemic in the African continent.[9] An article from PBS explains: "Malaria, dysentery, yellow fever, and other diseases reduced the few Europeans living and trading along the West African coast to a chronic state of ill health and earned Africa the name 'white man's grave.' In this environment, European merchants were rarely in a position to call the shots."[10] The earliest known use of the phrase began in the 1830s, and the earliest written evidence was found in an 1836 published book by F. H. Rankin.[11] Portuguese coastal raiders found that slave raiding was too costly and often ineffective and opted for established commercial relations.[12]

The colonial South Atlantic and Caribbean economies were particularly dependent on slave labour for the production of sugarcane and other commodities.[13][14] This was viewed as crucial by those Western European states which were vying with one another to create overseas empires.[15][16] The Portuguese, in the 16th century, were the first to transport slaves across the Atlantic. In 1526, they completed the first transatlantic slave voyage to Brazil, and other Europeans soon followed.[17] Shipowners regarded the slaves as cargo to be transported to the Americas as quickly and cheaply as possible,[15] there to be sold to work on coffee, tobacco, cocoa, sugar, and cotton plantations, gold and silver mines, rice fields, the construction industry, cutting timber for ships, as skilled labour, and as domestic servants.[18] The first enslaved Africans sent to the English colonies were classified as indentured servants, with legal standing similar to that of contract-based workers coming from Britain and Ireland. However, by the middle of the 17th century, slavery had hardened as a racial caste, with African slaves and their future offspring being legally the property of their owners, as children born to slave mothers were also slaves (partus sequitur ventrem). As property, the people were considered merchandise or units of labour, and were sold at markets with other goods and services.[19]

The major Atlantic slave trading nations, in order of trade volume, were Portugal, Britain, Spain, France, the Netherlands, the United States, and Denmark. Several had established outposts on the African coast, where they purchased slaves from local African leaders.[20] These slaves were managed by a factor, who was established on or near the coast to expedite the shipping of slaves to the New World. Slaves were imprisoned in a factory while awaiting shipment. Current estimates are that about 12 million to 12.8 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic over a span of 400 years.[21][22] The number purchased by the traders was considerably higher, as the passage had a high death rate, with between 1.2 and 2.4 million dying during the voyage, and millions more in seasoning camps in the Caribbean after arrival in the New World. Millions of people also died as a result of slave raids, wars, and during transport to the coast for sale to European slave traders.[23][24][25][26] Near the beginning of the 19th century, various governments acted to ban the trade, although illegal smuggling still occurred. It was generally thought that the transatlantic slave trade ended in 1867, but evidence was later found of voyages until 1873.[27] In the early 21st century, several governments issued apologies for the transatlantic slave trade.

  1. ^ Diffie, Bailey (1963). Prelude to Empire: Portugal Overseas Before Henry the Navigator. University of Nebraska Press. p. 58.
  2. ^ Gates, Henry Louis Jr. (22 April 2010). "Opinion – How to End the Slavery Blame-Game". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 26 April 2010.
  3. ^ Thornton 1998, p. 112.
  4. ^ "The transatlantic slave trade". BBC. Archived from the original on 16 July 2020. Retrieved 6 May 2021. * Some of those enslaved were captured directly by the European slave traders. Enslavers ambushed and captured local people in Africa. Most slave ships used European "factors", men who lived full-time in Africa and bought enslaved people from local leaders.
  5. ^ "Exchanging People for Trade Goods". African American Heritage and Ethnography. National Park Service. Archived from the original on 15 December 2022. Retrieved 12 January 2024.
  6. ^ "Implications of the slave trade for African societies". London: BBC. Archived from the original on 17 July 2020. Retrieved 12 June 2020.
  7. ^ "West Africa – National Museums Liverpool". Liverpool: International Slavery Museum. Archived from the original on 26 November 2020. Retrieved 14 October 2015.
  8. ^ "The capture and sale of enslaved Africans". National Museums Liverpool. Retrieved 15 August 2024.
  9. ^ Cohen, William (1983). "Malaria and French Imperialism". The Journal of African History. 24 (1): 23–36. doi:10.1017/S0021853700021502. JSTOR 181856. Archived from the original on 29 April 2024. Retrieved 29 April 2024.
  10. ^ "Confronting the Legacy of the African Slave Trade". PBS. Retrieved 15 August 2024.
  11. ^ "White Man's Grave". Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved 15 August 2024.
  12. ^ "The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade". Lowcountry Digital History Initiative. College of Charleston. Archived from the original on 27 June 2024. Retrieved 28 April 2024.
  13. ^ "The Rise and Fall of King Sugar" (PDF). National Archives of Trinidad and Tobago. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 June 2024. Retrieved 24 January 2024.
  14. ^ "Sugar Plantations". National Museums Liverpool. Archived from the original on 27 January 2024. Retrieved 24 January 2024.
  15. ^ a b Mannix, Daniel (1962). Black Cargoes. The Viking Press. pp. Introduction–1–5.
  16. ^ Ives Bortolot, Alexander. "The Transatlantic Slave Trade". The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University. Archived from the original on 17 January 2024. Retrieved 17 January 2024.
  17. ^ Weber, Greta (5 June 2015). "Shipwreck Shines Light on Historic Shift in Slave Trade". National Geographic Society. Archived from the original on 7 June 2015. Retrieved 8 June 2015.
  18. ^ Covey, Herbert C.; Eisnach, Dwight, eds. (2009). "Slave Cooking and Meals – Arrival in the Americas". What the Slaves Ate: Recollections of African American Foods and Foodways from the Slave Narratives. Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood Press. pp. 49–72. ISBN 978-0-313-37497-5. LCCN 2009003907.
  19. ^ Berlin, Ira (9 April 2012). "The Discovery of the Americas and the Transatlantic Slave Trade". The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Archived from the original on 17 January 2024. Retrieved 17 January 2024.
  20. ^ Klein, Herbert S.; Klein, Jacob (1999). The Atlantic Slave Trade. Cambridge University Press. pp. 103–139.
  21. ^ Segal, Ronald (1995). The Black Diaspora: Five Centuries of the Black Experience Outside Africa. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 4. ISBN 0-374-11396-3. It is now estimated that 11,863,000 slaves were shipped across the Atlantic, citing Lovejoy, Paul E. (1989). "The Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on Africa: A Review of the Literature". Journal of African History. 30 (3): 368. doi:10.1017/S0021853700024439.
  22. ^ Meredith 2014, p. 194.
  23. ^ Manning, Patrick (1992). "The Slave Trade: The Formal Demographics of a Global System". In Inikori, Joseph E.; Engerman, Stanley L. (eds.). The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economies, Societies and Peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Europe. Duke University Press. pp. 119–120. ISBN 0-8223-8237-7.
  24. ^ Stannard, David (1993). American Holocaust. Oxford University Press.
  25. ^ Eltis, David; Richardson, David (2002). "The Numbers Game". In Northrup, David (ed.). The Atlantic Slave Trade (2nd ed.). Houghton Mifflin. p. 95.
  26. ^ Davidson, Basil. The African Slave Trade.[full citation needed]
  27. ^ Cite error: The named reference alberge was invoked but never defined (see the help page).