1. Transatlantic slave trade
The Door of No Return

2. Transatlantic Slave Trade
Why?
European colonization of Americas
Spain
Portugal
England
Europeans thirst for New World (Americas) items fuels growth of plantations
Sugar
Tobacco
Cotton
Molasses
Rum
Disease, overwork kills millions of Native Americans; new labor force needed

3. Why Africans? No written language
Some disease resistance; already exposed to Europeans through trade activities, attempts “civilize”
No muskets, gunpowder
Slave trade already existed on the continent
Prisoners of war
Some sold themselves into slavery during famines
Treated as servants rather than property
“A slaves who knows how to serve inherits his master’s property”
Between 1450 and 1800 historians estimate MILLION Africans were kidnapped and sold into slavery
5% brought to North America

4. How? Africans became enslaved mainly through four ways:
criminals sold by the chiefs as punishment;
free Africans conducted raids for African and European gangs
domestic slaves resold
prisoners of war.
Source: Adu Boahen (University of Ghana)

5. “The Door of No Return” – Goree Island, Senegal

6. Cape Coast Castle, West Africa

7. What was Triangular Trade?
Three leg route
Europe
Africa
America
Europe to Africa
Cloth, firearms, beads,
spirits, tobacco
Africa to Americas
“Middle Passage”
Slaves
Americas to Europe
Raw materials: cotton,
Sugar, rum, tobacco

8. Triangular Trade

9. Middle Passage Slaves loaded on ships Horrific conditions
Diseases including small pox, dysentery
Those too sick to continue journey thrown overboard
Literally stripped of humanity
No clothes
No dignity
Treated as cargo
Hands/feet chained together
Fed only once daily, sometimes not at all
Clip from the movie “Amistad”

10. Middle Passage: Tight Pack
Tight pack meant as many as 400 slaves: high deaths but high profits

11. Middle Passage: Loose Pack
A loose pack meant fewer slaves: lower deaths and lower profits

12. Coping with Captivity Occasionally, revolts took place on ships
Often quickly put down as slaveholder had advanced weapons
La Amistad revolt (1839)
Ship’s captain and much of crew killed
Remaining crew trick Africans – end up in America
President John Quincy Adams championed their cause
US Supreme Court rules in favor of Africans; allowed to return home

13. Coping with Captivity Life in the Colonies
Caribbean
Spain
Sugar plantations
Brazil
Portugal
Mining
North America (West Indies & colonies)
England: dominated slave trade by 1600’s
Cotton, craft workers, domestic servants
Long hours, brutal conditions, no freedoms
To cope kept cultural traditions alive, turned to religion, slowed work pace, occasionally rebelled

14. African Diaspora Diaspora: from the Greek, means “spreading out”
Movement of Africans and their descendants to places throughout the world
the America
Europe
Middle East
Caused the spread of African culture to Americas, Western Europe