1. Triangular Trade and Slaves: An Unknown Connection

2. The Slave Trade
Why were millions of Africans sent as slaves to the Americas?
What goods were produced and exchanged?
Why did the Africans not fight back while traveling across the Atlantic Ocean?
What was the importance of the Triangular Trade to these colonies?

3. Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal and Vasco da Gama
Explorations
First contact between Europeans and Africans took place as a sea route to India was being researched
Vasco da Gama sailed around the Cape of Good Hope in 1858
da Gama set up trading stations along the way, trading iron and copper for fish, sugar, ivory, gold, and pepper.
Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal and Vasco da Gama

4. Slavery Myths
Contrary to popular belief, slavery did NOT begin with this exploration of Africa. It has existed since ancient times. The Romans took slaves as well as others.
In Africa, people most commonly became slaves in times of war when captured by winners. In fact, slavery was a part of African society through chattel slavery, debt bondage, forced labor and serfdom
In Africa, slaves were treated like people, not as property.

5. The Human Factor
At first there were just a few slaves. Later, as the Americas were discovered, the amount of manpower needed increased.
Native Americans were dying off, not used to European diseases. Therefore, a labor force was needed
Africans were good farmers, herders, were acclimated to the tropics and resistant to many tropical diseases. In other words, they were perfect

6. Increased Demands
As the need for more labor increased, the amount of slaves sent to the Americas increased.
1700s: about 60,000 slaves were sent on slave ships a year.
“The Middle Passage” was the journey from Africa to America for slaves.
As the demand for slaves grew, the Triangular Trade Network formed, linking Europe, Africa, and the Americas.

7. African Homes of Slaves
These are main the regions where slaves were taken from during the peak of the Triangular Trade

8. Stages 1 and 2
Triangular Trade involved taking manufactured goods, such as cloth from Europe to Africa
“The Middle Passage” shipped slaves from Africa to the Americas with a death rate of 13 percent for the slaves
Sailors on slave ships had a mortality rate of about 13 percent, had to be coerced to serve on a slave ship and suffered in conditions just as harsh as the slaves

9. Slave holders wanted healthy slaves so that they would be good workers
Slave holders wanted healthy slaves so that they would be good workers. Here, a slave trader checks a possible slave for sickness.

10. The Middle Passage

11. Stage 3
Why do you think so many slaves died en route from Africa to the Americas?
The final stage of the Triangular Trade involved the shipping of produce from slave-labor plantations (i.e. cotton) to Europe
Many slaves were sent to the West Indies, Central and South America

12. Atlantic Slave Trade

13. Atlantic Slave Trade

14. Atlantic Slave Trade
Between 1650 and 1860, 10 to 15 million enslaved people journeyed through “The Middle Passage” from western Africa to the Americas

15. Guns in Africa
Europeans came to depend on African rulers and merchants for slaves.
The slaves that were sold to Europeans by African rulers were often from enemy tribes or were prisoners of war.
Slaves were paid for with guns and other manufactured goods (example: whiskey/rum, key to US colonial economies).

16. Arab Slave Trading Caravan in the Sahara Desert
Slaves in the Caravans
With guns, African rulers and merchants were able to capture more slaves, so the numbers of enslaved Africans kept rising.
Some Africans formed slave caravans to transport slaves all over Africa
Arab Slave Trading Caravan in the Sahara Desert

17. Did you know…
That the sixth president of the United States spoke out against slavery?
J. Q. Adams