Chapter 21 – Africa and the Africans in the Age of the Atlantic Slave Trade

• Forced removal of Africans• African culture became one of the important strands in the

development of American civilizations.• Islam consolidated its position in sub-Saharan and east

Africa• Most of Africa remain independent states

• Factories – Trading stations with resident merchants established by the Portuguese and other Europeans

• Luanda – Portuguese settlement founded in 1520’s; became the core for the colony of Angola

African CaptivesAfrican Captives

• The Portuguese and Spanish inaugurated the pattern for contacts along the African coast

• Most forts were established with the approval of African authorities desiring trade benefits

Slave Trade in the CongoSlave Trade in the Congo

• Missionary efforts followed, particularly to the powerful states of Benin and the Kongo (Congo)

• Other Europeans followed Portuguese patterns by creating trading stations through trade agreement with Africans

• Slavery eventually became the principal focus of relationships between Europeans & Africans

• The development of sugar plantations on the Portuguese and Spanish Atlantic islands (Madeira, Canary, & Azores) and their subsequent extension to the Americas was a main reason for slavery

• The campaign against slavery that grew from Enlightenment ideas was an important turning point in world history

• African slavery was important in shaping the modern world

• It was one of the early international trades and it assisted the development of capitalism

• In 1660’s the English worked to supply their plantation colonies

• The French became the major carriers in the 18th century (Haiti)

• Tropical diseases caused both resident Europeans and the crews of slave-carrying ships high mortality rates

• Slaves arrived at the coast as a result of warfare and of purchase

• El Mina – Important Portuguese factory on the coast of modern Ghana

• Luanda – Portuguese settlement founded in the 1520s became the core for the colony of Angola

• Royal African Company – Chartered in Britain in the 1660s to establish a monopoly over the African trade; supplied slaves to British “New World” colonies

• Triangular trade – Complex commercial pattern linking Africa, the Americas, and Europe; slaves from Africa went to the New World; American agricultural products went to Europe; European goods went to Africa

• Between 1450-1850 about 12 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic; between 10-11 million arrived alive

Middle Passage – slave voyage from Africa to the Americas

The Middle PassageThe Middle Passage

• Brazil received more than 40% of all slaves reaching the Americas

• The continued high volume was necessary because of high slave mortality and low fertility rates

• Only in the Southern U.S. did slaves have a positive growth rate

Slave Ship PlanSlave Ship Plan

• Other slave trades: trans-Saharan, Red Sea, & east African – all under Muslim control; added another 3 million to the total # of slaves traded

“Coffin” Position: Onboard a Slave Ship

“Coffin” Position: Onboard a Slave Ship

Slave Ship InteriorSlave Ship Interior

Notice of a Slave AuctionNotice of a Slave Auction• Diaspora – The

dispersing of a group of people after the conquest of their homeland

• Saltwater slaves – Slaves transported from Africa; almost invariably black

• Creole slaves – American-born descendants of saltwater slaves; result of sexual exploitation of slave women or process of miscegenation (marriage of two races)

• On Africa’s east coast, the Swahili trading towns continued a commerce of ivory, gold, and slaves for Middle Eastern trade

• Few slaves went to European plantation colonies from east Africa

• Boers – Dutch farmers who immigrated to South Africa

• Afrikaners – later term used for the Boers

• The Great Trek – Movement inland during the 1830s of Dutch-ancestry settlers in South Africa seeking to escape their British colonial government

• Shaka – Ruler among the Nhuni peoples of southeast Africa during the early 19th c. developed military tactics that created the Zulu state

• Zulu wars – War fought in 1879 between the British and the African Zulu tribes

Shaka

William Wilberforce – British reformer who led the abolitionist movement that ended the British slave trade in 1807

• The influences causing the end of the slave trade & slavery were external to Africa

• Enlightenment thinkers during the 18th c. condemned slavery & the slave trade as immoral & cruel