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*The Atlantic Slave Trade
*Before the 1400s•A person could become a slave for many reasons:
•Captured in war
•Could not pay debts
•Criminals
•Parents sold children into slavery
•Slaves held a variety of jobs
•Slaves were usually freed after the paid their debts or reached a certain age
*After 1400s*Ships from Europe brought guns, cloth, and cash to Africa
*Africans traded other Africans as slaves for these goods
*Sugar, cotton, and molasses are brought from America to Europe
*Triangle Trade
*Name for series of trade routes between Europe, Africa, and America.
*Middle Passage: leg of the trade during which African slaves were taken to America
*System allowed Europeans to dominate trade and make large profits.
*Why Africans?
*The Pope declared that only non-Christians could be slaves.
*Most non-whites were not Christian so they became slaves
*Eventually this transferred to race/skin color.
*Thriving businesses*Industries that supported trade
thrived:
*Shipbuilding
*Fishing
*Tobacco plantations
*Processing sugar
*Towns like Nantes, France and Salem, Massachusetts become wealthy port cities
*The Process
*Africans were taken from inland villages and forced to march to coastal ports.
*Some walked thousands of miles to the coast.
*Men, women, and children were bound together with ropes and chains to prevent escape.
*Aboard “Floating Coffins”*Africans were packed
below the decks of ships.
*Trips lasted three weeks to three months.
*Disease was the biggest threat to life, and threatened a merchant’s profits.
*Suicide was more common than mutiny.
*African reaction to slavery
*Affonso I: ruler of Kongo, tried to convert subjects to Christianity to avoid slavery
*Ultimately unsuccessful since the demand for slaves was large.
*Osei Tutu: Asante leader who captured rival Africans and sold them into slavery, saving his own country from this fate.
*Impact of slave trade*African states and
societies were torn apart
*African lives cut short and brutalized.
*By the mid 1800s an estimated 11 million slaves had been sent to America.
*Another 2 million had died on the journey.
*Columbian Exchange
*Explorers travelling from the Americas brought back plants and animals to Europe.
*They returned to the Americas with goods from Europe to trade.
*This exchange of goods across continents is known as the Columbian Exchange (after Chris Columbus)
From America
From Europe
*Population Growth?*The exchange of food created a healthier diet
for many people.
*This caused the population to rise quickly.
*The Columbian Exchange also sparked the migration of people to America, searching for a new life or opportunities.
*Other groups, such as Natives and Africans, experienced higher death rates due to brutal European control.
*Vocabulary
*Capitalism: economic system in which most businesses are privately owned.
*Entrepreneurs: person who takes on a financial risk for a profit.
*Mercantilism: exporting more than you import to build up a supply of gold and sliver.