The Return of the Tidal Flow of the Middle Passage

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Some Dutch, English, and French traders also participated in the slave trade. It became a target for the traditional enemies of Spain, losing a large share of the trade to the Dutch, English, and French. The main destinations of this phase were the Caribbean colonies and Brazil , as European nations built up economically slave-dependent colonies in the New World. It is estimated that more than half of the entire slave trade took place during the 18th century, with the British, Portuguese and French being the main carriers of nine out of ten slaves abducted in Africa.

Following the British and United States' bans on the African slave trade in , it declined, but the period after still accounted for The graveyard had been in use from approximately to the late 17th century. The first side of the triangle was the export of goods from Europe to Africa. A number of African kings and merchants took part in the trading of enslaved people from to about For each captive, the African rulers would receive a variety of goods from Europe. These included guns, ammunition, and other factory-made goods.

The second leg of the triangle exported enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas and the Caribbean Islands. The third and final part of the triangle was the return of goods to Europe from the Americas. The goods were the products of slave-labour plantations and included cotton , sugar , tobacco , molasses and rum. The Atlantic Slave Trade was the result of, among other things, labour shortage , itself in turn created by the desire of European colonists to exploit New World land and resources for capital profits.

Native peoples were at first utilized as slave labour by Europeans until a large number died from overwork and Old World diseases. Many crops could not be sold for profit, or even grown, in Europe. Exporting crops and goods from the New World to Europe often proved to be more profitable than producing them on the European mainland. A vast amount of labour was needed to create and sustain plantations that required intensive labour to grow, harvest, and process prized tropical crops.

Western Africa part of which became known as "the Slave Coast " , Angola and nearby Kingdoms and later Central Africa , became the source for enslaved people to meet the demand for labour. The basic reason for the constant shortage of labour was that, with large amounts of cheap land available and lots of landowners searching for workers, free European immigrants were able to become landowners themselves after a relatively short time, thus increasing the need for workers.

Thomas Jefferson attributed the use of slave labour in part to the climate, and the consequent idle leisure afforded by slave labour: This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labour. Africans played a direct role in the slave trade, selling their captives or prisoners of war to European buyers. Sometimes criminals would be sold so that they could no longer commit crimes in that area. Most other slaves were obtained from kidnappings, or through raids that occurred at gunpoint through joint ventures with the Europeans.

King Jaja of Opobo , a former slave, refused to do business with the slavers completely. Africans also participated in the slave trade through intermarriage, or cassare , meaning "to set up house". It is derived from the Portuguese word "casar", meaning "to marry". Cassare created political and economic bonds between European and African slave traders.

Cassare was a pre-European practice used to integrate the "other" from a differing African tribe. Powerful West African groups used these marriages as an alliance used to strengthen their trade networks with European men by marrying off African women from families with ties to the slave trade. Early on in the Atlantic Slave trade, these marriages were common.

The marriages were even performed using African customs, which Europeans did not object to, seeing how important the connections were. Although Europeans were the market for slaves, Europeans rarely entered the interior of Africa, due to fear of disease and fierce African resistance. Since most of these nations did not have a prison system, convicts were often sold or used in the scattered local domestic slave market.

As of , Thomas Kitchin estimated that Europeans were bringing an estimated 52, slaves to the Caribbean yearly, with the French bringing the most Africans to the French West Indies 13, out of the yearly estimate. Forms of slavery varied both in Africa and in the New World. This was connected to another distinction: The treatment of slaves in Africa was more variable than in the Americas.

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At one extreme, the kings of Dahomey routinely slaughtered slaves in hundreds or thousands in sacrificial rituals, and slaves as human sacrifices were also known in Cameroon. The slaves in Africa, I suppose, are nearly in the proportion of three to one to the freemen. They claim no reward for their services except food and clothing, and are treated with kindness or severity, according to the good or bad disposition of their masters Those of the first description are by far the most numerous In the Americas, slaves were denied the right to marry freely and masters did not generally accept them as equal members of the family.

New World slaves were considered the property of their owners, and slaves convicted of revolt or murder were executed. There were eight principal areas used by Europeans to buy and ship slaves to the Western Hemisphere. The number of enslaved people sold to the New World varied throughout the slave trade. As for the distribution of slaves from regions of activity, certain areas produced far more enslaved people than others. Between and , Although the slave trade was largely global, there was considerable intracontinental slave trade in which 8 million people were enslaved within the African continent.

There were over city-states and kingdoms in the African regions affected by the slave trade between and when Brazil became the last Atlantic import nation to outlaw the slave trade. Of those , no fewer than 68 could be deemed nation states with political and military infrastructures that enabled them to dominate their neighbours.

Nearly every present-day nation had a pre-colonial predecessor, sometimes an African Empire with which European traders had to barter. The different ethnic groups brought to the Americas closely corresponds to the regions of heaviest activity in the slave trade. Over 45 distinct ethnic groups were taken to the Americas during the trade. Of the 45, the ten most prominent, according to slave documentation of the era are listed below. The transatlantic slave trade resulted in a vast and as yet still unknown loss of life for African captives both in and outside America.

The number of lives lost in the procurement of slaves remains a mystery but may equal or exceed the number who survived to be enslaved. The savage nature of the trade led to the destruction of individuals and cultures. The following figures do not include deaths of enslaved Africans as a result of their labour, slave revolts, or diseases suffered while living among New World populations.

Historian Ana Lucia Araujo has noted that the process of enslavement did not end with arrival on the American shores; the different paths taken by the individuals and groups who were victims of the Atlantic slave trade were influenced by different factors—including the disembarking region, the kind of work performed, gender, age, religion, and language. Estimates by Patrick Manning are that about 12 million slaves entered the Atlantic trade between the 16th and 19th century, but about 1. Besides the slaves who died on the Middle Passage, more Africans likely died during the slave raids in Africa and forced marches to ports.

Manning estimates that 4 million died inside Africa after capture, and many more died young. Manning's estimate covers the 12 million who were originally destined for the Atlantic, as well as the 6 million destined for Asian slave markets and the 8 million destined for African markets. According to Kimani Nehusi, the presence of European slavers affected the way in which the legal code in African societies responded to offenders. Crimes traditionally punishable by some other form of punishment became punishable by enslavement and sale to slave traders.

Atlantic slave trade

The slave trade was largely a by-product of tribal and state warfare as a way of removing potential dissidents after victory or financing future wars. He requests the King of Portugal to stop sending merchandise but should only send missionaries. In one of his letters he writes:. Each day the traders are kidnapping our people—children of this country, sons of our nobles and vassals, even people of our own family. This corruption and depravity are so widespread that our land is entirely depopulated.

We need in this kingdom only priests and schoolteachers, and no merchandise, unless it is wine and flour for Mass. It is our wish that this Kingdom not be a place for the trade or transport of slaves Many of our subjects eagerly lust after Portuguese merchandise that your subjects have brought into our domains. To satisfy this inordinate appetite, they seize many of our black free subjects After having taken these prisoners [to the coast] secretly or at night As soon as the captives are in the hands of white men they are branded with a red-hot iron. Before the arrival of the Portuguese , slavery had already existed in Kongo.

Afonso believed that the slave trade should be subject to Kongo law. The kings of Dahomey sold war captives into transatlantic slavery; they would otherwise have been killed in a ceremony known as the Annual Customs. As one of West Africa's principal slave states, Dahomey became extremely unpopular with neighbouring peoples. A family's status was indicated by the number of slaves it owned, leading to wars for the sole purpose of taking more captives. This trade led the Khasso into increasing contact with the European settlements of Africa's west coast, particularly the French.

The Bight of Benin's shore soon came to be known as the "Slave Coast". The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people. It is the source and the glory of their wealth In , the UK Parliament passed the Bill that abolished the trading of slaves. The King of Bonny now in Nigeria was horrified at the conclusion of the practice:.

We think this trade must go on. That is the verdict of our oracle and the priests. They say that your country, however great, can never stop a trade ordained by God himself. After being marched to the coast for sale, enslaved people were held in large forts called factories. The amount of time in factories varied, but Milton Meltzer states in Slavery: A World History that around 4.

After being captured and held in the factories, slaves entered the infamous Middle Passage. Meltzer's research puts this phase of the slave trade's overall mortality at Measures were taken to stem the onboard mortality rate, such as enforced "dancing" as exercise above deck and the practice of force-feeding enslaved persons who tried to starve themselves.

Other fatalities were suicides, slaves who escaped by jumping overboard. Before the African slave trade was completely banned by participating nations in , Cohn, an economics professor whose research has focused on economic history and international migration , [84] has researched the mortality rates among Africans during the voyages of the Atlantic slave trade. He found that mortality rates decreased over the history of the slave trade, primarily because the length of time necessary for the voyage was declining. In the nineteenth century, 2 months appears to have been the maximum length of the voyage, and many voyages were far shorter.

Fewer slaves died in the Middle Passage over time mainly because the passage was shorter. Despite the vast profits of slavery, the ordinary sailors on slave ships were badly paid and subject to harsh discipline. A high crew mortality rate on the return voyage was in the captain's interests as it reduced the number of sailors who had to be paid on reaching the home port. The slave trade was hated by many sailors and those who joined the crews of slave ships often did so through coercion or because they could find no other employment. Dysentery was the leading cause of death.

Notable diseases not originally known as present in Americas before include those such as smallpox, malaria, bubonic plague, typhus, influenza, measles, diphtheria, yellow fever, and whooping cough. Smallpox was one of the epidemics that surrounded the Atlantic slave trade from the 15th to the 18th centuries. Diseases like smallpox were known for causing a significant decrease in the indigenous population of the New World.

An explanation to aid in understanding the logistics behind the extensive population decrease includes the topic of immunity. The native population was not immune to this disease in that they did not have the pathogen required to resist the disease. Those such as the European colonizers and the African slaves brought to the New World, however, did possess this pathogen due to having been previously exposed to smallpox.

It was known to be a common illness many underwent as children, which in turn built up their immunity to withstand this disease. As a result of the Native Americans no longer being able to work the lands as the labor required them to mine gold and silver , European colonizers, such as the Portuguese took advantage of their access to regions of the African continent such as Angola from which to extract another source of labor in which Africans had proven to be prime candidates in that they survived this case of the disease- also known as variola intermedius- while the Natives had continued to fall to the various illnesses.

Effects of smallpox included fever, bodily eruptions, and was very noticeable in the disfigurement seen of the face, hands, and feet. This illness is a viral disease, contracted through contact with an exposed individual and through the air, and no drug treatments for it were available.

Some Europeans, who believed the plague of syphilis in Europe to be the fault of the Amerindians, saw smallpox as the European revenge against the Natives. For many diseases, the African and Eurasian population were able to have already acquired immunity- being able to resist an infection- due to prior exposure as children in which they were less likely to receive the same illness again. Upon arrival, these diseases were transmitted to the Native populations who did not have immunity due to no prior exposure having been from climates in which these germs, and pathogens surrounding these diseases were not common.

Having been exposed to the illness as an adult, some effects would prove to be more enhanced than if they were to be at an adolescent age. Evolutionary history also played a role in being immune to the diseases of the slave trade. Compared to African and Europeans, New World populations did not have a history of exposure to the disease, and therefore, no genetic resistance could be maintained as a result of adaptation through evolution.

Levels and extent of immunity varies from disease to disease. For smallpox and measles for example, those who survive are equipped with the cellular immunity to combat the disease for the rest of their life in that they cannot contract the disease again. There are also diseases in which immunity does not guarantee that an individual is not susceptible to becoming reinfected. Due to a limited knowledge on the causation and range of effects of diseases surrounding the event of the slave trade, there were little to no methods for inoculation present during the time.

In the late 16th century with the increased presence of smallpox, there existed some forms of inoculation or sometimes referred to as variolation in Africa and the Middle East. One practice features Arab traders in Africa "buying-off" the disease in which a cloth that had been previously exposed to the sickness was to be tied to another child's arm to increase immunity.

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Another practice involved taking pus from a smallpox scab and putting it in the cut of a healthy individual in an attempt to have a mild case of the disease in the future rather than the effects becoming fatal. As epidemiology advances, causes and effective treatments are being discovered to combat historically destructive diseases such as syphilis- which in today can be treated with simple antibiotics such as penicillin and other medications that can inhibit and rid the body of harmful bacteria.

The trade of enslaved Africans in the Atlantic has its origins in the explorations of Portuguese mariners down the coast of West Africa in the 15th century. Before that, contact with African slave markets was made to ransom Portuguese who had been captured by the intense North African Barbary pirate attacks on Portuguese ships and coastal villages, frequently leaving them depopulated. The alarming decline in the native population had spurred the first royal laws protecting them Laws of Burgos, — The first enslaved Africans arrived in Hispaniola in While at first these planters had relied almost exclusively on the native Tupani for slave labour, after they began importing Africans, as a series of epidemics had decimated the already destabilized Tupani communities.

By , Africans had replaced the Tupani as the largest contingent of labour on Brazilian sugar plantations. As Britain rose in naval power and settled continental North America and some islands of the West Indies , they became the leading slave traders. But, following the loss of the company's monopoly in , [97] Bristol and Liverpool merchants became increasingly involved in the trade.

Birmingham , the largest gun-producing town in Britain at the time, supplied guns to be traded for slaves. The first slaves to arrive as part of a labour force in the New World reached the island of Hispaniola now Haiti and the Dominican Republic in Cuba received its first four slaves in Jamaica received its first shipment of slaves in The first enslaved Africans to reach what would become the United States arrived in July [ citation needed ] as part of a Spanish attempt to colonize San Miguel de Gualdape. By November the Spanish colonists were reduced to , and their slaves from to 70 [ why?

The enslaved people revolted in and joined a nearby Native American tribe, while the Spanish abandoned the colony altogether The area of the future Colombia received its first enslaved people in El Salvador , Costa Rica and Florida began their stints in the slave trade in , and , respectively. The 17th century saw an increase in shipments. Africans arrived in the English colony of Jamestown , Virginia in The first kidnapped Africans in English North America were classed as indentured servants and freed after seven years.

Virginia law codified chattel slavery in , and in the colony adopted the principle of partus sequitur ventrem , which classified children of slave mothers as slaves, regardless of paternity. Irish immigrants took slaves to Montserrat in , and in slaves were shipped [ by whom? The colonists' dependency on knowledge and experience of rice cultivation meant that the enslaved Africans possessed a comparatively large amount of bargaining power. The method of using the tidal flow to cultivate rice transformed the coastal Southeast between and the early 19 th century.

It was a highly productive method that was practical only on the lower stretches of a few rivers from the Cape Fear in North Carolina to the St. Johns in north Florida. The initial investment to create a tidal rice plantation was substantial and took a tremendous amount of backbreaking labor as well. Enslaved Africans cleared riverside swamps of timber and undergrowth and then surrounded them with earthen levees. Next they constructed an intricate system of dams, dikes, floodgates, ditches, and drains.

The rise and fall of the tide was used to irrigate the fields several times during the growing season to encourage rice growth and to control weeds and pests. People learn through the mistakes that others made so as to enable them to have a change of strategic planning on how to re-build themselves should in case such situation repeats itself. The calamities of human wastes and destructions that the Africans experienced during these heinous days of slavery era were sufficient enough to lead us to the direction of rapid development of our cities, schools, trades and industries and the development of our natural resources that were being intentionally destroyed and un-harnessed during this silent killing disease era.

But unfortunately, the big stick that is continuously agitating our wounds and which disallowed those wounds to heal on time is still a monstrous problem throughout the nations of the land. By gradual process, slavery is now turning its color to some much more horrible designs and if care is not taken, its course of flow will be much more wider than the time of slave trade. Our leaders in Africa must now change direction and find solutions to our problems.

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