History

African Slaves – The Dark Side Of African History

It’s sorrowful to realize that such an enormous part of African history relates to the African slave trade. This was the unlucky era in which African men, women and youngsters were ripped from their homes and sold to serve as slaves in other regions of the planet.

When Europe’s New World empires started to flourish, their rulers discovered that an intensive workforce was needed to cope with all of the new land. This need for large numbers of workers became the momentum behind the transatlantic slave trade. African slaves brought over to do the work were ideal for the job – they understood farming and cattle management, and they were accustomed to working in hot tropical climates. Beginning the 15th century, many African people were held and brought to the New World colonies in order to work in mines or on enormous farms and plantations.

Surprisingly, using African slaves wasn’t a new idea. African slavery had been going on for centuries, and it was not solely the invention of evil EU colonizers. Sadly , from about 1450 to the end of the 19th century, African sovereigns and merchants cooperated absolutely with slave traders. Agree with it or not, these privileged Africans were really enthusiastic participants in the African slave trade.

The transatlantic slave trade was unique in that it was specifically engaged in as a part of what was called the’Triangular Trade.’ This profitable practice concerned many stages. The first stage involved made products such as guns, beads, tobacco and material being taken from Europe to Africa. Guns were included because they helped the europeans expand their empires, but they also helped them capture more slaves. This practice later backfired, when the guns were turned against the europeans. But nonetheless, the products that were brought to Africa were traded for African slaves.

The slaves were then shipped to the Western Hemisphere as the second stage of the Triangular Trade. The 3rd and last stage of the practice was the return to Europe of dear metals and other products produced by slave labor, including gold, silver, molasses, cotton, tobacco and sugar. When the transatlantic slave trade began, African slaves were taken from Senegambia and the Windward Coast, but by the 1650s slaves were held from West Central Africa in Angola and the Congo.

Portugal was the first EU country to export African slaves, and it was the only country taking part in the slave trade between 1440 and about 1640. That same country was the last in Europe to abolish slavery, but even after the slave trade was stopped, Portugal continued to use slaves as contract laborers. Britain was the biggest slave-exporting country during the peak of the transatlantic slave trade. That country alone was in charge of 2.5 million out of the roughly six million African slaves that were transported during this tricky period in African history.

African slaves endured terrifying conditions in the transportation process. Forced marches through Africa and cheap shipboard conditions caused a projected 13% of all African slaves to die before reaching their intended destinations. Those that survived were sent to the Caribbean, the Spanish Empire and Portugal’s Brazil. Less than 5% were sent to north America.

the effect of slavery are still felt today. Descendants of African slaves are scattered throughout the world because that’s where their ancestors were forcibly taken. African-American author and activist Maulana Karenga described the slave trade and its effects as’the morally monstrous elimination of human possibility … Poisoning past, present and future relations with others who only know us through this stereotyping and thus damaging the really human relations among folk of today.’ In fact, he claimed, African slavery didn’t destroy just the people who lived through that period of African history – it destroyed their language, their culture, and their faith, and it destroyed the essence of’human possibility.’