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American
colonies received slaves through the slave trade. The slave trade was the selling of human beings for a profit.
It began in the 1400s when the Portuguese began
trading horses and guns with West Africa for
human beings and it lasted until the 1700s. The prime area for getting slaves
was from West Africa in Ghana,
Mali, Songhai
and the Kongo. When Americans realize that Africans were better workers than
Native Americans and they could work without pay, they began using them as
slaves, on their plantations.
Slavery, the
practice of holding a person in bondage for labor, was a way of life for many
Africans long before the Europeans traveled to Africa. Africans enslaved or imprisoned, men and
women who were captured during tribal wars and people who had committed
crimes. When the Europeans began the
slave trade and African kings saw the amount of profits that was to be made
from the slave trade, African kings searched for ways to earn more profit.
They started more wars and inflicted more punishments on their people.
Africans were
sold as slaves, to the West Indies and America. This was known as the
triangular Atlantic trade, which was the most profitable trading route in the
world. The triangular Atlantic trade was a trade route shaped like a triangle.
A ship in the triangular trade went from Africa, to the West Indies to Boston. The Europeans
traded guns and horses to the Africans chiefs for their prisoners of war and
people who had broken the African law. West Africans were sold in the West Indies and American colonies for gold, sugar and
other products. Boston merchants sold rum to Africa.
West Africans
were then taken as slaves across the Atlantic Ocean
on ships. These slave ships were made to hold as many 500 humans in their
cargo holds. This voyage across the Atlantic Ocean
was called the “Middle Passage.” African men, women and children were crowded
into slave ships for a voyage that lasted 21 to 45 days. They were chained
together and their legs were chained or they were chained to the ship to prevent
mutiny. They were packed so closely together that many did not have enough
room to sit down. They had a poor diet of water, boiled rice, millet, or stewed
yams. Ship captains kept the Africans
below the deck and on rare occasions took them on deck for exercise. The heat, dirty conditions cause awful
illnesses and even death. Many
Africans did not survive the voyage and died of disease, illness, suicide or
mutiny. Their bodies were thrown
overboard without a funeral. The Africans who survive the horrible conditions
aboard the slave ships and made it to America
or the West Indies were sold as slaves to plantation owners who gave the
captains of the slave ships cotton, rice, tobacco, spices, rum, sugar and
currency for their return trip to Europe.
Now you know
how American colonies received slaves. The slave trade was a dreadful
business but plantation owners and ship captains did not think it was sinful
to keep human beings in bondage. They only saw the profits to be made through
the slave trade.
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Additional learning resource: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/10chapter3.shtml
BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR THE CURRENT PAGE
Textbooks:
World History - Medieval
and Early Modern Times. Evanston: McDougal
Littell, 2006. (150 – 199)
Across the Centuries.
Boston: Houghton
Miifflin Company, 1997. (108 – 153)
Dasilva, Benjamin, and Milton
Finkelstine. The Afro-American in United States History. New York: Globe Book
Company, 1969. (4 -135)
Internet Websties:
"The Terrible Transformation." The
African Slave Trade and the Middle Passage. 27 Feb. 2006
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1narr4.html>.
African History." The
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. 27 Feb. 2006
<http://africanhistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa080601a.htm>.
"The Slave Trade." Slave
Ship. 27 Feb. 2006
<http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASships.htm>.
"Captive Passage." Middle
Passage. 27 Feb. 2006
<http://www.mariner.org/captivepassage/middlepassage/index.html>.
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