The Atlantic Slave Trade- Causes

The Atlantic Slave Trade- Causes

Multiple Choice

Who was the first modern European to land in the Americas?

• Christopher Columbus

• Amerigo Vespucci

• Vasco DaGama

• Bartholomew Diaz

Poll

Did you know that the first Europeans to discover and settle on America where actually Vikings in the 10th Century CE? Nearly 500 years before Columbus!

• Yup, knew that!

• Didn't, but I do now!

The Demand for Slaves

• As discussed, settlers in the New World were producing crops that were demanded in Europe like tobacco, coffee, sugar, tea, and cotton.

• They wanted to reduce costs and maximise profits. A huge cost to any company is labour- the more people you have the more money you spend paying them.

• Slaves were then very cheap as you did not pay a slave. A slave could be fed enough to keep him and alive and working. A slave was property and could be treated as such.

• Europeans needed a source of slaves.

Multiple Choice

Sugar, tobacco, cotton, tea and coffee are not necessary for survival, therefore they are not essential goods like grain or water. Typically only people who could afford them could buy them. What then are they?

• Luxury goods

• Perishable Goods

• Nice goods

• New World Goods

Ok, So Native Americans as Slaves?

• Europeans initially tried to use Native American peoples as slaves but there were a few problems:

  1. Native Americans were incredibly vulnerable to European diseases (smallpox) as well as tropical diseases such as malaria.

  2. Native American populations also fiercely resisted European expansion and there was little relationship of slave trading between the two groups.

  3. Finally the Native American population was sparse and widespread across the vast American continents and difficult to capture.

Many brutal wars were fought between European settlers and Native peoples, usually to the detriment of the Native Peoples. There was not a relationship of trust and understanding as the Europeans expanded further, limiting the amount of trade between the two groups. However in the early days of European settlement Native Peoples happily traded with and even fought alongside European settlers against other Europeans (The Seven Years War, 1756-1763) or other tribes (The Beaver Wars, 1640- 1701)

Open Ended

So if Native Americans are unsuited as slaves on a massive degree, where else do you think they could have found slaves that didn't have the same drawbacks as Native Americans?

So, Where Else?

• Africa was a different story:

  1. Africa had a large population concentrated along the coast.

  2. Europeans had been trading with Africans for centuries and slavery, particulary along the North and West coast, was already practised by many Africans. There were many African slave traders who would sell slaves to Europeans.

  3. Africans were also immune to tropical diseases and many of the same diseases as Europeans.

Slavery as a practice was already fairly common in Africa before Europeans began looking to Africa for slaves, though the Europeans perfected the art of slave trading to a devastating degree... But the already existing practise made it easier for Europeans to get involved in an already existing market. Added to that the Africans strong immunity to disease and you had, morbidly, a winning combination.

But weren't the Europeans Christians?

• Yes, but they pointed to particular verses in the Bible that seemed to justify slavery.

• Most important was the so called "Curse of Ham": when Noah cursed his son Ham's descendents to be servants of his other sons descendents in Genesis after the Flood. Many interpreted Ham's descendents to be Africans and thus ordained by God to be servants despite the clear contradictions to other Christian philosophy.

• Another passage came from Paul in Ephesians 6:5 and repeated in Colossians 3:22: "Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ”.

• Slavery thus seemed natural and ordained by God to Europeans.

What's Next?

Next we'll look at the trade of slaves and goods that developed between Europe, Africa and the America's known, because of it's shape, as the Triangular Trade. The most brutal instance of human trafficking in all of human history.