 Hello and welcome to our video summarizing all you need to know about the transatlantic slave trade. My name is Barbara and in this video we'll examine the history of the transatlantic slave trade, its peak, as well as its decline and ultimately how it was outlawed. This video is useful if you're studying this as part of your history course, so if you find it helpful, we'd love it if you could give a video a thumbs up and share it with others who may also find it useful. So let's get started. Now, if you're thinking about the transatlantic slave trade as a whole, it's really important to bear in mind that it was a segment of the global slave trade that transported between 10 to 12 million enslaved Africans across the Atlantic oceans to the Americas from the 16th to the 19th century. So that's the transatlantic slave trade in a nutshell. It was the second of three stages of the so-called triangular trade in which arms, textiles and wine were shipped from Europe to Africa, slaves from Africa to the Americas, and sugar and coffee for them from the Americas to Europe. The transatlantic slave trade was the largest forced migration in human history and it completely changed Africa, the Americas and Europe. It also became the linchpin of racial hierarchizing and stratification. Now, when it comes to a more detailed history of this slave trade, beginning with its start. Now, the European slave trade really began with Portugal's exploration of the west coast of Africa in search of a sea route to trade to the east. The east had bountiful new resources like spices and silk and the Portuguese were really eager to acquire these goods without the laborious journey by land from Europe to Asia. But the 1480s, Portuguese ships were already transporting Africans for use as slaves on the sugar plantations in Cape Verde and the Madeira Islands on the eastern Atlantic. In 1482, Portuguese traders built Elmina Castle in present-day Ghana on the west coast of Africa. Originally built as a fortified trading post, the castle had mounted cannons facing out to sea, not inland towards continental Africa. The Portuguese had a great affair of a naval attack from other Europeans than of a land attack from Africans. Although the Portuguese originally set the fort, or rather used the fort for trading gold, by the 16th century that shifted the focus to trading enslaved people as a demand for slave labor inflated in the New World. The sharp prize in the demand for slave labor was a result of the growth of sugar plantations in the Caribbean and tobacco plantations in the Cheapscape region in North America. In 1526, they completed the first transatlantic slave voyage to Brazil. Spanish conquistadors took African slaves to the Caribbean after 1502, but Portuguese merchants continued to dominate the transatlantic slave trade for another century and a half, operating from the bases in the Congo and Gola area along the west coast of Africa. Soon, the Spanish, Dutch and English all followed the Portuguese in transporting enslaved people across the Atlantic. Consequently, slave trade became associated with competition for influence among European powers in the New World. Now this is a really interesting map that really charts the slave trade and as you can see the arrows, the green arrows really represent just how many slaves were transported from Africa and into the Americas and as you can see the bulk of them went to Brazil and interestingly enough the French Caribbean also received a bulk of these slaves but of course Northern America as well as the British Caribbean islands also received this share and of course also the Dutch Caribbean. Also do bear in mind that of course in the across the Atlantic Ocean most of the slaves came from the western part of Africa as well as kind of the southern part as you can see from the Angola region but don't forget that also in the Middle East as you can see from the eastern coast of Africa a lot of slaves are also traded into the Arabian islands. Now on the comes this peak of the slave trade, the Dutch became the foremost slave traders during parts of the 1600s and in the following century English and French merchants controlled about half of the transatlantic slave trade taking a large percentage of the human cargo from Western Africa between Senegal and Nigerie rivers. Britain was also heavily involved so until the 1730s London dominated the British trade and enslaved people. It continued to send ships to West Africa until the end of the trade in 1807. Only Portugal slash Brazil transported more Africans across the Atlantic than Britain so Britain was a huge country that was involved in the slave trade. Between 1699 and 1807 Britain and British colonial ports mounted 12,103 slaving voyages with 3,351 setting out directly from London. The first Africans imported to the English colonies were also called indentured servants or apprentices for life. By the middle of the 17th century they and their offspring were legally the property of their owners as property they were merchandise or units of labour and were sold at markets with other goods and services. Indeed they were they were even sold on the stock exchange so there were huge slave plantations that were traded on the London stock exchange and they were seen as really profitable. The largest numbers of slaves were taken to the Americas during the 18th century when according to historians estimates nearly three-fifths of the total volume of the transatlantic slave trade took place. Now when it comes to the impact the transatlantic slave trade database estimates that 12.5 million Africans were sent through the middle passage across the Atlantic to work in the New World. An estimated 10 to 15 percent of the captives died on the way to the Americas and those who did arrive often faced conditions worse than the slave ships. Soon the Atlantic slave trade would contribute to enshrining a racial hierarchy into New World culture. The slave trade had a devastating effect on Africa. The forced removal of up to 25 million people from the continent obviously had a major effect on the global population in Africa or rather the growth of the population of Africa. It's estimated that in the period between 1500 to 1900 the population of Africa remained stagnant or declined in some parts. Economic incentives for warlords and tribes to engage in the slave trade promoted an atmosphere of lawlessness and violence. Depopulation and a continuing fear of captivity made economic and agricultural development almost impossible throughout much of Western Africa. A large percentage of the people were taken captive and there were women in their childbearing years as well as young men who normally would have been starting families. The European slavers usually left behind persons who were elderly, disabled or otherwise dependent, groups who were at least able to contribute to the economic health of the societies were stolen away. The transatlantic slave trade also created conditions for the subsequent colonial conquest of Africa by European powers and the unequal relationship that still exists today between Africa and many of the big world powers. The slave trade is sometimes called the MAFA by African and African-American scholars meaning Holocaust or Great Disaster in Swahili. Some scholars such as Marimba Ani and Maulana Karenga use the terms African Holocaust or Holocaust of enslavement. An important legacy of the slave trade is the continued existence of a body of ideas initially formulated to justify it and which now underpins modern anti-African racism in various forms. Now when it comes to European colonization upon discovering new lands through the naval explorations, European colonizers soon began to migrate to and settle in lands outside the native continent. Off the coast of Africa, European migrants under the directions of the Kingdom of Castile invaded and colonized the Canary Islands during the 15th century where they converted much of the land to production of wine and sugar. Along with this they also captured native Canary Islanders the Gaunchers to use as slaves both in the islands and across the Christian Mediterranean. Using the Canary Islands as a naval base, Europeans at the time primarily Portuguese traders began to move their activities down the western coast of Africa performing raids in which slaves would be captured to be later sold in the Mediterranean. This obviously led to an establishment of a very unequal relationship. Africans were forced into a colonial trade with the more economically developed Europeans exchanging raw materials and human resources such as slaves for manufactured goods. Now also do bear in mind that there was a huge demand for slavery. So firstly one of the conditions that caused this demand was a labor shortage. Created by the desire of European colonists to exploit new world land and resources for capital profits, this labor shortage really fueled the slave trade. Native people were first to utilize the slave labor by Europeans until a large number died from overwork and old world diseases. Alternative sources of labor such as indentured servitude failed to provide a sufficient workforce. Many crops could not be sold for a 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 labor was needed to create and sustain these plantations that required intensive labor to grow, harvest and process prized tropical crops. Western Africa, part of which became known as the slave coast, Angola, nearby kingdoms and later Central Africa became the source for enslaved people to meet the demand for this labor. However of course a lot of people succumbed to diseases such as malaria, smallpox, whooping cough, yellow fever and so on and they were not present in the Americas before 1492. These diseases obliterated large amounts of native populations in the Americas that were not immune to these diseases. 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 in Africa. This is 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 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 and the African continent such as Angola from which to extract another source of labor in which Africans had proven to be prime candidates of course this exacerbated the slave trade. There was also a lot of European competition so this trade of enslaved Africans in the Atlantic has its origins in the exploration of Portuguese mariners down the coast of West Africa in the 15th century. The first Europeans to use enslaved Africans in the new world were the Spaniards who sought auxiliaries for the conquest expeditions in laborers on islands such as Cuba. As Britain rose in naval power and settled continental North Africa and some islands of the West Indies they became the leading slave traders and at one stage the trade was the monopoly of the Royal Africa Company operating out of London and also publicly traded on the London stock exchange. Now when it comes to the role of native Africans in the slave trade so Africans also played a direct role in the slave trade and it would be a mistake to just think that those who traded other Africans were only Europeans. Africans were also important or rather some Africans are important in selling captives and prisoners of war who were Africans to European buyers. The prisoners and captives who were sold were usually from neighboring or enemy ethnic groups and these captive slaves were considered by those Africans who sold them others and not part of the people of the ethnic group or tribe that was selling them. African kings held no particular loyalty to them and so had no problem in selling them off to European slavers. Sometimes criminals would also 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 as well as Africans. Now when it comes to the first and the second Atlantic systems the first Atlantic system was a trade of enslaved Africans to primarily South American colonies of the Portuguese and Spanish empires and it accounted for slightly more than 3% of all the Atlantic slave trade. It started on a significant scale in about 1502 and lasted about to about 1580 when Portugal was temporarily united with Spain. While the Portuguese were directly involved in trading enslaved people the Spanish empire relied on the asiento system awarding merchants mostly from other countries the licensed to trade enslaved people to the colonies. During the first Atlantic system most of these traders or Portuguese given them a near monopoly during the era. Some Dutch English and French traders also participated in the slave trade. After the union Portugal came under Spanish legislation that prohibited it from directly engaging in the slave trade as a carrier. It became a target for the traditional enemies of Spain losing a large share of the trade to the Dutch, English and French. The second Atlantic system was a trade of enslaved Africans mostly by English, Portuguese, French and Dutch traders. The main destination of this phase were the Caribbean colonies and Brazil as European nations built up economically slave dependent colonies in the New World. Now when it comes to triangular trade 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 1440 to about 1833. 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 and the third and final part of the triangle was a return of goods to Europe from the Americas. The goods were the products of slave labor plantations and included cotton, tobacco, molasses and rum. Now of course it's really important to remember that the abolition movement really really started and began and took hold and ultimately led to the end of the slave trade. So as the trade and enslaved people reached to speak in the 1780s more and more people began to voice their concerns about the moral implications of slavery and the brutality of this system. From the beginning the inhuman trade had caused controversy. London was the focus of the abolition campaign being home both to parliament and to the important financial institutions of the city. As early as 1776 the House of Commons debated a motion that the slave trade is contrary to the laws of God and the rights of men. The slave trade finally came to an end due to a variety of factors including the protests of millions of ordinary people in Europe and the United States. Its abolition was also brought about by millions of Africans who continually resisted enslavement and rebelled against slavery in order to be free. Resistance started in Africa continued during the so-called middle passage and broke out again throughout the Americas. The most significant of all these acts of resistance and self-liberation was the revolution in the French colony of Saint Dominique now Haiti in 1791. It remains the only successful slave revolution in history and it led to the creation of the first modern black republic. Haiti's constitution was the first to recognise the human rights of all its citizens irrespective of race. Denmark which had been active in the slave trade was the first country to ban the trade through the legislation in 1792 which took effect in 1803. Britain then banned the slave trade in 1807 imposing stiff fines for any slave found aboard a British ship. The Royal Navy moved to stop other nations from continuing the slave trade and declared that slaving was equal to piracy and was punishable by death. The United States Congress passed the slave trade act of 1794 which prohibited the building or outfitting of ships in the US for using the slave trade. Of course the American Revolution also played a role in the abolition of the slave trade. So at the time of the American Revolution which was between 1775 to 1783 there was widespread support in the northern American colonies for prohibiting the importation of more slaves. The United States Congress passed the slave trade act of 1794 which prohibited the building or outfitting of ships in the US for use in the safe trade. However after the revolution at the insistence of southern states Congress waited for more than two decades before making the importation of slaves illegal. When Congress did so in 1808 the law was enacted with little dissent but Caribbean smugglers frequently violated the law until it was enforced by the northern blockade of the south in 1861 during the American Civil War. 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