American Slavery OUT.pdf

The European slave trade began with the English importing tens of thousands of African slaves to work on sugar plantations in Jamaica and Barbados during the late 1600s. By 1690, the African population on Barbados was about 60,000, three times the white population. The triangular trade, a three-way trading process, involved merchants carrying goods from New England to Africa, trading for enslaved people, and selling them in the West Indies for sugar and molasses. This network carried various goods, including furs, fruit, tar, and tobacco, as well as African people.

The primary reason for the European slave trade was the demand for labor in the colonies. Africans were first enslaved in the West Indies, specifically in Jamaica and Barbados. The triangular trade involved goods such as rum, sugar, molasses, furs, fruit, tar, and tobacco.

From the perspective of the King of Whydah, the kingdom functioned as a terminus for trade routes, and the European slave traders played a central role in the coronation ceremony. The king received revenue from the trade, including a thousand cowrie shells for each slave sold and customs payments from European slave ships.

Gerard Mellier justified the slave trade as necessary for the cultivation of sugar, tobacco, and other products. He claimed that the slave traders were rescuing slaves from error and idolatry, bringing them to a place where they could be baptized and instructed in the Catholic religion.

The journal of Robert Durand described a voyage from Vannes to the coast of Guinea and then to Martinique to see the blacks and make a return to Vannes. The primary goal of the voyage was to transport slaves.

The Slave Trade map showed that slaves were coming from specific regions in Africa, such as West Africa, and were being transported to various locations in the Americas, including the present-day United States, Mexico, Central America, and South America. Between 1650-1860, millions of enslaved people were transported from Africa to the Americas. The predominant types of labor enslaved people did varied by region, including agriculture in the United States, mining in Mexico, and plantation work in South America. Most enslaved people were shipped to the Caribbean, and the map expanded the understanding of the slave trade by showing the scale and scope of the trade.