Trans Atlantic Slave Trade Worksheet PDF

Preview

Summary

workfdndsffnsind['s sdncocsnno;asc
cdnb cs' 5 types of chemical reactions:
1. Combination; combine two or more substances to form a new single substance
2. Decomposition; a single substance breaks down into two or more simpler products
3. Single Replacement; one element re...

Description

The Transatlantic Slave Trade (1502-1808)

In middle of the 16th century, a crew of Portuguese sailors looking for African people to capture and sell back in Portugal, landed somewhere near the coast of Guinea on the Coast of West Africa. They spotted a woman, probably 30 years old, with a baby, a boy of two years old, and a young girl fourteen years old. Three men of the crew jumped off the ship and seized the woman. She was strong and resisted with vigor the assailants. Regardless of their male force, the tree men were unable to bring the woman aboard the ship. A crew member witnessing the pitiful scene, got the idea to snatch the woman’s two year old baby instead, that way the mother maternal instinct would naturally lead her to the ship, and it did. The mother cried loud, but she know would have to follow her baby to the ship. No one ever heard again about the woman, the baby boy, and the fourteen years old girl. They have vanished, forever, into the tumultuous centuries of history which would follow. This type of kidnapping was not uncommon in the Transatlantic slave trade, the largest forced movement of people in history. Around 12.5 million people from the Western Coast of Africa were captured and forced into slavery in the New World. Many died, with only 10.7 million arriving in the Americas, their descendants being 200 million people of African descent in the Americas. The TransAtlantic slave trade is seen as one of the greatest most extreme crimes in human history. Why? When Columbus landed in the New World in the late 1400’s. The Spaniards originally enslaved the Native Americans, many Native Americans died from disease, brutal treatment, violence, and overwork. On the island of Hispanolia there were 3 million Taino Indians. In fifty years, after the arrival of the Spanish their population went down to 300. Bartholemew De Las Casas a Spanish priest living in Santo Domingo suggested that they go to Africa and obtain slaves from there. The first enslaved Africans arrived to the present day New World arrived in 1526 in what was present day Spanish Florida, not much is known about them because they killed their slave masters and ran away. In Jamestown 1607, the first English setters arrived in the New World in search of gold, instead their colony was very unsuccessful and many people died (80%) of disease, cold, and starvation. In 1616, the colonists discovered tobacco, and 1619, would be the arrival of the first permanently enslaved people of African descent in the U.S At first most of the forced laborers were Europeans who were indentured servants people who agreed to be slaves for a set number of years in order for their master or seller to pay their fare to the Americas, after that they would be free to go and work on their own if they hadn’t already been worked to death, which wasn’t uncommon. For one European servants could escape quite easily and blend into the population. They also lived outside the settlement’s walls which allowed them, once they gained freedom, to claim land (and therefore power) on the frontier, which could actually make them more powerful than their former masters. This created tensions between the city-dwelling elites and the poor on the frontier, which materialized in the form of rebellions such as Bacon’s Rebellion, where Nathaniel Bacon led a force of Virginia poor farmers on Jamestown because of increased tensions with the Governor. West Africans knew how to grow and cultivate crops in tropical and semi-tropical climates. African rice growers, for instance, were captured in order to bring their agricultural knowledge to America’s sea islands and those of the Caribbean. Many West African civilizations possessed goldsmiths and expert metal workers on a grand scale. These people were snatched to work in Spanish and Portuguese gold and silver mines throughout Central and South America. Contrary to the myth of unskilled labor, large numbers of Africans were anything but unskilled. In places like the U.S South and Brazil, slaves did everything. Picked cotton, plant and harvest crops like sugarcane, and built roads, buildings and entire cities for free. Before 1820, Slave imports outnumbered European immigration to the New World by 5 to 1

.

Who and Where? Enslaved people were taken from the slave ports of Badagry and Bonny (Nigeria), Luanda( Angola) Ouidah (Benin), Elmina (Ghana), Goree (Senegal) and taken to the colonies in the New World, 39% Went Portuguese colonies like Brazil, which received the most enslaved people, 28% went to British Colonies like the U.S and Caribbean nations, 18% went to Spanish Colonies like Colombia, Cuba, Panama, and the Dominican Republic, 14% went to French Colonies like Haiti and Martinique, and 2% went to Dutch colonies like Suriname and Curacao. The Slave Raids and Resistance On the Coast of West Africa many people would live in fear. Many bands of slavers would roam the West African countryside, preying on villagers who let their guard down. Children who were home alone while their parents were working were especially easy targets for the slave traders. Young people were prime targets because they were seen as weaker, and easier to brainwash. When these children grew up to become adults they would return to capture people on the coast Olaudah Equiano a former slave who became an abolitionist writes about the time he was kidnapped at the age of 8, when his parents who were farmers had gone out to work in the fields. It was a scary time, because anytime you or your family member could be gone. Slave traders would often seek out children who were alone, or small groups of people who were traveling and ambush them. This forced people to have to travel in rather large, armed, groups to protect themselves. Some people set up stilt villages to in the middle of lakes, such as Ganvie in Benin, to guard against slave raiders. Or set up traps against the slave raiders. Not everyone was enslaved as a result of raids however, slavery was also a way to get rid of people they deemed troublesome or who they (the locals) did not like for various reasons. The Middle Passage and the Triangular Trade The Slave trade was one of the saddest and lowest periods in human history and changed the face of a continent. To quote Harvard historian John Hope Franklin “ I don’t think the true story of slavery will ever be told, there is no way to make a movie that will show you exactly what went on, day to day throughout the time they would capture a slave till the time that slave landed on somebody’s plantation. All of the things that just happened in that small period of time. A period of a few months what they call the middle passage. I don’t think any movie, or any wordbook, or any history lesson, will ever capture the true story, the true brutality, all of the filth, that went on in those exchanges.” The kidnapping of people particularly children, the instigation of wars between different African groups. The Middle Passage was dangerous and miserable for African slaves. The placing of people on cramped, crowded slave ships where they travelled for weeks. Condition When enslaved Africans arrived at ports like Jamestown, Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans, Port Royal, Havana, Santo Domingo, Cartagena, Port Royal, Salvador, and Rio de Janeiro, they were sold at auction, families were split. In 1850, an average slave in the American South cost the equivalent of $40,000 in today’s money. So only 5% of people of European descent in the South could afford them. Not all slave masters mistreated their slaves. Treatment varied based on who they were sent to. However on some were tortured, overworked, fed bad food,etc. One in four slave ships failed to return to their homeport, victims of sea risks, rebellion and capture. And in many plantations there were constant slave revolts and rebellions, especially in the Caribbean and Spanish colonies. Resistance : Slave Revolts and Fighting Back Many of the slave revolts were successful such as in Haiti, Brazil with Zumbi dos Palmares, the Palenques of Colombia, the Maroons of Jamaica and Suriname. In the United States there were serious slave revolts. Harriet Tubman, a former slave, was also famous for escaping and leading 300 slaves into freedom. End of Slavery and Aftermath 1808, the slave trade was finally banned. Slavery did contribute to America’s wealth, but at a much more serious human cost. by 1860, there were more millionaires (slaveholders all) living in the lower Mississippi Valley than anywhere else in the United

States. In the same year, the nearly 4 million American slaves were worth some $3.5 billion, making them the largest single financial asset in the entire U.S. economy, worth more than all manufacturing and railroads combined at the time. It made places like the

South very dependent on slavery and whose fight to maintain caused a vicious civil War that killed 1 million people in the U.S. It underdeveloped, Africa due to fact that many of the people taken into slavery in West Africa, were young able-bodied people. So for a long time there was regression. It stripped people of a culture language and forced people to create a new culture and heritage, and traumatized so many. The warfare, disruption, underdevelopment, and population decline resulting from the slave trade had a profound impact on West Africa. As the turn of the twentieth century approached, Europeans became better able to penetrate the interior and quickly engaged in efforts to colonize the continent. In the U.S. Slavery was finally ended in 1863 with the 13th amendment to the constitution– But 100 years of tension would soon follow.

Translatlantic Slave Trade Questions and Answers

1. What part of Africa did the Translatlantic slave trade occur? a. West Africa b. East Africa c. North Africa d. Southern Africa

2. How were African trade states influenced by the Atlantic Slave Trade? a. They began to capture and trade European slaves b. They became too weak to resist the slave trade c. They competed to dominate the market for slaves d. They united to oppose the slave trade 3. What was the Middle Passage?

4. What were some examples of slaves revolting?

5. What European countries were involved in the slave Trade? 6. Give some examples of countries enslaved people of African descent went to? 7. When did the Atlantic slave trade end? 8. What are some facts that shocked or surprised you? 9. What year did the first enslaved people arrive in the present day United States?

10. Why is it important to learn about slavery __________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________

Sources: https://historicjamestowne.org/history/history-of-jamestown/the-starving-time/ https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/teaching-resource/historical-context-facts-about-slave-trade-andslavery http://slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0002 "Iberian Roots of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, 1440–1640". The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. 2012-10-18. ^

"Historical survey, Slave societies". Encyclopædia Britannica.

The Door of No Return, Goree Island, Senegal

Point Comfort, Jamestown, Virginia the first arrival enslaved Africans

Image credit: Evelyn Hockstein/The Guardian Barthelomew Las Casas...