Transatlantic Slave Trade, Plantation Systems, and Resistance

Flashcards testing knowledge of the Transatlantic slave trade, the Middle Passage, shipboard revolts, plantation regimes in the Caribbean vs. American colonies, methods of resistance, the Stono Rebellion, and 1807 abolition acts.

What was the Transatlantic slave trade?

A global human trafficking network operating between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries that connected Europe, Africa, and the Americas in a triangular route.

How did the triangular route of the Transatlantic slave trade operate?

European merchants brought manufactured goods to Africa in exchange for captured African people, transported enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas to produce cash crops like sugar, tobacco, and cotton, and shipped those raw materials back to Europe to be turned into manufactured goods.

What was the Middle Passage?

The central leg of the Transatlantic slave trade referring to the forced journey of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean from Africa to the Americas, typically lasting between one to three months.

What were the living conditions onboard slave ships during the Middle Passage?

Captives were crammed below deck with less than two feet of headroom, chained together in pitch-black darkness without ventilation, given about a pint of water a day, and forced to sit in their own waste, leading to rampant disease.

What percentage of captured Africans died during the Middle Passage?

Roughly 15% of all captured Africans died onboard their ship during the Middle Passage.

What happened during the Little George Revolt of 1730?

96 enslaved Africans slipped out of their chains, broke through the bulkhead to the upper deck, killed three crew members, locked the rest of the crew in the captain's cabin using a gunpowder bomb, and successfully sailed the British ship Little George back to Sierra Leone in West Africa.

What was the La Amistad revolt of 1839?

A successful slave rebellion led by 53 Mende captives who were illegally kidnapped in West Africa onboard a Spanish ship, leading to a landmark US Supreme Court victory affirming their right to freedom.

Who led the La Amistad revolt in 1839?

Joseph Cinque, a Mende captive who freed himself three days into the voyage and unlocked other captives to take control of the ship.

What was the outcome of the 1841 Supreme Court case The United States versus the Amistad?

Defended by former US President John Quincy Adams, the Supreme Court ruled that the captives were free, allowing the 35 survivors to return to West Africa.

What was the average survival time for newly arrived adult captives on Caribbean sugar plantations?

Newly arrived adult captives survived an average of only three to seven years after arriving in the Caribbean.

Why did mortality rates on Caribbean plantations significantly exceed those in North America?

Caribbean plantation owners found it cheaper to work enslaved laborers to death and purchase replacements than to provide conditions that sustained natural population growth.

What were the working hours and labor conditions on Caribbean sugar plantations?

Enslaved adults endured 18-hour workdays organized under the gang system, facing physical trauma from cutting cane with machetes or catastrophic burns in boiling houses.

What was the life expectancy for enslaved adults who survived childhood in the American Colonies?

Enslaved adults who survived childhood in the American Colonies could expect to live to around 21 to 35 years of age.

How did adult mortality in the American Colonies vary by location and crop?

Mortality was driven by location-specific hazards, such as in Carolina rice fields where malaria and yellow fever killed enslaved adults at rates about seven years higher than other types of work.

What was the main difference between the gang system and the task system in American plantation labor?

The gang system involved highly supervised group field labor popular on tobacco plantations, while the task system required individuals to produce daily quotas and was popular on rice plantations.

What methods were used in daily resistance by enslaved individuals?

Daily resistance included sabotage (breaking tools, leaving gates open, destroying crops), feigning illness to get a day off, and stealing small items like eggs or chickens.

What is the difference between petite maroonage and grand maroonage?

Petite maroonage refers to temporary escape (such as hiding for a day off or visiting family on a nearby plantation), whereas grand maroonage refers to permanent flight to swamps, mountains, Florida, or the North.

What were maroon communities?

Self-governing communities formed by escaped slaves, notably in the Caribbean, that engaged in armed defense and guerrilla warfare against colonial militias to protect their freedom.

What occurred during the Stono Rebellion of 1740?

Led by an enslaved man named Jimmy, a group of about 20 Africans from The Congo seized weapons near the Stono River on a Sunday, marched south toward Spanish Florida beating drums and carrying banners of liberty, grew to 60-100 people, and killed more than 20 white colonists before being defeated in battle by a local militia.

What was the Negro Act of 1740?

A law passed in response to the Stono Rebellion that made it illegal for enslaved individuals to grow their own food, earn money, learn to read, gather in groups, or use drums.

What two laws were passed in 1807 to ban the Transatlantic slave trade?

Great Britain passed the Slave Trade Act, and the United States passed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves.

Why did Great Britain and the United States pass laws banning the international slave trade in 1807?

In Britain, industrialization made wage labor more profitable than slave trading; in the US, the domestic slave population was large enough to sustain slavery without importing slaves from Africa.