APWH 4.6 Atlantic slave trade

Atlantic slave trade

• Became the economic network of trading links for European empires in the Atlantic after 1500

• Moved goods, wealth and people around the Atlantic Basin

• Tobacco

• First profitable new world product for English and Dutch. Spanish and Portuguese relied on sugar.

chartered companies

• How the British build an empire!

• Royal monopolies granted to private investors by King of England

• Paid an annual fee to King of England and received protection of Royal Navy 

• By using private companies, the English found a faster and more efficient way to claim land in New World and soon caught up to Spanish and Portuguese land claims

Dutch West India Company

• A joint stock trading company

• Protected by the Dutch Navy

• seized 1000 miles of sugar regions in Northern Brazil

• Seized parts of Africa from Portuguese

• Expansion of sugar plantations causes sharp increase in slave trade.

• Sugar replaces tobacco in region.

Fluyt Ships

• Small fast ships developed and used by Dutch.

• Could travel in shallow water

• Armed for combat with below deck storage for trade

• Considered “Pirates” by

• Catholic Spanish, Portuguese and French

French and English Expansion

• Both added to Caribbean holdings by attacking Spanish colonies and trade routes

• *French plantations most diverse – producing cacao and coffee in addition to suga

English Barbados

• Changes from tobacco to sugar plantation economy from 1640-1680

• Wealthiest and most populated colony in Americas for England

• = more slaves needed.

Sugar and Slaves

• Large labor force needed to grow sugar!

• Slaves were a better labor choice because they would never be set free

• By 1600 Brazil was the world’s largest sugar producer, surpassed by 1700 by West Indies

Problems with Indentured Servants

• would leave after 3-4 years when the contract expired.

• eventually no Europeans signed up for indentured servitude in plantation areas.

• Male field slaves, lived an average of 7 more years.

• Female chattel slaves lived an average of 25 years and produced slave children

Sugar Plantations

• Plantations double in size by 1700’s

• Slave prices rise also due to increased demand during 1700’s.

Technology and Environment

• Plantations required farm and factory production methods like:

• 1. Sugar press and processing equipment = most expensive part of production

2. Large millsused windmills to crush canes.

• Juice cooked in 4. copper kettles

• Syrup dried in conical molds, packed in barrels and shipped

• Molasses, a by-product of sugar production was drained off and made into rum.

Environmental damage

• Deforestation in order to plant more sugar cane (especially near coast)

• No crop rotation = soil exhaustion

• Pressure on native animals and plants by clearing of forests

• Carib people pushed to point of extinction as their native food supply disappears

• West Indies repopulated with Europeans and Africans

Plantocracy

small number of rich men who owned the land and the slaves

Slave Groups included:

• 1. Great Gang = strongest male slaves did the harvesting

• 2. Grass Gang = children and elderly followed behind and picked up scraps

• 3. Driver = privileged male slave that kept gang working

Slave Punishments

• Main motivation to work HARD!

• Whipping

• Confinement in irons

• Mutilation

Slave Family Life

• Poor nutrition/overwork lowered Caribbean fertility rates

• Deaths out numbered births

• Disease #1 killer

• Slave life expectancy in Brazil 23 years.

Slave Society

• Planters mixed slaves from several regions

• Slaves required to learn colonial languages

• Forced to convert to Catholic or Christian faith.

• Discouraged African beliefs

Seasoning

• Period of adjustments slaves made to New World environment

• 1/3 died of unfamiliar diseases during this time (30%)

French Colonial Social Classes in West Indies

• 1. grand blancs = great whites/land owning planter class

• 2. petits blancs = little whites/less well off

• 3. Free whites = no property

4. Free blacks = Manumitted, no property

Free Blacks

• Manumission = a legal grant of freedom

• By late 1700’s, 30% population of Brazil free Blacks

• Maroons = Caribbean runaway slaves

• Jamaica and Hispaniola mountain regions had many maroon communities

French Guiana 1739

• Jamaican maroons first to sign treaty with French recognizing their independence

Maroons

Caribbean runaway slaves