Transatlantic Slave Trade and Resistance

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms, historical figures, systems, and concepts related to the transatlantic slave trade and resistance mechanisms from the lecture notes.

Atlantic Slave Trade

A major part of the global slave trade spanning from the 1500s to the mid-1800s that transported over 12 million enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean.

Matrilineal Slavery

A system implemented in the US where any child born to an enslaved mother automatically became a slave, causing the US slave population to grow from 500,000 to 4,000,000 by the Civil War.

Slave Voyages

A research website that utilizes Europeans' own historical record-keeping to assess the full scale and data of the transatlantic slave system.

Capitalism

An economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit rather than by the state.

Mansa Musa

A Muslim ruler of a wealthy Northwest African kingdom who is considered one of the richest individuals in history and famously disrupted local economies with gold on his pilgrimage to Mecca.

Portuguese

The first European nation to reach the West Coast of Africa in the 1500s using large ships, initially seeking trade in gold and routes around Africa to India.

Mina Castle

A coastal trading fort built by the Portuguese to hold trade goods, which was later adapted to lock captives in overcrowded dungeons before pushing them onto slave ships.

Serf

A worker bound to an estate under a European feudal system who transfers with the land if sold; a term preferred by some historians over 'slave' to describe early African labor systems.

Queen Nzinga

The ruler of Ndongo and Matamba who fought Portuguese slave trade expansion through diplomatic negotiations, Christian conversion, guerrilla warfare, and recruiting runaway slaves into her military.

Guerrilla Warfare

A military strategy used by smaller or outnumbered forces to attack larger enemy forces at vulnerable points from safe vantage points before quickly escaping.

Matamba

An interior territory established as a trading powerhouse by Queen Nzinga after her forces were driven away from the West Coast by the Portuguese.

Middle Passage

The forced ocean journey of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic, during which an estimated 10% to 20% of captives died.

Speculum Oris

A mechanical torture device used by slave ship crews to force open the mouths of captives who attempted to starve themselves in resistance.

Amistad

A slave ship captured in an 1839 revolt led by Cinque, leading to an 1841 US Supreme Court case that granted freedom to the captives because they were held against their will.

Cinque

The leader of the 1839 slave revolt aboard the Amistad who led captives to take control of the ship and demand to be steered back to Africa.

US Importation Ban of 1808

A federal law enacted by Congress in 1808 that legally banned the importation of new slaves into the United States from foreign sources.