Transatlantic Slave Trade - Vocabulary Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms and concepts discussed in the lecture notes on the Transatlantic slave trade.

Transatlantic slave trade

The system that linked Europe, Africa, and the Americas through slavery, embedded in global capitalist exchange within the Atlantic world.

Racial slavery

A form of slavery justified and organized through racial ideology, applying bondage to specific racialized groups.

Triangular trade

The three-part Atlantic exchange of slaves, raw materials, and manufactured goods among Europe, Africa, and the Americas.

Middle passage

The voyage across the Atlantic in which enslaved Africans were transported to the Americas, marked by crowded ships, disease, and high mortality.

Tight packing

A practice of loading slave ships with as many captives as possible to maximize profits, often with devastating health outcomes.

Loose packing

A packing approach that reduces crowding to lower disease risk, but still involves severe suffering and deaths.

Origins debate

Scholarship debating how racism originated and its relation to slavery, with differing views on pre-existing racial ideas versus development during encounter with Africa/New World.

Etymology of 'slave'

The origin of the term 'slave' is historically linked to enslaved peoples; discussion in class often notes connections to early European contexts (debates exist about specifics, including Slavic origins).

Social death

A concept describing how enslaved people are deprived of full social recognition and humanity, often framed as a social alternative to death.

Natal alienation

The severing of birthrights and family ties experienced by enslaved individuals, leading to psychological and social dislocation.

Afro-pessimism

A theoretical framework arguing that Blackness is socially constructed as nonhuman in Western thought, with slavery understood as a relation of property.

Patterson's power (three facets)

Orlando Patterson’s application of Max Weber’s idea of power: power operates in social, psychological, and cultural dimensions within domination.

Master–slave dialectic

A Hegelian concept describing how domination involves the master’s assertion of power and the slave’s developing self-consciousness through the relationship.

Belonging

The question of who belongs in a society or social contract and who is excluded, shaping categories of difference.

Portuguese role

The first Europeans to land in Africa and establish slave-trading outposts, initiating organized European involvement in the Atlantic slave system.