CC Black American History: Transatlantic Slave Trade #1

Transatlantic Slave Trade

• ~400 years (15th-19th century [1400s-1800s]

  • Historian Marcus Rediter considered 1700-1808 the most destructive time of the slave trade

    • 2/3 of enselaved Africans were taken to the America’s during this time

• ~12.4 million carried through middle passage on slave ships

  • ~2 million Africans died and were thrown overboard

  • Out of every 100 people taken, 64 would survive march to the coast from africa’s interior, only 48 would survive journey across Atlantic, and only 28-30 would survive first 3-4 years in the colonies

  • Africans taken from 6 primary regions

    • Senegambia

    • Sierra Leone

    • Windward Coast

    • Gold Coast

    • Bight of Benin

    • Bight of Biafra

    • West Central Africa (Kongo and Angola)

  • People taken were often:

    • Prisoners of war from other African tribes

    • Criminals

    • Poor members of society traded to pay off debts

  • Conditions of Slave ships:

    • many diseases (yellow fever, malaria, small pox, dysentery)

  • Middle Passage: moved across atlantic including different destinations

    • 2nd of 3 parts of the triangle trade

      • 1st - Cargo (textiles, iron, alcohol, firearms, gunpowder) from europe to africa’s western coast

      • 2nd - Cargo exchanged for people; transported to the Americas

      • 3rd - In Americas, enslaved Africans sold/exchanged for goods (sugar and tobacco); ships go back to Europe

• only ~5% of Africans were brought to the US

  • 41% to Brazil

  • 48% to Caribbean and South America

• Olaudah Equiano (African captured as a boy)

  • Interesting narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano (autobiography)

  • Wrote of his experience being captured

• Chattel Slavery (unique to America)

  • intergenerational, hereditary

  • children born into bandage

  • unique to experience of slavery in the Americas

• England’s Royal African Company

  • maintained monopoly on all english trade to africa since inception (1672)

  • 1675-1725: most active years of Royal African Company

• South Carolina

  • prohibited African slave trade beginning in 1787

  • 1803: reopened trade

    • 1803-1808: 35000+ enslaved people brought to SC

    • Charleston was point of entry for ~40% of Africans entering North America through middle passage

      • African American’s “Ellis Island”

  • 1808: federal prohibition of transatlantic slave trade

    • International slave trade abolished in US but domestic trade would continue