The Transatlantic Slave Trade: Origins, Development, and Impact
The Genesis and Evolution of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
The Beginning of the African Diaspora
First European Expedition for Slaves (1444): On August 8, 1444, in Lagos, Portugal, 235 enslaved Africans disembarked from a Portuguese ship. This marked the initial European expedition specifically aimed at acquiring slaves from Africa.
The Spectacle in Lagos: The enslaved individuals, comprising men, women, and children of various complexions, were paraded from the docks to the town gates. Prince Henry, the Portuguese monarch who sponsored early explorations, was among the onlookers.
Distress and Disorientation: The chronicler noted their extreme distress, with some "kept their heads low, and their faces [were] bathed with tears, looking upon one another," while others were "looking up to the heavens and crying out loudly, as if asking for help from the Father of nature."
Auction and Separation: The captives were divided into lots for auction, facilitating the merchants' proceeds and Prince Henry's 20 percent royal tax. This separation caused immense suffering, parting "fathers from sons, husbands from wives, brothers from brothers" with "No respect … shown either to friends or relations."
Definition of African Diaspora: This event signified the beginning of an African diaspora, defined as the mass dispersion of a people from their homeland, leading millions of Africans into slavery under European and Euro-American masters.
Early Destinations: While the first captives landed in Portugal, most later ended up much farther away, particularly with European settlement in the Americas in the 1500s.
The Transatlantic Slave Trade: An Overview
Triangular Commercial Enterprise: This immensely profitable trade involved three continents:
Leg 1 (Europe to Africa): European merchants exchanged manufactured goods for enslaved people in Africa.
Leg 2 (Africa to Americas - Middle Passage): Enslaved Africans were shipped to colonies in the Americas.
Leg 3 (Americas to Europe): Commodities produced in the Americas (e.g., sugar, tobacco) were brought to Europe for manufacturing.
Transformation of Continents: This trade profoundly transformed both Africa and the American colonies.
Exploitation and Expansion of Internal African Slave Trade: While a long-standing internal slave trade existed in West Africa, the transatlantic trade exploited and expanded it, leading to the depopulation of many African regions.
New Kind of Slavery: Most captives came from vibrant West African communities with little prior contact with Europe. Upon entering the transatlantic slave trade, they encountered a system of bondage significantly different from African slavery.
African Slavery: Often temporary and rarely heritable.
American Slavery: Lifelong and passed from parent to child, marking a transgenerational captivity for survivors of the voyage.
Formation of Collective Identity: Victims of the slave trade came from diverse ethnic and linguistic groups and initially did not identify as "Africans." This collective identity was imposed upon them in the Americas due to slavery, forced migration, and their new environment.
Pre-Existing Conditions: Europe and West Africa Before the 15^{th} Century
Geographic and Social Isolation: Europeans and West Africans, despite being on neighboring continents, were largely separated by the Arab Islamic societies of North Africa, the Sahara desert, and challenging maritime conditions.
Overland Barriers: The Sahara desert made travel difficult and dangerous, limiting movement primarily to Berber traders and enslaved Africans transported north for resale in the Islamic world. This fostered limited direct contact between Europeans and West Africans.
Maritime Barriers: Powerful winds and currents off the Saharan coast long prevented sea travel between Europe and Africa.
Europe's State on the Eve of the Trade:
Fragmented but Interconnected: Europe was not yet a conglomeration of powerful empires but consisted of monarchies, city-states, and feuding nobles. European societies were larger, more widespread, and more economically interconnected than most precolonial West African societies, yet socially unstable.
Rise of Nation-States: By the 15^{th} century, monarchies began to replace feuding nobility, offering more secure social order. They forged identities as protectors of Christendom (e.g., Crusades, Reconquista in Iberia).
Expansionist Needs: Maintaining powerful bureaucracies, standing armies, and navies was expensive, prompting rulers to explore and exploit new lands for gold, luxury goods, and commercial power.
Quest for Asian Riches: Europeans, particularly Prince Henry, hoped to find a route to Asia's riches south of Cape Bojador, bypassing the powerful Ottoman Empire.
Maritime Expeditions and First Contacts
Portugal's Pioneering Role: Portugal, one of Europe's earliest nation-states, led the navigation of the West African coast due to its advanced shipbuilding capabilities.
Innovations in Shipbuilding: Portuguese carracks and caravels, small sailing ships with 2 or 3 masts, utilized both triangular (borrowed from Arab dhows) and square sails. Triangular sails were crucial for braving strong winds and traveling faster and farther, specifically enabling them to navigate the dangerous northeasterly winds off Cape Bojador.
Exploratory Expeditions (1418-1470s): Portugal launched a series of expeditions, charting new territories and discovering uninhabited islands off Africa's west coast (Madeira, Azores, Arguin, Cape Verde Islands, São Tomé and Príncipe). These islands became stepping-off points, leading to the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope in 1488.
Early Slave Trading: The Atlantic slave trade emerged alongside these expeditions, with Portuguese seamen bringing enslaved Africans back to Portugal and its Atlantic islands.
Spain's Involvement: Spain also participated, establishing its Atlantic colony in the Canary Islands during the 15^{th} century.
The Guanches: The Canary Islands were inhabited by the indigenous Guanches (likely Berber descendants) who resisted Spanish conquest from 1402 until the 1490s.
Agricultural Exploitation: Even before full conquest, the Spanish began planting lucrative crops like sugarcane, wheat, and others in the Canaries.
The Role of Sugar Plantations
Ideal Conditions: The Canaries, Madeira, and São Tomé proved ideal for sugar production.
History of Sugar:
First cultivated in the Pacific Rim over 10,000 years ago.
Introduced to Europe in the 11^{th} century.
High demand as a spice, sweetener, preservative, and medicinal remedy.
Labor-Intensive Crop: Sugarcane cultivation required warm weather and intensive labor, leading to its short supply in Europe.
Mediterranean Plantation System: Initially, sugarcane was grown on large plantations in the Mediterranean (Cyprus, Sicily, southern Spain) using enslaved workers from Russia and the Balkans.
Shift to Atlantic Colonies and African Labor: With Portuguese and Spanish Atlantic colonies, this plantation system moved offshore, becoming increasingly dependent on enslaved Africans.
By the 1490s, Madeira was the largest European sugar producer.
In the 16^{th} century, sugar production boomed in the Azores, Canaries, Cape Verde, and São Tomé, all requiring imported laborers.
Shifting Dynamics of Slave Acquisition
Early Slave Raids: Initial Portuguese expeditions involved successful slave raids.
African Resistance and Commercial Treaties: By the 1450s, West African rulers organized defenses, driving Portuguese slaving expeditions offshore with fleets of armed canoe men. European caravels, though equipped with cannons, were outmaneuvered.
Negotiated Trade: After 1456, the Portuguese crown began negotiating commercial treaties with West African rulers. These rulers agreed to supply slaves from the internal African slave trade (which had existed since ancient times) in exchange for European goods.
Commercial Relationship: The slave trade thus evolved into a commercial relationship between coastal peoples, with African merchants acting as intermediaries.
Visual Depiction (1789 Engraving): Richard Westall's engraving, inspired by Carl Bernhard Wadström, depicted "Slave Traders Seizing People in Guinea, Africa." Wadström, witnessing slave raiding and warfare, became an abolitionist, highlighting the brutal reality of enforced separation and violence (e.g., a slave trader with a whip pulling a man from his distraught children).
The Enslavement of Indigenous Peoples and the Turn to African Labor
Europe's Population Boom: Europe's population boomed in the latter half of the 15^{th} century, making labor abundant there and slave imports unnecessary for Europe itself.
Labor Demand in the Americas: The cultivation of Europe's Atlantic colonies, and then extensive settlements in the Americas, created a massive new labor market.
African Presence in the Americas: The first Africans arrived in the Americas with or shortly after Columbus. African seamen may have served on his voyages.
Hispaniola (1492): African slaves joined Spanish settlers in Hispaniola (modern-day Haiti and Dominican Republic).
Nicolás de Ovando (1502): The Spanish governor brought Iberian-born black slaves, hoping they would provide labor and help subdue the indigenous population. He later banned further importation due to concerns about them inciting native rebellion.
Resumption of Imports (1505): Spain's colonies in the "New World" required vast labor, leading to the resumption of African slave imports for copper and gold mines in Hispaniola.
Failure of Indigenous Labor (Taino Indians):
Encomienda System: Spanish conquistadors exploited native inhabitants (Taino Indians) under the encomienda system, demanding tribute in labor, gold, or goods.
Devastating Decline: The Tainos suffered from Spanish brutality, resistance, and, most significantly, exposure to Old World diseases (influenza, smallpox, chicken pox, mumps, measles) to which they had no immunity.
Population plummeted from 500,000 to 60,000 by the first decade of the 16^{th} century.
Further decline to 28,000 by 1514.
Only a few hundred Tainos remained by 1542.
This rapid decline throughout the Americas necessitated an alternative labor source.
Justifications and Debates on Slavery
Advantages of African Slavery: European colonists turned to African slavery due to several perceived advantages over Indian slavery:
Disease Immunity: Africans, having lived in the same hemisphere as Europeans, possessed some immunity to Old World diseases.
Manageability: Africans were strangers to the New World, making them unfamiliar with the terrain and local populations, thus less likely to escape.
Catholic Church Sanction: African enslavement was explicitly sanctioned by the Catholic Church, while Indian enslavement became controversial.
Papal Bull Dum Diversas (1452): Issued by Pope Nicholas V, this proclamation granted the kings of Spain and Portugal permission "to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all the Saracens [Muslims] and pagans … and other enemies of Christ… and to reduce their persons into perpetual slavery." This was intended to sanction European attacks on Islamic societies, not indigenous Americans, and was issued before Columbus's voyages.
Dominican Challenges to Indian Slavery:
Antonio de Montesinos (1511): A Dominican priest on Hispaniola, publicly challenged the Spanish mistreatment of Indians in a sermon, questioning their right to subject Indians to "cruel and horrible servitude."
Bartolomé de Las Casas: Influenced by Montesinos, Las Casas pressured the Spanish crown and the pope to protect Indians. Starting in 1516, he encouraged replacing Indian slaves with imported Africans, a position he later regretted upon realizing "how unjustly and tyrannically Africans were taken as slaves."
Official Bans on Indian Enslavement:
Pope Paul III's Bull (1537): Declared Indians to be rational beings who should be converted, not enslaved.
Spanish Government Ban (1542): Prohibited the enslavement of Indians within Spanish territories.
Limited Impact: Despite these rulings, abuses of the encomienda system persisted, but they facilitated the expansion of the transatlantic slave trade.
The First Africans in the Americas and Their Roles
Significant Numbers: Roughly 300,000 Africans landed in the Americas before 1620, with most arriving after 1550, when their numbers surpassed those of Portuguese and Spanish migrants.
Colonial Expansion: Enslaved Africans supplied labor to Spanish colonies (Puerto Rico, Cuba, Guadeloupe, Trinidad, Jamaica, Mexico, Peru) and Portuguese Brazil.
Staging Ground: Hispaniola served as a staging ground for Spanish incursions. Africans worked on sugar plantations (after precious metals depleted) and accompanied military expeditions.
Juan Ponce de León used armed Africans in Puerto Rico (1508).
Diego Velázquez used black auxiliaries in Cuba (1511-1512).
Hernán Cortés's forces conquering Aztecs (1519-1521) included Juan Garrido, a free black conquistador.
Juan Garrido (c. 1480-?):
Born in West Africa around 1480, likely sold to Portuguese traders as a boy.
Achieved freedom in Portugal, converted to Catholicism, and lived in Lisbon and Seville.
Arrived in the New World as a free man in 1503.
Participated in conquests of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guadeloupe, Dominica.
Served Hernán Cortés in the siege of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) and an exploration journey to Baja California.
Settled in Tenochtitlan, raised a family, and planted the first wheat in New Spain.
Types of Enslaved Africans:
Ladinos: Latinized blacks who lived in Spain, Portugal, or their Atlantic/American colonies, acculturated to European ways, spoke Spanish/Portuguese, and had no sympathy for indigenous peoples. They served as companions and domestic servants.
Bozales: African-born slaves, imported directly from Africa starting around 1518 (first slave ship to Brazil in 1550). They quickly became the majority and performed the most dangerous, demanding, and dirty work.
Demanding Labor and High Mortality:
Mining: Extracted silver and gold in Mexico and Peru, suffering from tunnel collapses and lung disease from toxic mineral dust.
Pearl Diving: Africans drowned in large numbers off Veracruz, Mexico.
Sugar Plantations: Labored from dawn till dusk, enduring high mortality rates due to long hours and hazards of boiling cane at high temperatures. Sugarcane cultivation spread from Hispaniola throughout the Caribbean.
Brazil and Mexico as Sugar Producers: In the 16^{th} century, Brazil and Mexico were the largest sugar producers, importing tens of thousands of Africans.
Scale of the Trade: The demand for labor led to an international slave trade lasting over three centuries and carrying approximately 12.5 million slaves to the New World, forming the backbone of the African American population.
The Business of Slave Trading and Expansion
End of Monopoly: By the early 17^{th} century, Spain and Portugal lost their monopoly as other European powers (Dutch, English, French) claimed territories and also imported enslaved Africans.
Rapid Expansion: Average annual slave exports from Africa increased from just over 10,000 in the early 17^{th} century to nearly 60,000 by the 18^{th} century.
Expanded Geographic Reach: The trade extended beyond the Senegambian coast to Guinea-Bissau, the Gold Coast, Benin, Kongo, Angola, and even Mozambique in East Africa. Captives were drawn from an expansive interior trade reaching west-central Africa and Madagascar.
**Key Trading Regions and Volumes (Map 2.1 data):
From Africa:
Wolof: 756,000
Senegambia and other nearby regions: 389,000 and 337,000
Gold Coast: 1,209,000
Slave Coast: 1,999,000
Benin: 1,595,000
Kongo, Angola, and West Central Africa: approx. 5,695,000
To Americas:
Caribbean Islands: 4,375,000
Barbados (New Granada): 390,000
Guiana: 398,000
Amazonia: 144,000
Pernambuco: 818,000
Bahia: 1,568,000
Rio de Janeiro: 2,281,000
Rio de la Plata (South America): 98,000
New England (British North America): 27,000
Chesapeake (British North America): 128,000
Carolinas (British North America): 210,000
New France Colonies (North America): 22,000
To Europe: 9,000
European Trading Centers: The slave trade remained a coastal exchange, primarily at European trading centers.
Elmina Castle (Ghana): Built by Portuguese in 1482 as a trading post, it became a major slave trading post by the early 17^{th} century. It was erected with local rulers' agreement in exchange for commodities and military support. Controlled by the Dutch after 1637, it remained active until 1814.
Treaties and Systems:
Treaty of Tordesillas (1494): Granted the Western Hemisphere to Spain and Africa/Asia to Portugal, allowing Portugal to control the early transatlantic slave trade.
Asiento System: Spain authorized European merchants to ship enslaved Africans directly from Africa to New Spain. Portuguese dominated until the 1640s, then the Dutch, and later the British (who dominated the 18^{th} century trade).
American Participation: Rhode Island traders sponsored at least 1,000 transatlantic trips during the 18^{th} century.
The Triangle Trade: Mechanics and Impact
**Three Legs of the Trade (Map 2.2):
Leg 1 (Europe to Africa): European manufactured goods (copper, beads, guns, ammunition, textiles, wine, fruit) were transported to West African coasts.
Leg 2 (Middle Passage - Africa to Americas): Enslaved Africans were transported from West Africa to New World slave ports. This was the most infamous and dangerous phase.
Leg 3 (Americas to Europe): Ships returned to Europe laden with profitable slave-grown crops (sugar, tobacco, rice, indigo, later cotton), fish, furs, naval stores, grain, lumber, rum, molasses, and fruit. European manufactured goods (linens, horses) were also exchanged within the system as trade routes varied.
Economic Fuel: This trade fueled Europe's economic development, providing raw materials and capital for the industrial age. It was also crucial for the economic growth of the Americas, supplying labor for profitable settlements.
Impact on Africa:
Tragic Consequences: While African rulers and merchants profited, most inhabitants did not.
Warfare and Weakened Social Bonds: The trade fostered warfare, encouraging African states to raid each other for slaves. Rulers who resisted found it difficult as European traders supplied their enemies with guns.
Demographic Costs: Massive loss of generations of young people, many perishing due to the trade.
Unimaginable Suffering: Millions of individuals endured immense suffering during capture, sale, and the Middle Passage. The legacy of suffering extended for hundreds of years.
Abolition: Britain banned the slave trade in 1807, followed by the U.S. Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves in 1808, signaling the beginning of imperial powers' withdrawal from the trade.