Atlantic Slave Trade †Causes and Effiects Essay

The yearning of the europiumans especially Lusitanian, Spanish, British and the Dutch for geographic expedition, colonisation and imperialism was a major factor in expanding the buckle down quite a little networks in the Atlantic. As discussed by Timothy P. Grady in the confine The Atlantic creation 1450-2000, look forrs from Portugal, Spain and other European nations expanded the geographic fellowship s step uphwarfared along the coast of Africa and double-uward across the Atlantic shores of the Americas.The preach for this exploration was triggered by the fall of Constantinople in May 1943, the last hint of the Roman Empire, to the Muslim Turks which shook the fortitude of the European countries and the Christian faith. The magnification of the Ottoman Empire around the Mediterranean region deprived European merchants of the lucrative clientele routes along the Silk Road to the East.The threat of lost converse and mass routes across the Mediterranean into China, Ind ia and other regions of eastern Asia and lost admittance to silk and other precious commodities carried along this route, oblige Europeans to explore alternate trade routes to Asia by turning westward for red-hot opportunities. Discovery of virgin routes west of Europe with the Atlantic, led to European arrival off westerly coast of Africa in the late fifteenth century.By mid ordinal century, the coast line of West Africa was infiltrated by fifty forts and knuckle down duty posts of competing European countries Portugal, Spain, Britain, Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Germany dividing the coastline into Ivory Coast, Gold Coast and Slave Coast. The political prune up in Africa as well as facilitated striver trade. Africa was divided into a amount of pure and large states, chieftaincies and independent villages each with their own form of government, religion, tradition and traditions. These territories often fought with each other and the captives of war were taken as knuckle downs.such(prenominal) conflicts were justified wars which according to Warren. C. Whatley was natural struggles of nation building conducted in the customary course of affairs. The captives referred to as joint-products of war or stolen goods were then exported. With the advent of the Europeans, domestic conflicts became striver marauds. As Robin Law asserted, the Kingdom of Dahomey dominated the slave raiding and affair from 1715 to 1850. Their kings held a royal monopoly on the trade and conducted slave raids through their armies.Thus the political ambitions of the European and African monarchy led to the knowledge of the slave trade. The victimizations in engine room and its impact on navigation, ship building, and firearms assisted the proceeds in Atlantic slave trade. Navigation The desire for exploration spurred European scholars, navigators and sailors to expand their knowledge of geography and devise new shipway of charting and mapping their journeys. Incre ased use of the hour glass and logs to measure date and distance and the Portolan charts clearly documented navigation.In 1462, the Portuguese navigators devised methods of figuring out latitudes by measuring the summit of the Pole Star above the horizon. afterwards in 1484, astronomers in the court of King Joao II, using the midday cheerfulness to figure latitudes, produced a set of declination t subjects. Under the patronage of Prince henry of Portugal, other significant developments were made in the study of winds, tides and ocean currents documents from previous explorations were compiled and maps and charts were continuously improved. Thus a good number of problems associated with navigation were unflinching by late fifteenth century.As navigation across the owing(p) oceans became manage subject, the bringation of the slaves amid the continents Europe, Africa and America became less complicated. Ship Building The changes to the excogitation and functionalities of the European ships were another major factor that contributed to the expansion of Atlantic slave trade. Between the fourteenth and mid- nineteenth centuries, sailing ships were the main means of transport of the slaves. These sailing ships kept changing over time in impairment of design, fittings, equipments and materials utilise as sail.Use of three to four masts, sturdy hull, agora lateen and sprit sails, and stern rudder enhanced their sailing power, speed and eased bind of the ships in wild weather conditions. Small ships such as the caravel, extremely manoeuvrable ships introduced in the fifteenth century further the Portuguese to explore regions around West African coast such as Senegal and curtain Verde and Canary islands to secure staples, gold and slaves. Other ships designed by Portuguese for travel in the Atlantic Ocean were the carracks, four masted ships and the galleon, severely armed multi deck sailing ships.The ships also grew in size and multi decks were able t o accommodate larger number of slaves. The mean tonnage of the slave ships from Liverpool in 1730 was 75 tons. This growingd to 130 tons in 1790 and 226 tons in 1805. Weapons The supremacy of Europe in the slave trade was driven by its guns, cannons and restraints. They used a variety of weapons to threaten the slaves and the enemy ships at sea, to keep an eye on control both on land and at sea. The diffusion of the new gunpowder technology accelerated the slave trade. The African communities, threatened by armed neighbours, resorted to trading the captives for gunpowder, guns and muskets.In the words of Warren. C. Whatley, the vicious cycle, a raid or be raided arms race known as the Gun- Slave-Cycle was created. The permutation of the ineffective matchlock musket by the flintlock in1680s, drastically change magnitude firearms hold in West Africa. According to J. E. Inikori, the firearms imported from England during the eighteenth century were between 283,000 and 394,000 guns per annum. The necessity for firearms from West Africa was so blue gear that manufacturing companies such as Farmer and Galton were forced to pressurise their workers to increase production.The train for firearms was matched by supply of slaves. The developments in restraining technology aided the slave trade in terms of terrorising the slaves and reducing escapes. The restraints used in the trade included, neck restraints, iron collars linked by chains, saliva restraints and leg and wrist shackles to trammel movement. The ability to stow more slaves per third-dimensional foot of the ship, ability to navigate better around the coast of Africa, the decrement in escapees due to draconian restraints, and the organisation of forts around the coast to expect the captives helped to reduce cost and promote trade.African Demand for goods from Europe The door of a wide range of consumption goods in West Africa, the self- ensure of which was a matter of brotherly status and power, was another factor jumper lead to the development of Atlantic slave trade. The African demand for iron and shit bars, textiles, salt, earthenware, weapons and firearms, rum, wine, gin and cowrie shells and a variety of both European and eastern goods had a profound impact on slave trade. The demands for these goods were so high that the European suppliers could not cope with the increase demand.J. E. Inikori commented that firearms and textiles were in such high demand by the slave traders that they were not prepared to clear their slave cargo, if they were not satisfied with the quantity of supply of these items of trade. The merchants were willing to trade their devotion to capture slaves in vary for European goods. Alan Rice clearly identifies this when he asserts, The desire for luxury goods was so great that these African elites would consign war captives and domestic slaves to an unknown fate across the ocean in metamorphose for them.Growth in Slave trading institutions Growth in social institutions to perform a more organised slave trade was a key factor in Atlantic slave trade. The increase in demand and determines of slaves encouraged the development of various institutions to address the issues associated with the trade capture, enslavement, seasoning, trade, regulations and taxation. The merchants explored new ways of trapping the slaves deception, pilferping, ambush attacks, promoting conflicts between villages and the pretence of family substitution for the runaways.The kidnap of Olaudah Equiano in 1750s in his words, One day when all our people were kaput(p) out to their works as usual and only I and my babe were left to mind the house, two men and woman got over our walls and in a moment seized us both and ran off with us into the warm wood. The drought and famine in Africa due to marginal rainfalls in the Savannah areas Angola and the grasslands extending from Senegambia to Cameron, forced desponding families to sell themselves. P eople were too poor people to rifle and offered themselves as collateral for credits. Non repayment made them slaves.Development of enforcement mechanisms also encouraged the slave trade. Credit was offered to slave traders to cover costs of acquiring, transporting and housing slaves until they were boarded on the ships. Other types of such mechanisms, described by Warren. C. Whatley were the use of factories and forts as keeping pens and warehouses, African canoe houses and other trade coalitions, secret societies and treaties between European and African nations. The cycle of violence to hunt down the slaves continued conduct to an upsurge in slave trade The decline in nation in the AmericasThis was another important factor that led to the development of Atlantic slave trade. With the European colonisation of the Americas, there was a appendage in mining and plantations in the islands between North and South America and the get demands were met by native Indians. The massive mortality rates of the natives due to poor working conditions and new European and African diseases such as measles, small pox, the plague, influenza, malaria and yellow fever led to decline in the world of Americas. telephone number 1 presents information on the drastic decline in population in Americas which led to a decline in labour. The Europeans now sour to the Negroes in Africa for labour. They soon found that the African slaves were more productive and the rig quadrupled. Shiploads of slaves were exported to work in these American islands and soon the slave trade was modify from a marginal institution to a global phenomenon. Growth in Plantations The development of Atlantic slave trade stemmed from the growth in plantation agriculture such as dulcify, cotton, tobacco, tea and rice in the New World.The demand for plantation workers in sixteenth century Brazil, ordinal century Caribbean and nineteenth century Cuba instigated slave supply from Africa. The intensity of t he growth in plantations could be seen in small islands like Barbados. By 1650 Barbados had three hundred plantations which multiplied to 900 by 1670, a rate of 100% per annum. The growing demand for sugar, multiplying at a compound rate of 5% per annum in the seventeenth century to about 10% in the nineteenth century, increased the demand for African slaves to work in the sugar plantations in the New World lands.As H. Hobhouse puts it, food became responsible for the Africanization of the Caribbean. This small group of islands accounted for 80% of the sugar and slave trade until the eighteenth century. The slave labour for majority of these plantations was secured from Africa through the Atlantic. As plantations became the expanded into a global trade network, so did the Atlantic slave trade. Slave Trade and Profitability There were various groups of stakeholders in the Atlantic Slave trade who participated in it due to the profitability from the trade in slaves.African Rulers pro fited in terms of taxes and custom duties paid by the European merchants. They were given the first choice of any merchandise that was brought into Africa for trade and were able to bargain lower prices for these goods. The rulers also commanded premium prices for their own slaves. They also received considerable gifts from the merchants in order to secure preferential trading agreements. Ouidah, a coastal town in Benin, West Africa was a lovesome European trading post since 1720 and was accessed by forty to fifty European trading vessels per year.Hence the ruler who started off with ten slaves in exchange for opening his market in 1700 was able to command a higher(prenominal) price of twenty slaves by 1720. This was in addition to the privileges in the secure or sale of the commodities which included the slaves as well. According to Miles Ogborn, by 1800s the rulers in Africa were able to obtain goods for each slave worth three or four times as much in 1700. Both African and Euro pean slave traders were paid well. Overwhelmed by the profits from slave exports, fuddled merchants both in Africa and Europe, expanded slave trading networks to prodigious numbers. write in code 2 analyses changes in supply by African slave merchants in response to changes in prices. The data reveals that the supply increased as price increased. Hence, the largest emigration of slaves in the eighteenth century can be attributed to the increase in price from ? 14 to ? 25. Between the years 1779 and 1788, there was a decrease in demand for slaves due to the War of American Independence. This created unnecessary supply of slaves in the African coast. Hence the planter in Americas started restocking their slave supply.The European slave traders capitalised on this by securing supply at cheaper prices from Africa and merchandising higher prices in the Americas thereby do abnormal profits between these years. Thus slave trade allowed African and European slave traders to exploit prof its from the trade. The consumers of Europe profited in terms of cheaper commodity prices due to increased output by African slaves in the plantations. Figure 3 presents data on the production of sugar and tobacco by British colonies.The increased volume of production of these commodities reduced their prices much to the favour of European consumers. baccy which fetched twenty to forty shillings in 1619 was sold for a shilling or less while the price of sugar halved between 1630 and 1680. Thus the consumers were able to enjoy the luxury of these commodities at affordable prices. The planters were another group of stakeholders in the trade who profited in their own way. Labour became cheap and more on tap(predicate) due to Atlantic Slave trade.The planters always worked with a motive of lucrative exploitation of the factors of production, especially labour and work was dictated by discipline and violence. Successful planters were able to create immense wealth and have degenerate lifestyles. While the slaves slogged day and night in the plantations, the owners were able to retreat in the Great Houses built on commanding positions, with beautiful gardens, imported china, furniture and furnishings. The fortune and lifestyle of Sir Charles Price, the largest land and slave owner of Jamaica between 1738 and 1772 demonstrates the height of planter lifestyles. The Decoy, the Great House he built was a mansion with magnificent rooms with mirrors and wood carving in the decor, lakes and position around the house and elegant gardens with fruits, flowers and vegetables.This essay has clearly illustrated the factors that led to the development of the Atlantic Slave trade. Eventhough the political set up in Europe and Africa and the growth in plantations laid the foundation for the trade, it was the technological developments and social influences on the Europeans and Africans that took the trade to global heights.Overall, the technological improvements lowered transp ort, handling and shipping costs enabling the achievement of economies of scale. Similarly, the growing demand for goods from Europe in Africa, the growth in slave trading institutions and the decline in Americas population fostered the slave trade. Finally, the profitability from the trade influenced various groups of stakeholders to become intensely involved making it an international trade spanning four continents and altering their social, economic and political composition.