impact on africa

Why did the African slave trade expand?

The expansion of plantation agriculture from Brazil into the Caribbean drove the expansion of the slave trade.

As the slave trade grew, some African leaders tried to slow it down or even stop it altogether. They used different forms of resistance, but in the end, the system that supported the trade was too

strong for them to resist.

An early critic of the slave trade was Afonso I, ruler of Kongo in west-central Africa. As a young man, .

Afonso had been tutored by Portuguese missionaries, who baptized him to Christianity

Whatever the cause, slave ships became

"floating coffins" on which up to half the Africans on board died from disease or brutal mistreatment.

The slave trade brought great profits to many and provided the labor needed by colonial economies. Yet the slave trade had a devastating impact on

African societies.

The English word slave comes from Slav, the people of

Eastern Europe who were often sold into slavery in the Middle Ages

In Africa, the merchants traded these goods for slaves. On the second leg, known as the

Middle Passage, the slaves were transported to the Americas.

In the 1750s, a young 11-year-old boy named ______ was seized from his Nigerian village by slave traders. He was then transported as human cargo from West Africa to the Americas. In later years, he wrote about the experience in his autobiography:

Olaudah Equiano

Once purchased, Africans were packed below the decks of slave ships, usually in chains. Hundreds of men, women, and children were

crammed into a single vessel for voyages that lasted from three weeks to three months.

Some enslaved Africans resisted, and others tried to seize control of the ship and return to Africa. Suicide, however, was more common than mutiny. Many Africans believed that in

death they would be returned to their home countries. So they hanged themselves, starved themselves, or leapt overboard.

Why did so many enslaved Africans die during the Middle Passage?

disease, mistreatment and suicided

Disease was the biggest threat to the lives of the captives and the profit of the merchants. Of the slaves who died, most died of

dysentery. Many died of smallpox. Many others died from apparently no disease at all.

How did the Atlantic slave trade affect colonial economies?

enormous wealth to merchants and traders

the Portuguese and other Europeans brought a few Africans back to Europe as slaves. There, Africans were seen as

exotic servants of the rich.

In the Middle East, enslaved Africans worked on

large farming estates or large-scale irrigation projects. Others became artisans, soldiers, or merchants.

Under Osei Tutu, government officials, chosen by merit rather than by birth, supervised an efficient bureaucracy. They managed the royal monopolies on gold mining and the slave trade. A

monopoly is the exclusive control of a business or industry

The ships faced many perils, including storms at sea, raids by pirate ships, and

mutinies, or revolts, by the captives.

As European colonies in the Americas grew, however, Europeans turned to slave laborers to clear

plantations, or the large estates run by an owner or an owner's overseer.

Most Africans were taken from inland villages. After they were enslaved, they were forced to march to coastal ports. Men, women, and children were bound with

ropes and chains, often to one another, and forced to walk distances as long as a thousand miles. They might be forced to carry heavy loads, and often the men's necks were encircled with thick iron bands.

Triangular trade was immensely profitable for many people. Merchants grew wealthy. Even though there were risks such as losing ships at sea, the money to be made from valuable cargoes usually outweighed the risks. Certain industries that supported trade thrived. For example, a

shipbuilding industry in New England grew to support the shipping industry.

In North America, even newly settled towns such as Salem, Massachusetts, and Newport, Rhode Island, quickly grew into thriving cities. Even though few slaves were imported directly to northern cities in North America, the success of the port cities there was made possible by

the Atlantic slave trade.

The Atlantic slave trade formed one part of a three-legged international trade network known as

triangular trade. This was a triangle-shaped series of Atlantic trade routes linking Europe, Africa, and the Americas.

Europeans lacked the resources to travel inland to seize slaves. Instead, they relied on local African rulers and traders to bring captives—usually from other African nations—to coastal trading posts. There, the traders e

xchanged captured Africans for weapons, gunpowder, textiles, iron, and other goods.