Chapter 14: Atlantic Slave Trade

In Chapter 14, Strayer talks about the "Economic Transformations" and the consequences of them in Europeans and Asian commerce during the years 1450 through 1750. For this post, I chose to talk about the section "Commerce in People: The Atlantic Slave Trade," specifically answering the causation question "What explains the rise of the Atlantic Slave trade” (p. 623)?

The rise of the Atlantic slave trade happened because of the growth of plantation and agriculture needs in the Americas. The Portuguese introduced sugar plantations off the Atlantic Ocean in Brazil and along with the Spanish, they maintained plantations in the Caribbean. Portuguese Brazilian plantations were a monopoly for a century (1570 - 1670) and then later, in the 1775s, the British, French and Dutch broke their monopoly with the highly productive colonies they created. These British North American Southern colonies included Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia and were known as the backbone of the Southern economy. The plantations were spread all over the Atlantic Ocean for several centuries and grew to supply the colonies of five European empires. All these empires used slave labor to some degree. For example, to attend to the massive international sugar market, the Portuguese imported millions of African slaves to the colonies of the sugar plantations in Brazil. It was interesting to learn that Brazil imported much more slaves through the Atlantic trade than the British in the North American Southern colonies. Strayer confirms that “between 1500 and 1866, this trade in human beings took an estimated 12.5 million people from African societies, shipped them across the Atlantic in the infamous Middle Passage, and deposited some 10.7 million of them in the Americas, where they lived out their often-brief lives as slaves. About 1.8 million (14.4 percent) died during the transatlantic crossing, while countless others perished in the process of capture and transport to the African coast” (p. 620) The rise of the Atlantic slave trade served the plantations in the Americas but it was with the cost of millions of African lives and the birth of the racism in both Americas to this date.

References:

Photo: https://devastatingdisasters.com/the-transatlantic-slave-trade-16-19th-century/

Strayer, R. (2016). Ways of the World: A Brief Global History. Bedford/St. Martin's