Chapter 20
Africa and the Africans in the Age of
the Atlantic Slave Trade
The Beginning
• Factories:
– Established trading forts allowing trade from the
interior
• Much is established with the consent of the African people.
• El Mina
• Missionary efforts
– Europeans saw the Africans as pagan savages (just like
the saw everyone else)
• Few permanent settlements
– This was for goods and slaves not for living
Patterns of Conquest
• What the Portuguese did in Africa is seen
throughout the history of the slave trade:
– Fortified trading stations
– Combo of force and diplomacy
– Alliances with local rulers
– Predominance of commercial relations
Who
• The Portuguese were the main suppliers
– The Dutch got involved later on capturing El Mina
– The English wanted control for the plantations
• African states on the coast benefitted from
the slave trade
– More inland states with firearms became suppliers
On the West Coast
• Two important states that developed out of
the slave trade
– Asante:
• Dealt with the Dutch
• dominated the gold coast until the 1820s
– Dahomey:
• With the use of guns, created its own autocratic society
based on trading slaves
On the East Coast
• Continued to trade luxury items with the
Muslim world
– Some slaves got to Europe/America
• Islamization will connect the northern savanna
with the western external slave routes
– This new phase with be more violent
– Linked Islam and the slave trade
– Movement to purify the Sufi
• Major impact of the pastoral people (Fulani)
The Slave Trade
• The Atlantic
– 12 Million Africans shipped out
• 10-11 millions made it alive
– So many were needed as a continuous supply.
• Mortality and low birth rate
• Needed to replenish
• Other slave trades
– Trans-Saharan
– Red Sea
– Muslims in East Africa
Keep in mind
• Europeans used the fact that Africa already
had slavery as a justification
– Used many ways, and on many levels
– Trade allowed the existing systems to expand and
develop
• The growing divine authority of the African
rulers paralleled the rise of absolutism in
Europe
– The development of new political forms
Who was in control?
• Control of the Slave trade often reflected who
had European Control at the time
– Portuguese until 1630: Supplying Brazil
– Dutch 1637-1660: They took control of El Mina
– English: needed fro their growing colonies
• Royal African Company
– French: Start by not major until 18th Century
Who did they trade?
• West: The Atlantic trade
– Young men for hard labor
– Changed the demographic of the region
• More men in America
• More Women in Africa
• East: The Trans-Saharan trade
– Muslim traders
– Women
– Domestic help and concubines
The African Diaspora
• Slaves became an important segment of the
new world population
– Cultures mixed with other things to create
something new
• Slave Society
– Whites on top
The Middle Passage
Triangle Trade
• The major way Africa was linked to
the increasingly integrated economy
of the world
Was it Profitable?
• Some say it was so profitable that there were
major elements in the rise of capitalism and
the origins of the Industrial Revolution
• Like other things it appeared more profitable
than it really was
– The trade itself may not have given the most
money
• The industry that came out of the slave trade WAS
VERY PROFITABLE
South Africa
• 1652: The Dutch East India Company
– Colony Cape of Good Hope
• Provision post
• Dutch = Boers
• 1795: English take Cape Colony
– 1815 formal British Control
– Limited Boers landholding
• 1834: Britain outlaws slavery
– Great Trek: Boers leave top be free of government
control in the North
• Moving into someone else's land
The Impact of Slavery on Africa.
• “Africa entered the world economy in the
slave trade era. Its incorporation produced
differing effects on African societies, but many
societies had to adapt in ways that placed
them at a disadvantage that facilitated later
loss of independence during the 19th century.
The legacy of the slave trade, as European
rulers practiced forced labor policies, era
lingered on into the 20th century.”
Terms
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factories: trading stations with resident merchants established by the •
Portuguese and other Europeans.
El Mina: important Portuguese factory on the coast of modern Ghana.
lançados: Afro-Portuguese traders who joined the economies of the •
African interior with coastal centers.
Nzinga Mvemba: ruler of the Kongo kingdom (1507-1543); converted •
to Christianity and was renamed Afonso I; his efforts to integrate
Portuguese and African ways foundered because of the slave trade.
•
Luanda: Portuguese settlement founded in the 1520s; became the
core for the colony of Angola.
Royal African Company: chartered in Britain in the 1660s to establish a •
monopoly over the African trade; supplied slaves to British New World
colonies.
•
Indies piece: a unit in the complex exchange system of the West
African trade; based on the value of an adult male slave.
triangular trade: complex commercial pattern linking Africa, the
•
Americas, and Europe; slaves from Africa went to the New World;
American agricultural products went to Europe; European goods went
to Africa.
•
Asante: Akan state the Gold Coast (now Ghana) among the Akan
people and centered at Kumasi.
•
Osei Tutu: important ruler who began centralization and expansion of •
Asante.
•
asantehene: title, created by Osei Tutu, of the civil and religious ruler •
of Asante.
•
Benin: African kingdom in the Bight of Benin; at the height of its power
when Europeans arrived; active slave trading state; famous for if
bronze casting techniques.
•
Dahomey: African state among the Fon or Aja peoples; developed in
the 17th century centered at Abomey; became a major slave trading
state through utilization of Western firearms.
Luo: Nilotic people who migrated from the Upper Nile regions to
establish dynasties the lakes region of central Africa.
Usuman Dan Fodio: Muslim Fulani leader who launched a great
religious movement among the Hausa..
Great Trek: movement inland during the 1830s of Dutch-ancestry
settlers in South Africa seeking to escape their British colonial
government.
Shaka: ruler among the Nguni peoples of southeast Africa during the
early 19th century; developed military tactics that created the Zulu
state.
Mfecane: wars among Africans in southern Africa during the early 19th
century; caused migrations and alterations in African political
organization.
Swazi and Lesotho: African states formed peoples reacting to the
stresses of the Mfecane.
Middle Passage: slave voyage from Africa to the Americas; a deadly
and traumatic experience.
obeah: African religious practices in the British American islands.
candomble: African religious practices in Brazil among the Yoruba. |
vodun: African religious practices among descendants in Haiti.
Palmares: Angolan-led large runaway slave state in 17th-century Brazil.
Surinam Maroons: descendants of 18th century runaway slaves who
found permanent refuge in the rainforests of Surinam and French
Guiana.
William Wilberforce: British reformer who led the abolitionist
movement that ended the British slave trade in 1807.
Good stuff to keep in mind
Stuff from this chapter that goes with
the APWH Themes
Key Concept 1: Globalizing Networks
of Communication and Exchange
• The new global circulation of goods was facilitated by
royal chartered European monopoly companies that
took silver from Spanish colonies in the Americas to
purchase Asian goods from the Atlantic markets but
regional markets continued to flourish in Afro-Eurasia
by using established commercial practices and new
transoceanic shipping services
– Commercialization and creation of global economy
connected to new global circulation of American silver
– Influenced by mercantilism, joint-stock companies were
new methods used to control the domestic and colonial
economies
– The Atlantic system involved the movement of goods
wealth and free and unfree laborers and the mixing of
African, American and European cultures and people
• The increase in interactions between newly
connected hemispheres and intensification of
connections within hemispheres expanded
the spread and reform of existing religions and
created syncretic belief systems and practices
– The practice of Islam continued to spread into
diverse cultural settings in Asia and Africa
– Syncretic forms of religion (such as African
influences in Latin America, interaction between
Amerindians and catholic missionaries, or Sikhism
between Muslims and Hindus in India and
Southeast Asia) developed.
Key Concept 2. New forms of social
organization and modes of
production
• Traditional peasant agriculture increased and
changed, plantations expanded, and demand
fro labor increased. These changes both fed
and responded to growing global demand for
raw materials and finished products
– Peasant labor grew in many places
– The Atlantic slave trade increased demand for
slaves
– The purchase and transport of slaves supported
the growth of the plantation economy throughout
the Americas
• As new social and political elites changed,
they also restructured new ethnic, racial and
gender hierarchies.
– Some notable gender and family restructuring
occurred, including the demographic changes in
Africa that resulted from the slave trades (as well
as the dependence of European men on Southeast
Asian women for conducting trade in region or the
smaller size of European families)
Key Concept 3: State Consolidation
and Imperial Expansion
• Imperial expansion relied on the increased use
of gunpowder, cannons and armed trade to
establish large empires in both hemispheres.
– Europeans established new trading-post empires
in Africa and Asia, which proved profitable for the
rulers and merchants involved in new global trade
networks, but these empires also affected the
power of the states in interior West and Central
Africa