Legacies of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
Aim
To get students thinking about the legacies which we can see in today’s
world that have stemmed from the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
Curriculum Links
This activity is designed to be used for teaching students studying English
and History at Key Stage 3.
Instructions
 This activity has been designed to work alongside a planning lesson on
an essay question.

Distribute photocopies of the worksheet and instruct students that
they are to complete the activity by filling in the missing words, using
the words provided.

Once completed, the teacher can go through the task and ask
students to raise hands and give the correct answer to each question.
You can also discuss the meanings of the words with students.

This exercise can lead to an essay question that students can
undertake further individual research on: “Identify and analyse the
legacies that the Transatlantic Slave Trade has left on the world”.
1. Africans were kidnapped from this West African coast, enslaved and
transported by Europeans to the Caribbean. ______________was
established as the capital city of Sierra Leone which became a British Crown
colony in 1808. The country gained independence from Britain in 1961, after
150 years under British colonization and has since been subject to abject
poverty and a twelve year long civil war.
2. A controversial venue in Bristol named after a merchant who made his
fortunes from the Transatlantic Slave Trade._________________
________ was boycotted by the group Massive Attack who believe that it is
an insult to the memories of the enslaved Africans for tax payers to be
funding a public building that bears the name of a prominent enslaver.
3. A martial art form that is gaining worldwide popularity,
__________________ was initially developed in 1630 by enslaved Africans
who escaped to the mountains of Brazil. From there they were attacked by
Portuguese and Dutch armies, but the Africans developed a system of
fighting which was a symbol of freedom.
4. The End of the Slave Trade Act 1807 abolished British participation in
the slave trade but did not end the practice of slavery in the colonies. The
full emancipation of enslaved Africans took place in 1838 and the African
people living in the Caribbean began to host elaborate
_______________________ borrowing from European traditions but with
a strong African influence. This was to celebrate not only their freedom, but
also to maintain some of the African dances, and songs which they had been
denied from practising during enslavement. This event is practised annually
in all of the Caribbean islands and the version in London has become Europe’s
biggest street festival.
5. Some people believe that the African community should receive a form of
compensation called ___________________ from the governments that
were engaged in the enslavement of African people. _________________
is given for an insult or injury. After the abolition of slavery, plantation
owners were paid £20 million for the loss of their property and the
emancipated Africans received nothing to help them make a new start in life.
6. At the 1884 Berlin Conference, Africa was divided amongst the European
powers who argued that this process of _________________________
would ensure that the African “natives” would become civilised, stop
practices like slavery and become good Christians.
____________________ was in fact a ploy to extract valuable natural
resources from Africa in order to continue the economic growth that Europe
and the United States of America had become accustomed to as a result of
slavery. Ghana was the first state to gain its independence in 1957 and
Zimbabwe the last state in 1980. As a result most African states are only 50
years old and many of the ensuing problems faced by modern Africa directly
stem from the process of ________________________.
7. The abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade came about for a number
of reasons. Fundamentally the enslaved Africans’ continuous revolts and
fight for their freedom led to a decline in profitability of the Transatlantic
Slave Trade. They were supported by a _________________
_______________________ which included ordinary people and women.
This was significant as women were not allowed to vote, but used their
economic power to boycott sugar made by enslaved Africans and organised
the signing of mass petitions. This was the first
______________________ ____________________ form of
campaigning and has been adopted as a benchmark for present campaigns on
a number of issues.
8. One of the legacies of the Transatlantic Slave Trade has been the
systematic _____________________ faced by people of African descent
in the countries where their ancestor were enslaved. In the United States
of America, African-Americans were not allowed to vote till the 1965 Voting
Rights Act was passed. They were segregated in ghettos and unable to
attend certain schools or universities. _____________________, however
is not a historical notion and still exists today in the United Kingdom, where
boys of Caribbean origin underachieve at school, Black people are more
likely to be unemployed and are under-represented in key institutions such
as parliament, the senior judiciary and police force.
9. Enslaved Africans were taken to Europe, the Caribbean and the Americas
where they now make up a _________________ community. Due to the
dehumanizing process of slavery, enslaved Africans, were prevented from
using their original language and bore the names of slave masters. Slavery
has left African descendants in places like Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad,
Brazil and Cuba who have created new identities comprised of some
memories of African culture and tradition and the European culture they
encountered on their enslavement
10. The concept of ______ __________________ grew out of 19th
century efforts to end slavery and the slave trade. The onset of colonialism
also spurred Black people worldwide to realise that they faced common
problems (slavery, colonization, and racism), and that it would be to their
benefit to work together in an effort to solve these problems. This concept
resulted in the creation of the Organisation for African Unity (now the
African Union) which works on the same model as the European Union.
Words
 Pan-Africanism
 Diaspora
 Mass Movement
 Capoeira
 Carnival
 Colonialism
 Freetown
 Colonisation
 Reparation
 Colston Hall
 Reparation