Unit 2
Africa, Europe, and the Rise of AfroAmerica, 1441-1619
BACKGROUND
The continuous presence of persons of African descent on soil that became the United States begins in
1619 with the arrival of twenty Africans at Jamestown, Virginia, aboard a Dutch warship from the West
Indies. Their arrival was a part of the trans-Atlantic slave trade; lasting almost four centuries, (15011873) and accompanying the larger process of European colonization of the New World, this trade
involved transporting African slaves to the Americas so their labor could be used in the economic
development of this vast region.
Since members of all racial groups and some religious groups (for example, Jews, Christians and
Muslims) have been enslaved at some point in time, Africans hold no monopoly on serving as slaves.
Anglo-Saxons and Franks, for example, were among the Europeans who were enslaved during the Middle
Ages. Other Europeans captured and sold each other as late as the mid-fifteenth century. Such activities
often invoked the papal wrath, since many of these slaves were Christians shipped to Muslim lands such
as the Sultanate of Egypt. The word slave, in fact, is derived from the word Slav. Slavic groups (for
example, Poles, Ukrainians, Serbs, and Croats), often captured by the Crimean Tartars, provided many of
the slaves used by the Turks of the Ottoman Empire for the better part of this empire's history (13571918). And although slavery traditionally existed in some African societies, its nature there, similar to the
nature of bondage in some other slave systems found throughout the world, was radically different from
the system found in the Americas. Slaves in Africa, for example, usually did not pass on their status to
their offspring, and they often were allowed opportunities for social mobility.
Since non-Africans have been slaves historically, the question arises why Africans were used in the New
World slave trade. Two basic theories, each addressing the classic "chicken-or-the-egg" paradox between
slavery and racial prejudice, have been offered. The first argues that racial prejudice preceded the slave
trade, that Europeans arrived in Africa culturally pre-conditioned to perceive Africans as inferior to
themselves and thus ideally suited for enslavement. This is said to have been particularly true of the
English whose language, for example, has numerous negative usages containing the word black (for
example, blackball, blacklist, black market, black sheep). The other theory suggests that Africans were
enslaved because they constituted a large and accessible labor supply that was relatively close to the
Americas. The European perception of African inferiority, therefore, is regarded as an afterthought, an
attempt to rationalize African enslavement after it had been accomplished. As evidence this theory notes
that initially Europeans enslaved native Americans and even used the forced labor (indentured
servitude) of their own kind in the New World. Further, after slavery was abolished in parts of the New
World in the nineteenth century (for example, the British Caribbean in 1833), Chinese and East Indians
were brought in as indentured servants to replace the freed slaves, usually working under conditions that
approached slavery. It is therefore reasoned that if China or India, countries with large populations in the
sixteenth century, had been situated closer to the Americas than Africa was, then their people rather than
Africans would have been New World slaves.
The Portuguese are acknowledged by historians to have inaugurated the trans-Atlantic slave trade. In
1441 two Portuguese explorers, Nino Tristao and Antonio Goncalves, sailed to what is today Mauritania
in West Africa, kidnapped twelve natives, and returned home to present them as gifts to Prince Henry the
Navigator, By 1460, seven hundred to eight hundred African slaves were being taken annually into
Portugal, for use mainly as domestic servants. Between 1460 and 1500 the removal of Africans increased
as the Portuguese and Spanish established forts and trading stations along the West African coastline. By
1500 about fifty thousand slaves had been taken out of Africa, most brought into Europe, where they were
used mainly as domestic servants and artisans and in farming. The remainder were used in the Azores,
Madeira, Canary, and Cape Verde islands on sugar plantations in a system that served as a model for the
cultivation of commercial crops later in the Americas.
Columbus's 1492 voyage to the New World, during which he established a settlement on Hispaniola (the
present-day island of Haiti and the Dominican Republic), opened up the Americas for European
settlement. Following the principles of mercantilism, New World colonies were to be exploited
economically. The need to work the mines (gold, silver, and copper) and cultivate commercial crops (such
as sugar, tobacco, indigo, and rice) created a demand for slave labor. In 1501, after the Spanish were
largely unsuccessful in their efforts to conscript native Americans, Africans were brought for the first
time from Europe (Spain) to work in the New World (Hispaniola). In 1510 the first sizable shipment of
African slaves into the New World occurred (250 from Spain). Eight years later, African slaves were
shipped by the Spanish directly from Africa to the New World.
The most recent research by slave historians suggests that from 1501 to 1873 between ten million and
fifteen million African slaves were brought into the New World. Since it is estimated that for every slave
landed in the New World two Africans perished from either the slave raids and wars in Africa, the slave
caravans that marched to the coast, the coastal bulking stations (prison camps) where slaves were held
prior to being transported, or from the horrors of the Middle Passage (the travel by sea from Africa to the
New World), it is likely that more than forty-five million lives were lost to Africa from the slave trade,
This loss, especially because it involved those who were young (child-producing population) and ablebodied, is regarded as having retarded Africa's economic development down to the present century. By
most economic indices Africa was worse off as it entered the twentieth century than when it entered the
fifteenth century.
The flow of slaves across the Atlantic, rising slowly, with about 3 percent of all slaves imported before
1600 and about 14 percent in the seventeenth century, crested in the eighteenth century, when about 60
percent of the total was landed in the Americas. Since the remaining 23 percent arrived in the nineteenth
century, over 80 percent of all of the slaves imported into the Americas arrived between 1701 and 1873.
Cuba in 1873, it is generally believed, received the last shipment of African slaves to the West.
The principal areas of Africa from which these slaves were obtained were West Africa (Senegal to Gabon
– fifty-five percent); Central Africa (Congo and Angola – twenty-five percent); and East Africa (mainly
Mozambique -- twenty percent). Those taken specifically to the United States were drawn from West
Africa (Senegal to Gabon – seventy-three percent); Central Africa (Congo and Angola – twenty-five
percent); and East Africa (mainly Mozambique -- two percent), The removal of slaves from Africa
followed a general pattern that, starting in West Africa, saw the prime source areas shifting eastward and
southward over time. This meant that the following areas successively became the focal point of obtaining
slaves: Senegambia/Sierra Leone, Windward Coast, Gold Coast, Bight of Benin, Bight of Biafra, Congo/
Angola, and Mozambique.
The Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, English, French, and Americans were the main traffickers in the slaves
brought to the Americas. Because Spain, for roughly two hundred years beginning at the end of the
sixteenth century, granted to various merchants and statesmen its famous assiento, a license to carry
slaves to its New World colonies, it did not become a major carrier of slaves until the end of the
eighteenth century. Most of these slaves were taken into Cuba and, to a much lesser degree, Puerto Rico.
Cuba, with seven percent of the total of slaves imported, ranks fourth among the five leading slaveimporting countries in the Americas. The remainder (with their percent of the total importation) were
Brazil (forty percent), Haiti (nine percent), Jamaica (eight percent), and the United States (four percent).
While much has been made of African complicity in the slave trade, and instances of African resistance to
European slavers often ignored, the trade's paramount cause was the European demand for African labor.
Europeans were determined to maintain the trade with or without African assistance. Thus, for Africans,
lacking a "continental" (Pan-African) or common identity, the trade was carried out under duress: African
groups had to either enslave other groups or risk being enslaved. The crucial factor in this enslavement
process was the introduction of firearms by Europeans; an early appearance of firearms in sub-Sahara
Africa occurred in 1591 with the Moroccan expedition against the Songhay Empire. Simply put, Africans
who acquired firearms could dominate and sell those who lacked them.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries many African slaves became part of what was called the
triangular trade. Under this trading network, rum from the British colonies of North America was
carried to West Africa (Guinea Coast) and traded for slaves. These slaves were then carried to the West
Indies, where they were used to cultivate sugar. The molasses produced from the sugar was then sold,
along with more slaves, to the British colonies in North America. From the molasses rum would be
produced in North America and the cycle would start again.
The trans-Atlantic slave trade ended in 1873. Its decline had begun as early as 1803 when Denmark
abolished its slave trade. Great Britain and the United States followed in 1808, Holland in 1814, and
France in 1815, After 1808, Great Britain in particular sought to suppress the trade conducted by others
by patrolling the West African coast. Other factors influencing the decline of the slave trade were the
abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833 (owing in great part to the work of abolitionists like
William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson), declining profits in the slave trade, and the realization by
Great Britain that its interests were better served by using African labor to produce the continent's raw
materials for Britain's burgeoning Industrial Revolution.
Some scholars, using oral tradition and certain linguistic, archeological, and anthropological evidence,
argue that there was an African presence in the New World prior to Columbus' voyage in 1492. This
thesis is best presented in Ivan Van Sertima's They Came Before Columbus (1976), Certainly African
slaves accompanied the early Spanish explorers of the New World like De Soto and Pizarro. Estevanico,
the black Moroccan who accompanied the Spanish during their explorations in the 1530s of what is the
present-day Southwest of the United States, was perhaps the best known of these. About 100 slaves were
also a part of San Miguel, the 1526 Spanish settlement near present-day Georgetown, South Carolina,
which lasted one year. It ended when the Africans rebelled, set fire to the settlement, and the 150 Spanish
survivors returned to Hispaniola. The fate of the Africans in San Miguel remains unknown.
Unit 2 Questions
1.
When did slavery begin in America? Where? How many slaves were aboard that 1 st ship?
2.
How long did the trans-Atlantic slave trade last?
3.
List some of the religious groups that have been enslaved at some point in time.
4.
List some European groups that have been enslaved.
5.
Give two examples on how slavery was different in African.
6.
Give examples on how the term Black is used with a negative tone.
7.
Why would it be in a slave holders’ best interest to view the African as inferior?
8.
Give two examples of the forced labor force prior to the African.
9.
Who started the trans-Atlantic slave trade?
10. From 1501-to 1873, how many slaves were brought to the New World? How many slaves died prior to
getting to the New World?
11. What is Middle Passage?
12. Where did majority of the slave sent to the US come from?
13. How did the firearm affect the slave trade?
14. What is triangular trade?