Africa+and+the+Africans+in+the+Age+of+the+Slave+Trade



The Atlantic Slave Trade:
 * MI: Early Portuguese contacts set the patterns for contact with the African coast. The Slave trade expanded to meet demend for labor in the new American colonies, and millions were exported in an organized commerce that involved both Europeans and Africans.**
 * Portuguese establish **factories**: Forts and trading forts with resident merchants. Gives the portuguese special leverage on African trade and a point from which to go into African territory.
 * **El Mina**, a portuguese factory, was established in the gold-producing regions of Africa and served as a point for Portuguese dissemination into central Africa.
 * **Nzinga Mvemba**, ruler of Kongo, brought his whole Kingdom to Christianity with the help of Portuguese advisors and missionaries.
 * **Luanda** was a Portuguese settlement that provided for the basis of Angola, a Portuguese Colony.
 * The Portuguese saw the Africans as savages that could be converted to Christianity.
 * Demand for slaves skyrocketed when the Iberians established sugar plantations that required many workers and a constant labor supply. By 1600, the slave trade predominated over all other kinds of commerce on the African coast.

__Trend Toward Expansion:__ MI: **The Atlantic Slave trade had expanded, and from1450 to 1850, 12 million Africans were coerced into the institution of slavery.**
 * 10-20 percent of African Slaves died on the journey to the Americas.
 * High slave mortality and low fertility fueled the slave trade and cause it to expand even further.
 * By 1860, about 6 millions slaves worked in the Americas.
 * From 1530-1850, Brazil received the majority of slaves from Africa. This was about 4 million slaves, or 42% of the total count.
 * Arab traders also contributed to the export of slaves from Africa, adding a total of 3 million slaves to the global slave network.
 * In 16th century - most slaves from Senegambia; by 17th, west central Africa was the major supplier.

__Demographic Patterns:__
 * MI: Women were not involved, though men were traded more because of the magnitude of physical work.**
 * Women and children were kept for domestic slavery, slave owners did not want to buy children due to high mortality rates.
 * Women were mostly used as concubines and domestic servants.
 * Men were the biggest imports followed by women and children. In Africa, women were more dominant than men in terms of population (maternal societies).
 * Maize and manioc were introduced in Africa and they aided the male-deficient populations to recover from the losses caused by teh slave trade.

__Organization of the Trade:__
 * MI: Other European countries also competed for a share in the slave trade. They began rivaling and eventually overthrew Iberian dominance on the network.**
 * The Dutch were able to seize El Mina in 1637, followed by the English who had their own source of slaves in Barbados, Jamaica, and Virgina.
 * The **Royal African Company** was charted in England in order to protect these English settlements and slaves.
 * Tropical disease were deadly for both slaves and Europeans.
 * The Spanish developed a scaling system in which a healthy slave called an **Indies piece**, and women and children were later assign a fraction of that value.
 * The profitability of the slave trade was at times 300 percent and has been attributed with the rise of commercial capitalism and the Industrial Revolution.
 * A triangular trade developed between Europe, Africa, and the Americas, but the true economic significance of the slavetrade is hard to measure due to little knowledge on how profits from this trade were utilized.
 * The slave trade was profitable enough to keep merchants in it, and it contributed to the growing economy of western Europe. This trade network also integrated Africa into a increasingly global economy.

African Societies, Slavery, and the Slave Trade __Slaving and African Politics:__ MI: The intensity of the slave trade due to European intervention changed the nature of African slavery and the mindset of some African societies. __Asante and Dahomey__: Osei Tutu was the adantehene, the all-supreme ruler that was designated to be the supreme civil and religious leader. The kingdom of Dahomey was ruled by a king with a powerful council, and they embraced the global slave trade differently. Throught the acquisition of firearms, they were able to create a much more brutal regime.
 * MI: The slave trade influenced African forms of servitude and the social and political development of African states. Newly powerful states emerged in west Africa; in the Sudan and east Africa, slavery also produced long term effects.**
 * European involvement in the already existing slave trade expanded and transformed the network.
 * Africans already had essentially benign forms of servitude that were extensions of lineage systems, and the Atlantic trade opened the opportunity to expand this.
 * African slavery was not as brutal as European slavery, but the enslavement of women was a central feature in Africa.
 * TEuropeans were able to tap existing slave routes and utilize Africans that were willing to trade and enslave.
 * Centralized states were important to the European slave trade and other societies in which the institution was prevailing.
 * The trade of slaves was the business of kings and nobles according to a French agent.
 * African states on the coast were in constant competition with the Europeans over the slave trade.
 * Warfare centralization many African nations due to efforts to control slave trade.
 * Political power of states grew as they went deeper and deeper into mainland Africa.
 * MI: The empire of Asante rose to prominence during the slave trade throught the usage of European guns.**

__East Africa and the Sudan:__ Europeans and Arabs established plantations in the region to produce very cheap raw materials. "Islamization" plays a key role in the development of slavery in this region. Fulani people rose to power under the banner of a reformed Islam - **Usuman Dan Fodio** was a major figure.
 * MI: West Africa was the region most affect by the Atlantic slave trade, but the East still experienced significant changes.**

__Demographic Patterns:__
 * MI: Women were not involved, though men were traded more because of the magnitude of physical work.**
 * Women and children were kept for domestic slavery, slave owners did not want to buy children due to high mortality rates.
 * Women were mostly used as concubines and domestic servants.
 * Men were the biggest imports followed by women and children. In Africa, women were more dominant than men in terms of population (maternal societies).
 * Maize and manioc were introduced in Africa and they aided the male-deficient populations to recover from the losses caused by teh slave trade.