The slave trade: revisiting our dark path to civilization

This year, I learned about the slave trade in social studies. It was such a dark time in our history, and the effects are still lasting today. The trauma hasn’t been erased, which is why I think it is important to revisit the incident so we don’t repeat the same mistakes. The Atlantic slave trade was a dark chapter in our history that lasted from the late 15th to the early 19th century (more than 300 years!). It involved 3 continents: North America, South America, and Africa. This horrendous event forcibly brought more than 10 million Africans to the Americas. The trauma was passed down through generations, and it had a lasting impact on the economies of many countries.

It all started when Europeans began to grow crops like sugarcane, tobacco, and cotton in the new colonies. They required a lot of labour, and there weren’t enough people to cultivate the crops. Although some American natives were enslaved, they died from diseases and others refused to work. African slavery had existed in many forms before this incident, where some could buy their freedom and others even had chances to rise to a higher status in society. When Europeans offered valuables like manufactured goods, weapons, and rum to African kings and merchants in exchange for slaves, they were ready to make the deal. They justified their decision by viewing the people they sold as criminals or prisoners of war.

The trade was the third part of the triangular trade, in which arms, textiles, and wine were shipped from Europe to Africa, and then slaves from Africa to the Americas (A.k.a. the middle passage), and sugar and coffee from the Americas to Europe. African leaders began getting rich, and started looking for new ways to capture more slaves to meet the Europeans’ demands. It came to a point where war became a reason to capture more slaves and other criminal sentences were replaced with slavery. This destroyed societal values, negatively impacted the economy, and broke families across the continent.

The slaves themselves faced unimaginable brutality. Many people died because of the terrible conditions aboard the ships, which included cramped spaces, little to no food, and poor hygiene. If anyone was suspected of being ill, they were thrown overboard, and if anyone disobeyed the commands of the crew, they were thrown overboard as well. Women and children were sexually abused and were forced to comply with the wishes of the captain. Sometimes captains cut off the ears of the people they captured as proof of purchase. Those that managed to survive the journey faced even worse situations in the Americas. They were shaved and cleansed, and then they were oiled to appeal to buyers. They were sold in markets like meat was sold in shops. This, among many other things, continued for several years until people started taking action against the injustice.

The slave trade eventually ended in America in 1808, after congress prohibited the foreign importation of slaves into the United States. In 1807, the British government passed an Act of Parliament abolishing the slave trade throughout the British Empire. Despite this act, slavery continued in the British colonies until its final abolition in 1838.

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4