How did the European slavery that arose in the fifteenth century differ from other forms of European slavery?

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, (1501-1873) 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 (1357-1918). 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 able-bodied, 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 asiento, 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 slave-importing 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.

CORE LESSON

Theme

The presence of black people in the United States is rooted in the arrival in 1619 of twenty Africans in Jamestown, Virginia, as part of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. This trade was the largest incidence of forced migration in human history and involved the arrival of slaves in the New World (and the United States) from West, Central, and even East Africa. It had a profound impact on the African continent.

Materials and Preparation

Students should read either chapters 4 and 5 in The African American Experience: A History (“The Atlantic Slave Trade, 1500-1760s” and “The West Indies, First Stop for Africans, 1500-1760s”) or chapter 4 in African American History (“New World Slave Trade”).

Students should also study Map #3 of the slave trade and read excerpts from Winthrop D Jordan’s White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812; Eric Williams’ Capitalism and Slavery ; Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa; Philip D. Curtin’s The Atlantic Stave Trade: A Census; Gustavus Vassa’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, Written by Himself; and James A. Rawley’s The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A History.

The teacher should read chapter 3 From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans (“The Slave Trade and the New World”).

Time Period

Each of the activities that follow will take one class period.

Objectives/Activities

ACTIVITY 1

1. Compare and contrast the theories that have been offered to explain why Africans rather than some other group of people were used in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
2. After students have read the excerpts from Winthrop D. Jordan’s White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 and Eric Williams’s Capitalism and Slavery, divide the class into two groups, one representing Jordan’s position and the other Williams’. Have them debate the two positions. Point out to students the possibility of both positions having some merit.
3. Evaluation: Have students write a 500-word essay indicating whether they prefer the argument of Jordan or Williams, believe there is some merit in both arguments, or believe that neither has merit. Students should explain their selection of a particular position.

ACTIVITY 2

1. Identify the areas of Africa from which slaves were taken and those New World areas where they were landed.
2. After having students use Map #3 to become familiar with the major areas of Africa from which slaves were taken and die New World areas where they were landed, instruct students to discuss the ways in which we can document the presence of certain groups of Africans in specific parts of the New World (for example, ship records, African survivals).
3. Evaluation: Have students imagine they are a journalist whose assignment is to research and write a 500- word article about a folk religion found in Cuba, Haiti, or Brazil that has African origins. Have them identify the particular African group associated with this religion. Also have them note whether practitioners of this religion are among immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, or Brazil found in New Jersey.

ACTIVITY 3

1. Assess the implications of the trans-Atlantic slave trade for the African continent.
2. Ask students to imagine that they are an African king/chief who has been asked by European slavers to enslave a neighboring African group. Have them debate the pros and cons of accepting this offer. For example, if the king/chief doesn’t accept, then the neighboring group could receive guns from the Europeans and enslave his people. If he does accept, he will become dependent on the slave trade and on the guns received from Europeans. He will also have allowed the Europeans to divide Africans, setting them against each other.
3. After students have read the excerpts from Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa and Philip D. Curtin’s The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census, ask them whether Africa benefited overall from, or was harmed by, the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
4. Evaluation: Have the students write a 500-word essay about what responsibility, if any, can be assessed to Africans for engaging in the slave trade. Or have students write a 500-word essay responding to the notion, articulated by some nineteenth century black leaders, that the slave trade could be considered “Providential Design,” a grand plan by which Africans were to be taken to the New World, civilized, and then returned to Africa to serve as civilizing agents.

ACTIVITY 4

1. Explain why the Middle Passage is considered to have been an extremely inhumane and horrific experience for the African slaves transported to the New World.
2. Have students read the Middle Passage excerpts from Gustavus Vassa’s The Interesting Narrative Of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, Written by Himself and James A. Rawley’s The Trans- Atlantic Slave Trade: A History. Ask students to discuss whether these excerpts support the notion that the conditions of the Middle Passage were particularly horrific.
3. Evaluation: Have the students imagine they are someone like Gustavus Vassa, an African who experienced the Middle Passage. Ask them to write, as part of an autobiography, a 500-word account of this experience.

Supplemental Activities

1. Show students the program described here from the documentary series The Africans (obtainable from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities Media Resource Center, 28 West State Street, Sixth Floor, Trenton, New Jersey 08608 (609-695-4838):
   “Tools of Exploitation”
   This segment contrasts the impact of the West on Africa and the impact of Africa on the development of the West, looking at the manner in which Africa’s human and natural resources were exploited before, during, and after the colonial period. The segment also examines Africa’s own traditions of slavery (60 minutes).
2. Show students the film Sankofa, written and directed by Haile Gerima, an Ethiopian who is a Howard University film professor. This film depicts the slave trade through a black woman’s dream-like remembrances (125 minutes). It can be obtained from Mypheduh Film, 403 K Street, N. W., Washington, D.C. 20001 (202- 289-6677).

Key Persons

Olaudah Equiano (Gustavus Vassa). Born in West Africa and placed in slavery in Virginia, he was one of the earliest blacks in America to write his autobiography. In it he detailed the Middle Passage. It was published in 1789 under the title The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, Written By Himself.

Estevanico. A black Moroccan who accompanied the Spanish explorers of the present-day Southwest in the 1530s.

Annotated Bibliography and Suggested Reading

FOR TEACHERS

FOR STUDENTS

MATERIALS

Map #3 – The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (PDF)

Winthrop D. Jordan– White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812

Eric Williams– Capitalism and Slavery

Walter Rodney– How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Philip D. Curtin– The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census

Gustuvas Vassa– The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African (written by Himself)

James A. Rawley– The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A History

Table of Contents | Unit 3

How was the use of slavery in this time period different from slavery in previous periods of history?

How was slavery in the Americas different from slavery in Africa?

What was the general social structure in European society in the 16th century?

What was the major reason that European states wanted to prevent their New World colonies from trading with other states?