Atlantic Slave Trade Dbq Essay

The Atlantic slave trade was the biggest illegal immigration in world history,and is sometimes called the Holocaust of Enslavement because of how many innocent people were unjustly killed.The first step of this trade was the Europeans who would travel to the west coast of Africa. Once they arrived it was common that they would bribe tribes with goods and weapons, commonly guns, that were used into turning against their own and capturing their neighbors. Upon being taken against their will the enslaved were then shipped across the Atlantic ocean. During this 2-4 month period they were beaten, shoved into small barracks, and many died due to lack of sanitation. The lucky, or perhaps unlucky, ones that survived the middle passage were then sold

Although in awe of the resources and scenery, they instantly saw the innocence of the natives people and exploited it. With the conquering of the Aztecs and Incas Europe now had a free labor force. ¨The work was hard and the spaniards were not willing to do it (Document 1),¨ this meant the Native Americans were pushed to their breaking point when mining for gold, silver, and the production of sugar. Within 20 years, the population had all but gone extinct due to disease and war. This meant that their numbers were not enough to fill the quota, seeing that the Americans produced 90% of Europe's sugar during this time period. The African slaves then became the prominent cheap labor market once it was shown the the Africans could withstand harsher treatment. This enacted the Triangular Trading system that that shipped slaves to the Americas, raw goods from the Americans back to Europe, and the finished product back to Africa in exchange for more slaves. Greed influenced an absence of humanitarian concerns because slavery was a way for the rich to get richer and the poor to have a little bit of wealth without doing some of the harsh labor. This caused humanitarian morals to drift to the wayside because it is easy to ignore morals once you do not seen the oppressed as people any more. Slaves were now looked at as property meant to give you more

This wasn't always the case considering the people the built this country were shackled and not even considered as humans. The Slave trade violated basically all of the humans rights, but specifically; Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, Article 4: No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms, and Article 5:No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The slave trade violated all of these terms and history leads us to believe that Africans were not even considered people anymore and were “altogether [treated] in every respect like brutes (Document 8). Document 3 describes an image of slaves being taken by their African captures. The picture shows the slaves with shackles around their neck like livestock. From this point they would be conducted to a prison where there was nothing to be heard but, “the rattling of chains, smacking of whips, and the groans and cries of [their] fellow countrymen(Document 2).” This Document 2 describes the tellings of a young boy named Cugoano and his experience with his capture into slavery. The middle passage was perhaps one of the more horrifying parts of the slave trade. Document 4 shows the New World being bridged from bones of the African slave trade. Slaves that were sick or died during the