Atlantic Slave Trade Research Paper

Slave Trade Effects on African Societies Between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries the Atlantic slave trade boomed. The increase of plantations in the Americas demanded for large amounts of hard laborers, the answer was to ship over ten million Africans to the Americas and parts of Europe. The forced involvement in the Atlantic slave trade affected African culture in tremendous ways. On the west coast of Africa a vast amount of the population was taken as slaves, depopulating large portions. Most slave were young, strong men in their prime. Many of these men ¨may have fulfilled any number of societal roles in their community of origin¨ (Sanders). The cost of losing so many possible artisans, merchants, philosophers, and skilled laborers provoked an economic and cultural depletion in the disturbed regions. The young men taken lost all opportunity to have kids in Africa, damaging cultural

The states of Asante, Oyo, and Benin were two of the most brutal slave trading states. Asante, Oyo and Benin were three of the wealthiest and most powerful states at the time. Large slave trading states took all the wealth from the tribes, stealing capable men, and The states used their new gained wealth to fund cultural developments. Asante used its wealth, gold, to enable “its artisans to celebrate its royal tradition through the crafting of magnificent seats or stool coated in gold,” seats or stools of gold were a sign of authority to the Asante people (reader 204). The Oyo and Benin empires both used metalwork, bronze, to reflect the ruler’s power and the people's’ highest value. The bronze heads of Ife, Oyo’s capital, are considered the most sophisticated in the world. The best Oyo heads were crafted in the thirteenth century, but became elaborate in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, during the slave trade. Kingdoms did become richer, but at the cost of