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Summary: The Atlantic Slave Trade

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Over twelve million Africans were captured and taken against their will by Europeans in the Atlantic slave trade from about 1525-1866. The experience that the slaves endured was horrendous, unsanitary and overall the worst time of their lives. The middle passage was where the slaves were taken from Africa to the Americas via ships. After they arrived in the Americas, they were sold and forced to work for their new owners. Due to strong European force, slaves experienced dehumanization through being captured from their villages and tortured, living with awful conditions on ships, and being sold against their will to Americans.
Europeans invaded African villages out of nowhere; Africans were caught by surprise with no chance to fight back, and …show more content…

Masters knew that “running away was common. People ran because they had been mistreated or they were afraid they were going to be sold, or they just wanted to be free” (Lester 21). Slaves were tired of working all the time and they just wanted to have their freedom like the Americans; but the attempt at this freedom came with consequences. If a slave was caught running away, they were harshly tortured and in some cases even murdered. This occurred so that the other slaves could watch and see what would happen to them if they tried to escape. Some slaves were branded with their master’s name or a symbol so that everyone would know who they belonged to and that they did something wrong. Working for the Americans was as harsh and dehumanizing as the voyage that was taken to get there.
The Atlantic slave trade was when Africans were taken to the Americas by Europeans to be sold and forced to work. First, they were tortured on the way to the slave ships and aboard the ships. On the ships, the slaves were kept in tight spaces, shackled together living with disease and little food and water. When they arrived in the Americas, the slaves were sold and forced to work for their new masters. The slaves had to be mentally, physically and emotionally strong to survive this awful experience. Through every phase of this awful experience, the slaves were dehumanized and

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When they were getting ready to be sold, they would have marches for several miles and some of them would be shackled around the neck. Once they reached the coast of where they would board ships, the slaves would be put into cages just like animals are today. After boarding the ships, they were cramped in so tight that hundreds of them would die because they would not being able to breath. Inhuman conditions like these went on for thousands of year. Incidents such as running away or sleeping with a black slave would appear during this time.

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Slaves were broken up from their families to ensure that working is their only priority. Having nothing to love and care for made slaves feel less human. Document 8 shows a picture of a man who was badly whipped. The document states, “Beatings with a whip were a common form of punishment used on slaves.” Beating was a form of punishment used when a slave disobeyed their master.

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These enslaved people were taken to the Americas in a deadly journey known as the Middle Passage. The Americas then traded cash crops and raw goods for these slaves. This trade system became known as the Atlantic Slave Trade System. The Atlantic Slave Trade System during the period of 1550 CE to the 1700s CE caused the displacement Africans from their native lands,

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The brutality of American slavery prior to the abolishment of slavery after the American civil war of 1861 to 1865 varied depending on the conditions offered by slave masters and particular historical events along with the states which slaves were in (Source A). Evidence suggests that the treatment of slaves especially in the southern region of America (which includes the states South Carolina, Virginia, Florida and Georgia) was horrendous as it included various punishments which scared slaves not only physically but also mentally. The treatment a slave received was also based on the how long the slave or slaves actually worked for a particular owner (Source B). Many testimonials from former African American slaves go on further to show

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Furthermore, these slaves were transported on a “slave ship” which tightly held 562 slaves and were infiltrated with life-threatening diseases (Document 7). While aboard the ship, the slaves were branded with their owner’s mark and were crammed so tightly into the ship that they couldn’t even slightly change their position (Documents 7 & 8). Since European ports facilitated goods entering by sea, slaves were traded in these crowded ports and were then taken to the New World (Document 6). The slave trade not only had an impact on Africa as it caused small African states to disappear and new powerful kingdoms to arrive, but also affected the economic development of the New World and introduced debilitating diseases there as

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African Americans were captured by people called slavers in Africa and would be shipped to the US to be bought. 3.What were conditions like for the enslaved Africans being transported on the Middle Passage? Approximately 15 percent of slaves died on the ships because conditions were horrible. There were so many people packed into one place and there were diseases that would go around from person

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The Europeans had such a high demand for slaves, they packed them in by the hundreds to sell them to those overseas. It did not matter that some died along the way; all that mattered to the Europeans was that they made money of off the sale and work of the slaves. James Ramsay wrote in the Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies that “In the place of decency, sympathy, morality, and religion; slavery produces cruelty and oppression” (Document 7). This quote describes how the slaves were treated. For something as small as not working or eating the sugar sane, the slaves were brutally punished.

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Slaves also lived in a constant fear during their lives. If they did not obey they would be whipped or beaten badly, leaving scars that left their bodies marked forever. Now think of what Harriet Tubman went through. Her first breath of air was as a slave. Put to work as a child, Harriet

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This unprecedented global tragedy claimed millions of lives over four centuries, and left a terrible legacy that continues to dehumanize and subjugate people around the world to this day. The forced movement of West Africans across the Atlantic to the Caribbean happened on cutting-edge scale of brutality and inhumanity, killings and massive abuses. Millions died without a burial, without a trace. These Europeans paid no monetary price for their progress, but they incurred a terrible cost in the form of the of the root racism that we still battle today. The slave trade left an ineradicable mark.

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Many of them were beaten and tortured. Because of the slave trading, their family members are sold to different owners. Most of them did not have enough to eat, warm clothes or a good place to live. Almost everyone scared to be sold to the south, because the way of treating to the slaves in south was so harder than other places. Based on these facts their mind automatically generated the word “escape or run away”.

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From mid-15th century to the end of the 19th century, in order to provide labor, the western colonial countries took a large number of black people from Africa to American colonial plantations and mines. Since the slave trade was mainly carried out on both sides of the Atlantic, the western countries generally call it “the Atlantic slave trade”. Although it brought huge profits to the capitalists of Western Europe, it is the darkest period in African history. We can say that the slavery in the New World was absolutely dehumanizing, and it’s extremely cruel. It has caused billions of Africans lose their lives and has had a very serious impact on the development of Africa.

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Argument paper. The Middle Passage is the part of the trade, where Africans, tightly packed on ships, were transported across the Atlantic Ocean to the West Indies. The journey lasted for several months, at this time the enslaved people basically lay in chains in rows on the floor of the ship 's hold. Genocide, in turn, does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of the nation, except for the massacres of all members of the nation.

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They were not thought of as human beings, but as property. The impact of the Atlantic slave trade on Africa was immense and long lasting. It is estimated that more than 10 million Africans were ripped from their land and sold as property. With this came a staggering decrease in population, forcing the economy to worsen.

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Living conditions for slaves were dreadful, with long work hours and low wages. Slave masters separated families and sold off children from their parents, or vice versa. Slaves were prone to severe punishment for even trivial offenses. Whippings and beatings were prevalent. Running away allowed them to get away from all the hostility, if only for a while.

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One of the largest forced movements of humans was via the Trans-Atlantic slave trade route between the mid-fifteenth century and nineteenth centuries, which transported about 10-12 million African slaves into the Americas. The Trans-Atlantic slave trade formed a devastating relationship between the Europeans and Africans through slavery, an inhumane act of forcing drudgery among other humans. At first Africans themselves were enslaving each other through the freehold system. The freehold system was a way for African slave owners to employ slaves by giving them land in exchange for their labor. By 1441, Portuguese began to abduct Africans and forced them to work in Portugal as slaves with the help of African slave traders.

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