Growth of Slavery and the Slave Trade

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Growth of Slavery and the Slave Trade

• Slavery in Africa, the Middle Passage, Limiting
  Rights

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Slavery in Africa

• Slavery existed in Africa and elsewhere around
  the world.
• Usually they were people captured in war
• Slaves were a part of the community and often
  treated as servants rather than property.
• Slave traders sold African slaves into Europe and
  the Middle East.
• As the slave trade grew, Europeans promised
  traders guns and goods in exchange for slaves
  from the interior of Africa.

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The Middle Passage

• The passage of slave ships west across the
  Atlantic Ocean
• Conditions on the ships were horrible
• Slaves were chained to each other.
• They were allowed above deck to eat and exercise
  once a day.
• Many tried to resist by revolting, others refused
  to eat or jumped overboard to avoid slavery
• About 10 of Africans died during the voyage by
  illness or mistreatment.

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Detailed plan of the Brookes, 1789
Below the plan was a detailed description of the
Brookes and information about the ship's trading
history.
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(No Transcript)
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Limiting Rights

• Colonists passed laws that set out rules for
  slave behavior and denied slaves basic rights.
• Slave codes treated enslaved Africans not as
  human beings but as property
• The colonists believed blacks were inferior to
  whites known as racism (believing one race is
  superior to another).

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Ad for slaves
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Primary Source- a firsthand account
Interior of a Slave Ship, a woodcut illustration
from the publication, A History of the Amistad
Captives, reveals how hundreds of slaves could be
held within a slave ship.
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Questions

• What time period were these pictures/excerpts
  made?
• Who created them?
• Why were they made?
• Why are they important?

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Published in the June 2, 1860 issue of Harper's
Weekly, The Slave Deck of the Bark "Wildfire"
illustrated how Africans traveled on the upper
deck of the ship.
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Excerpt from The Interesting Narrative of the
Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, The
African

• Besides, the crew used to watch us very closely
  who were not chained down to the decks, lest we
  should leap into the water, and I have seen some
  of these poor African prisoners most severely
  cut, for attempting to do so, and hourly whipped
  for not eating. This indeed was often the case
  with myself.
• - Equiano, 1789