African-American Studies

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African-American Studies

• Africa, Europe, and the Rise of Afro-America,
  1441-1619
• Mr. Campbell

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Focus Questions

• Is oppression human nature? Can it be overcome?
• How did slavery change peoples lives?
• What is the difference in describing slavery as a
  necessary evil versus a positive good?

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Historical 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.

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• Slavery existed for a long time with various
  ethnic groups 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.
• Christians in Europe were shipped to Muslim
  nations

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• 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).

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• 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.

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Two Theories of the New World Slave Trade

• Since non-Africans have been slaves historically,
  the question arises why Africans were used in the
  New World slave trade.
• 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).

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• 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.

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• 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.

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Discussion

• 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.

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Assigned Reading

• Read the excerpt from Winthrop D. Jordan's White
  Over Black American Attitudes Toward the Negro,
  1550-1812
• List some attitudes Americans/whites had toward
  Africans.
• How did the definition of black impact the
  mindset of Europeans towards black people prior
  to the 16th century? By contrast how was white
  defined as?
• How did the perception of blacks being inferior
  people get extended within European theater and
  literature?

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Transatlantic Slave Trade

• The Portuguese are acknowledged by historians to
  have inaugurated the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
• In 1441 two Portuguese explorers 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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Slave Ships Packing
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Discussion Questions

1. What effect did expansion and colonization by the
   Europeans have on slavery?
2. How did the method of using Africans has domestic
   servants first come about?
3. Infer what the consequences could be for African
   nations and culture as the race to gain more
   African slaves intensifies in this time in
   history?
4. How did the system of slavery differ in Africa
   then the practice the Europeans used for slavery?

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Effects of Slave Trade

• 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.
• 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)

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• 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.

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Flow of the Slave Trade

• 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.

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• 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
• East Africa--mainly Mozambique -- twenty percent

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Activity

• Write a short poem about the journey the slaves
  took from Africa to the Americas. You can use
  examples from your notes and previous discussions
  to do this assignment.

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The Business of the Slave Trade

• The Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, English, French,
  and Americans were the main traffickers in the
  slaves brought to the Americas
• 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

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• 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).

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The African Dilemma

• Europeans were determined to maintain the trade
  with or without African assistance.
• 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
• Africans who acquired firearms could dominate and
  sell those who lacked them.

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Factors in the Decline of the Slave Trade

• Abolition of slavery in the British Empire in
  1833
• Declining profits in the slave trade
• 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.

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The End of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

• 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

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Review Questions

1. What year did the first slaves arrive in America?
2. From region in Africa did most slaves come from?
   To which country did most slaves end up at?
3. What countries dominated the slave trade?
4. For over 200 years how did the Spanish control
   the slave trade?
5. What percentage of slaves coming from Africa
   ended up in the United States?

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Review Questions continued

1. What were some key factors that ended the slave
   trade?
2. Of the major countries in the slave trade which
   abolished slavery first thereby starting the
   trend to end the slave trade?
3. How many Africans are estimated in losing their
   lives to due to the slave trade? How many slaves
   are estimated in arriving in the New World?
4. How did racism and geography play apart in the
   slave trade?
5. How was the system of slavery in Africa different
   from the European system?