Student Question
How did Europeans change African slavery?
Quick answer:
Europeans drastically altered African slavery by transforming it from a localized practice into a large-scale, systematic, and economically driven enterprise. Prior to European involvement, African slavery was often a temporary condition related to war or debt. Europeans, however, integrated slavery into the global Triangle Trade, increasing demand and turning enslaved Africans into commodities. This led to intensified raids deep into Africa, devastating societies and permanently changing the nature of slavery both in Africa and the Americas.
Although slavery had long been practiced in Africa before the arrival of the European slave trade, slavery in Africa by Africans had been mostly imposed on the losers of wars and territorial skirmishes, or to settle individual debts or disagreements between warring tribes. Slavery had not been widely used for strictly economic purposes, however. This all changed with the arrival of the European slavers, who used the indigenous slave traders, mostly from West and North Africa, to kidnap men, women and children from other territories and sell them into bondage for the long, often deadly voyage to colonies in the West.
Prior to the arrival of the European slave traders, slavery in Africa had not necessarily been a permanent state. As mentioned above, it was often a punishment or a way of settling a score with a rival tribe. Often it involved sexual slavery, with women bearing the brunt of...
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the effects. It was certainly less systematic and organized than it would become with increased demand from British, French and Portuguese Colonies.
Once the slave trade in Africa became part of the global Triangle Trade, African Slaves became a commodity and Africans who lived near the coasts started to see and hear about the fate that befell others who were sold into bondage. Many of those who hadn't already been kidnapped and sold into slavery fled from parts of the coasts where it was known that the brutal Slave Traders were active. This in turn pushed the African Slave Traders to go deeper into the continent to get procure more slaves for the increasing demand of plantation owners in the American Colonies, the Caribbean, and places like Brazil. The greater the demand grew, the more profitable the trade became and the more ruthless the methods of the African slave traders became. This vicious cycle tore apart the fabric of many African societies, and gutted many parts of the continent's most able-bodied populations.
How did Europeans alter the practice of slavery?
In the 15th and 16th centuries, Europeans were interested in the trading going on in African nations and their sophisticated trading networks. This gave the Europeans the idea to get involved in trading human beings. They took the enslaved people from West Africa to the Americas.
In the Americas people were now getting used to the idea of owning their own land. They didn't want to work for other people now that they had some freedom to work for themselves. Convicts were being used to work the land at the time, but the landowners found that these people were just not getting the work done. The planters and overseers at the farms and plantations, then began to purchase the enslaved people the Europeans were bringing over. The action that the Europeans took by selling people, affected slavery immensely. This would go on for generation after generation. The horror of people being taken from their native homes to become sold as slaves.
With the Europeans now becoming involved with the slave trade, they brought it to the Americas. It affected this country in one of the worst ways possible. You have to wonder, if the Europeans hadn't come here with the enslaved people what would have happened? Would some other country done it? Would we, as Americans, discovered what was going on? Would there have been a way to keep this from ever happening? This is how the Europeans changed to face of slavery forever.