The history of African slaves

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Black slave trade

The black slave trade began in the 16th century. European colonists sold African blacks to the Americas as an effort. , a large number of black Africans came to the Americas.

The background of the evil slave trade

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After the opening of new shipping routes, Portugal and Spain first embarked on the path of colonial expansion. Then Britain, France, and the Netherlands also embarked on the path of colonial plunder. In the Americas, European colonists seized the land of Indians and established plantations. At the same time, they slaughtered and enslaved the Indians wantonly, reducing the number of Indians sharply and unable to provide enough labor for the plantations. So the planters began to buy African Black people worked hard on plantations, which opened the way for European hard workers.

The Decline of Indian Civilization

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Indian The Mayan civilization created by man is one of the oldest civilizations in the world. The subsequent Inca civilization and Aztec civilization were both flourishing for a while. However, with the arrival of European colonists, all the wealth created by the Indians was plundered. The Indians were lost, their land was occupied, and even the Indians who had entertained and helped the European colonists were enslaved and massacred in large numbers. The number of Indians dropped sharply after the discovery of the American continent, and the Indians in many places were exterminated. Ancient The Indian civilization suffered a devastating blow, which was the consequences of colonial plunder and colonial expansion.

The evil slave trade

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Traders set out from Europe and arrived in Africa by ship. After Africa captured black people through various despicable methods, they transported the black slaves to the Americas, sold the black slaves to American plantation owners, and then took the gold and gold from the Americas. Industrial raw materials were shipped back to Europe. This was called the "triangular trade" with huge profits. The Portuguese were the first to engage in slave trade, but the British came later and became the main operators of the "triangular trade".

One day, on the vast and lonely Atlantic Ocean, a mysterious pirate ship sailed from Europe to the coast of Africa. Who is driving the pirate ship? What are they going to do? It turned out that this was a "slave-catching team" organized by European colonists. The "Gold Coast" and "Slave Coast" are the main places of their activities. Initially, they raided black African villages, burned down the houses, and abducted the able-bodied men. This criminal act of directly using force to plunder has aroused fierce resistance from the African people. So they changed their tactics and used their guns to incite some African chiefs to engage in slave hunting activities. Then they used guns, ammunition, liqueur, textiles and other small commodities to buy black people from the chiefs and sell them as slaves. In this way, slave hunting activities not only spread along the coast of Africa, but also penetrated into the interior, causing even more serious damage to Africa. Along the coast of Africa, European colonists established fortresses and trading posts. The captive black people were taken in groups to the slave market there to be "selected" by slave traders. After the buyer and seller make a deal, the slave trader uses a red-hot iron to brand the slave's arms and chest with the company's coat of arms. The slaves were then imprisoned in dungeons in fortresses and trading stations. Once a batch was collected, they were put on ships and shipped to America. The black slaves transported to the Americas were then transported to the slave market for purchase by American plantation owners.

The Atlantic route for black slaves was a death line. From West Africa to Africa, black slaves endured six to ten weeks of hardship. First of all, slave ships were often overloaded. You can often see records in books that a 90-ton ship carried 390 slaves, or a 100-ton ship carried 414 slaves. The space allocated to each slave on the ship was only 5.5 feet long and 16 inches wide. The slaves were crowded together like books on a shelf. Every two black slaves were locked side by side, right leg to left leg, right hand to left hand. The place where each black slave lay was smaller than a coffin, and his movements were strictly restricted. Secondly, black slaves lived in crowded cabins with dirty air, rampant epidemics, poor diet, and insufficient fresh water supply, resulting in frailty and illness. Many slaves contracted infectious diseases and were thrown into the sea and died in the belly of the fish.

Chapter 1 The Prevalence of the Black Slave Trade

Africa is one of the origins of mankind. In the multi-polar world where ancient civilizations developed, Africa occupies a place. The Nile River Basin gave birth to the ancient Egyptian civilization. The coast of North Africa was once an integral part of the ancient Mediterranean civilization

circle. After the 7th century AD, the spread of Islamic culture in North Africa, the coast of East Africa, and Sisu Dan brought new economic and cultural prosperity to these areas. In the vast sub-Saharan region, after long-term and stable development, black culture with a unique style has been formed. By the 16th century, Africa, like Eurasia, was already in various stages of pre-capitalist development. Without the invasion of colonialists, African society would have evolved and developed on its own track.

In ancient times and the Middle Ages, black people were sold to Southern Europe, the Arab world, Persia, South Asia and other places via the Sahara trade route, the Nile River and the Indian Ocean. In that era, due to low productivity, the slave trade was a common phenomenon, not unique to black people. There were also white people who were sold to black people as slaves.

However, the invasion of modern colonialism disrupted the normal social development process in Africa. With the rise of capitalism, Africa became a place for commercial hunting of black people. The black slave trade developed into a specialized industry and a special historical phenomenon. Tens of millions of black Africans left their homes and traveled across the ocean

and were trafficked to the Americas, the Indian Ocean, and Asia to work in plantations and mines run by colonists.

Another Some black people died during slave hunting, slave warfare, and trafficking. The African people and their social and economic life

have suffered unprecedented catastrophe. Productivity has been severely damaged. However, the evil colonial and capitalist systems

prospered with the trafficking and enslavement of black Africans. Marx once pointed out that Africa became a place for commercial hunting of black people, which was one of the main factors in the primitive accumulation of capital and marked the dawn of the era of capitalist production. Later, the slave trade and black slavery in the Americas accumulated funds for the Industrial Revolution.

It can be said that capitalism is stained from head to toe with the blood of the African people.

The slave trade lasted approximately four centuries. Except for a few countries such as Austria, Poland and Russia, almost all European countries and the United States have participated in this criminal activity. Looking at the development process of the black slave trade, it can be roughly divided into three periods: the first period from the middle of the 15th century to the middle of the 17th century; the third period from the middle of the 17th century to the early 19th century. In the Second Period, due to the development of American plantations, the slave trade reached its climax during this period; from 1807 to 1808, Britain and the United States passed bills prohibiting the slave trade.

Later, the black slave trade entered its third period. At this time, the slave trade was legally prohibited, but the slave smuggling trade flourished. It was not until the Brussels Conference in July 1890 made a resolution to abolish the African slave trade

that the black slave trade was officially terminated.

If divided according to the different nature of trade determined by the different stages of early capitalist development,

Then the entire history of the slave trade can also be divided into three stages: from the 15th to the 17th century, The feudal royal families of Spain and Portugal and later the commercial capital represented by chartered companies of the Netherlands, Britain, France and others dominated

the black slave trade as a monopoly trade; In the 18th century, industrial capital broke the monopoly of commercial capital, and the black slave trade entered the free trade stage; after the Industrial Revolution, it was abolished in law due to the emergence of modern large-scale industry.

In the 19th century, the slave smuggling trade became popular.

This chapter describes the prevalence of the slave trade in the 300 years from the 16th century to the early 19th century, and its impact on the historical development of the world and

Africa.

1. The black slave trade in the 16th century and the first half of the 17th century

In 1441, led by Antao Goncalves and Nuno Triestau A Portuguese expedition team robbed 10 black Africans on the coast near Point Brown and brought them back to Lisbon for sale. This was the beginning of the black slave trade. In the second half of the 15th century, the Portuguese trafficked black slaves from the coast of West Africa to serve as domestic and agricultural labor in their own country, or trafficked them to newly established sugar cane plantations on Atlantic islands such as Madeira, Canary Islands, and Cape Verde Islands. Work, about 500-1,000 slaves were traded every year. However, until the beginning of the 16th century, the value of the Portuguese slave trade in West Africa was far less than that of the trade in African products such as gold, ivory, and pepper. The Treaty of Tordesillas signed by Spain and Portugal in 1494 was the first treaty between great powers to carve up the world. It determined that 370 leagues west of Cape Verde would be the dividing line between the spheres of influence of Spain and Portugal. The sphere of influence is bounded by 46 degrees west longitude. From then on, Africa, Asia and Brazil belonged to Portugal, and the rest of America belonged to Spain.

In the 16th century, in the process of expanding and plundering the West Indies and the American continent, the Spanish carried out inhumane massacres of the indigenous Indians and attempted to enslave the Indians, but failed. The Spaniards discovered that the Indians were not suitable for heavy field work, and one black slave could do as much as four Indians. In order to meet the demand for labor there to develop tropical crop plantations and mine deposits, they decided to import black people from Africa. In 1501, less than 10 years after Columbus discovered the New World, the first batch of black slaves was transported to Hispaniola from Portugal. This was the beginning of the slave trade to the Americas and the beginning of black slavery in the Americas. In 1518, the first slave ship from Africa arrived in Western India, starting the direct slave trade between Africa and the Americas. By 1540, the number of black slaves imported into Spain's American colonies each year may have reached 10,000.

The Portuguese slave trading activities on the west coast of Africa in the 16th century were mainly in two areas: one was Upper Guinea

Inner Asia, that is, from the Cape Verde Islands to the coast of Sierra Leone. Santiago Island, the largest island in the Cape Verde Islands

was once the center of trade with Upper Guinea. Some Europeans who originally settled in the Cape Verde Islands gradually moved to the coast of Upper Guinea and even went up the Gambia River, establishing many small strongholds in this area. Engage in slave trade and other commercial activities. The other is the mouth of the Congo River and the area south of it. At the beginning of the 16th century, not only Portuguese merchants, but also Portuguese missionaries, teachers, and craftsmen (tailors, shoemakers, masons, and craftsmen) sent there at the invitation of King Alfonso of the Congo. Bricklayers), etc., all engage in slave trafficking in the name of helping Congo develop its economy

The reality is that. By 1526, the situation in Congo had become so bad that Alfonso wrote to the King of Portugal: "There are many merchants in every corner of the country. They will destroy the country. People

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Suffering from slavery and robbery every day, even members of the nobility and royal family were not immune. "Sao Tome Island became a slave trading base in the Gulf of Guinea and the coast from Congo to Angola in the 16th century. In 1493, Europeans began to settle on the island; in 1499, the first sugar cane plantation was established. In the first half of the 16th century, it became Europe's main source of sugar. Starting in the 1620s, Portuguese merchants from Sao Tome and Principe went deep into the interior of San Salvador, possibly as far away as Lake Malebo on the Zaire River

and Ndongo in the south, engaging in trafficking. slave activities.

Black slaves brought from the Bay of Benin, Congo, Angola and other places either stayed in local plantations to work, or were transferred to the Gold Coast, Madeira Islands, Cape Verde Islands and mainland Portugal. Directly transported to America, in the mid-16th century it became the main transfer station for African slaves trafficking to the Americas. S?o Tomé reached the peak of its prosperity between 1530 and 1560 and was one of Portugal's main overseas territories at that time. Slaves and sugar cane were its two greatest assets. Curtin cites N. Dill's estimate that S?o Tomé transported 100,000 slaves during the entire slave trade.

In 1576, the Portuguese established Fort S?o Miguel in the Bay of Luanda as a base. From then on, black slaves south of the mouth of the Congo River were trafficked directly to the Americas from here, instead of being transshipped through Sao Tome Island. It gradually developed into one of the slave trading centers of Angola and Congo. By the last quarter of the 16th century, the South Atlantic trade system of exporting slaves directly from Africa to the West Indian Islands and the American continent had been established. The slaves exported to Europe and the Atlantic Islands (Madeira, Canary and Cape Verde Islands) only accounted for 17 of the total exported from Africa. Most of the slaves exported to Europe after 1600 were also transferred to the West Indies. At the same time, from the end of the 16th century to the beginning of the 17th century, the source of American slaves rapidly shifted from West Africa to the Congo and Angola. At least two factors are worth mentioning: first, the sugar plantations of S?o Tomé faced competition from Brazil and gradually declined by the late 16th and early 17th centuries, which meant that the demand for Congolese Angolan slaves in the Gulf of Guinea itself decreased; secondly, , starting from the early 17th century, the Portuguese began to resort to military operations in the interior of Luanda, either through direct plunder, or through trade with local Africans and obtained new sources of slaves. However, until the middle of the 17th century, the demand for African slave labor in the Americas and the resulting slave trade were limited.

2. Reasons for the prosperity of the black slave trade after the mid-seventeenth century

In the history of early capitalist development, direct slavery in the Americas was once the European bourgeoisie

The foundation of industry. Since the mid-17th century, due to the development of capitalist factory handicrafts and changes in people's living habits (for example, coffee has become the main beverage, the consumption of sucrose has increased, etc.), Europe has begun to develop its influence on the tropics. The growing demand for products led to the development of slave plantations in the West Indies and the American continent that produced tropical products.

This became the reason why the slave trade flourished.

The first group of British immigrants came to Barbados in 1625 and planted tobacco, cotton, indigo and other crops.

Sugar cane was first introduced in 1641, and Barbados was called the "Mother of the West Indian Sugar Islands". The number of black slaves imported here doubled. Later, sugarcane cultivation was rapidly extended to the Leeward Islands, Jamaica, Antigua and other islands. More than two decades after sugarcane was introduced to the British West Indian colonies, sugar accounted for nearly half of London's total imports from colonial plantations, surpassing tobacco. At the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century, the development of Jamaican plantations gradually replaced Barbados's status, and the number of black slaves imported into it exceeded that of Barbados. The ratio of slaves to whites was as high as 10:1. In the French West Indies, tobacco was first introduced to Guadeloupe in 1635, and after the mid-17th century, sugar cane, coffee and other tropical crops were gradually introduced. By the end of the 17th century, plantation slavery had become the economic foundation of the West Indies. Therefore, in the 50 years in the second half of the 17th century alone, the number of slaves sold to Europeans on the Atlantic coast of Africa exceeded the total number of the previous 200 years.

Africa was extremely backward at that time , coupled with the frequent wars between tribes, basically did not have the strength to fight against the advanced European civilization.

If you fall behind, you will be beaten. Didn’t China do the same in the past?