Understanding Contemporary Africa Chapter 1 Summary

In this essay I will be telling my thoughts and what I learned from the following readings and videos Understanding Contemporary Africa Chapter 3: The Historical Context; The Creation of an Atlantic Economy: Sugar and Slaves; Videos, Ancient Africa–A History Denied and The Slave Kingdom. Although these cover a lot what stuck out to me was vastness of slavery, people involved in making slavery work, how Europeans thought Africans need their help, and economic societies within Africa.

Slavery was a worldwide thing, throughout Primary and secondary education in the United States we were only taught the issues that lead up to the Civil War. Reading this I was intrigued at the fact slavery was a worldwide thing. Slaves were shipped to the Caribbean to provide constant labor on the high demand of sugar production. Not only were the slaves shipped to the new world but also to the Muslim land in the Middle East. While the men were favored in the New World the Women were shipped to the Middle East (Gordon & Gordon 48). What was also interesting in learning about the Muslim involvement in …show more content…
What I learned through watching The Slave Kingdom was that the White man would work with the king of a certain city where the Africans were actually the ones who went into other villages and took people to sell to the Europeans. During the interview with the kings’ son in The Slave Kingdom he talks about how he doesn’t believe they knew the extent of torture and agony they were put through. In the same documentary they say that the kings did know how bad it was and that is why they wouldn’t send their own people. I believe the kings did not know the entire extremities of the trade, they knew what went on in the holding places, but not what they went through once the slaves were sold to the Europeans and shipped to the new