Effects Of The Atlantic Slave Trade

The Atlantic Slave Trade was a dark time in history. This was a time in which a specific race of people were looked upon as less than human. Monarchs and explorers only cared for their selfish gains which lead to the dehumanization of an entire race of people. From the 1450s to 1870s there were million of humans taken captive and turned into slaves, most from Africa. The absence of humanitarian concern for these people influenced the treatment of slaves in negative ways. These negative ways of treatment due to absence of concern were kidnapping, hard labor, and treatment much like that of animals. Most slaves were kidnapped from their villages to be used as slaves. Slavery was a denial of a lifestyle and culture into a life of work so someone …show more content…
All the people with slaves cared about was the money that the slaves could make for them. Slave owners cared all about the gold and silver that the labor was providing for them. Slaves labor was a great source of that labor since you they were already paid for and don’t need a wage or salary. Merrick Whitcomb explains how “the Spaniards are not willing to do the work” that gave them their gold and silver (Doc 1). The slaves would do the heavy lifting and plow the fields and dig for gold while the Spaniards that actually wanted the treasures sat back and watched as the slaves worked. The Europeans and saw how effective it was to own slaves so they kept the slave trade open for a long time. In Falconbridge’s An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa he “describes the reaction of enslaved Africans to their sale” and how many slaves he witnessed being sold in the West Indies which was about 250 (Doc 10). The Africans were terrified because of their lose of life but also due the strangeness of the new land. They could never imagined the cruelty of this new land and the labor they were about to provide for …show more content…
We can see how slaves were put onto ships by stuffing them into them in the picture by Wilberforce House of the slave ship Brooks (Doc 5). The slaves were beaten and tortured so other slaves would not think of rebellion. Many slaves became sick and died on the way to the New World so the slave owners and traders stuffed the ships with as many slaves they could stuff into the ships. Some slaves were killed before they could infect the other slaves with their sickness. A way that the slave traders did this is seen in a picture called Living Africans Thrown Overboard the Slave Ship Zong from 1781 in which sick slaves were thrown overboard (Doc 4). The slave traders used that method when slaves were sick or were weighing the ship down too much. The lack of concern for these Africans led to this kind of idea of looking at slaves as animals rather than