THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE Slavery has been a major destructive act in history since the 18th and 19th century, in Africa and in other various places. Africans refer to this action as Maafa meaning Holocaust. Over more than ten and twelve million Africans were brought to the Americas. Of these, 600,000 came to North America. From them have come the more than thirty million African Americans alive today. According to Midlo, “the very word “slave” is derived from “Slav meaning whites that were captured in the Eastern Europe and shipped to medieval Spain in large numbers”. Slavery basically started in Africa at a relatively small standard,
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So they took it upon themselves to explore the rest of it. According to general knowledge, Europeans believed that God sent them as missionaries to Africa to teach and spread out his word. They made people think that, that was the main reason why they expanded but meanwhile they were making money and using their knowledge as an advantage over the natives. This is where the quote “God, gold, glory, and slaves come into place. These were the Europeans chief motives for their expansion. God which I already talked about as in religion (Christianity), then Gold, as in economic improvement and natural sources like precious “metals, rubber, kola nut, salt” according to Midlo (p2). Also Glory as in being able to stand up tall in everything, like technology, new transportation machines, agricultural machines etc, and lastly Slaves are purchased to do their nontechnical works like domestic works, sometimes they are sold to other owners for money. One major thing is that before the Europeans arrived in the 1400’s, most enslaved people were prisoners of wars in Africa. So the European first bought the slaves from African merchant at a market in return for guns and other small things like alcohol to pursue them. As time gradually goes on, some local rulers became concerned about the effects of the slave trade in their societies. According the article one King Afonso of Congo made it clear that there was a great corruption that involved the depopulation of their countries. But Africans however ignored such protests. In order to ensure the profitability of slaves, and to produce maximum “return on investment,” slave owners generally supplied only the minimum food and shelter needed for survival, young adult women had value over and above their ability to work in the fields;
So they took it upon themselves to explore the rest of it. According to general knowledge, Europeans believed that God sent them as missionaries to Africa to teach and spread out his word. They made people think that, that was the main reason why they expanded but meanwhile they were making money and using their knowledge as an advantage over the natives. This is where the quote “God, gold, glory, and slaves come into place. These were the Europeans chief motives for their expansion. God which I already talked about as in religion (Christianity), then Gold, as in economic improvement and natural sources like precious “metals, rubber, kola nut, salt” according to Midlo (p2). Also Glory as in being able to stand up tall in everything, like technology, new transportation machines, agricultural machines etc, and lastly Slaves are purchased to do their nontechnical works like domestic works, sometimes they are sold to other owners for money. One major thing is that before the Europeans arrived in the 1400’s, most enslaved people were prisoners of wars in Africa. So the European first bought the slaves from African merchant at a market in return for guns and other small things like alcohol to pursue them. As time gradually goes on, some local rulers became concerned about the effects of the slave trade in their societies. According the article one King Afonso of Congo made it clear that there was a great corruption that involved the depopulation of their countries. But Africans however ignored such protests. In order to ensure the profitability of slaves, and to produce maximum “return on investment,” slave owners generally supplied only the minimum food and shelter needed for survival, young adult women had value over and above their ability to work in the fields;