Chapter 20

Africa and the Africans in the Age of the Atlantic Slave Trade

The Beginning

• Factories:– Established trading forts allowing trade from the

interior• Much is established with the consent of the African people.• El Mina

• Missionary efforts– Europeans saw the Africans as pagan savages (just like

the saw everyone else)• Few permanent settlements – This was for goods and slaves not for living

Patterns of Conquest

• What the Portuguese did in Africa is seen throughout the history of the slave trade:– Fortified trading stations– Combo of force and diplomacy– Alliances with local rulers – Predominance of commercial relations

Who

• The Portuguese were the main suppliers– The Dutch got involved later on capturing El Mina– The English wanted control for the plantations

• African states on the coast benefitted from the slave trade– More inland states with firearms became suppliers

On the West Coast

• Two important states that developed out of the slave trade– Asante: • Dealt with the Dutch• dominated the gold coast until the 1820s

– Dahomey:• With the use of guns, created its own autocratic society

based on trading slaves

On the East Coast

• Continued to trade luxury items with the Muslim world– Some slaves got to Europe/America

• Islamization will connect the northern savanna with the western external slave routes – This new phase with be more violent– Linked Islam and the slave trade– Movement to purify the Sufi• Major impact of the pastoral people (Fulani)

The Slave Trade

• The Atlantic – 12 Million Africans shipped out

• 10-11 millions made it alive– So many were needed as a continuous supply.

• Mortality and low birth rate• Needed to replenish

• Other slave trades– Trans-Saharan– Red Sea– Muslims in East Africa

Keep in mind

• Europeans used the fact that Africa already had slavery as a justification – Used many ways, and on many levels– Trade allowed the existing systems to expand and

develop• The growing divine authority of the African

rulers paralleled the rise of absolutism in Europe– The development of new political forms

Who was in control?

• Control of the Slave trade often reflected who had European Control at the time– Portuguese until 1630: Supplying Brazil– Dutch 1637-1660: They took control of El Mina– English: needed fro their growing colonies• Royal African Company

– French: Start by not major until 18th Century

Who did they trade?

• West: The Atlantic trade– Young men for hard labor– Changed the demographic of the region• More men in America• More Women in Africa

• East: The Trans-Saharan trade– Muslim traders – Women– Domestic help and concubines

The African Diaspora

• Slaves became an important segment of the new world population – Cultures mixed with other things to create

something new• Slave Society– Whites on top

The Middle Passage

Triangle Trade

• The major way Africa was linked to the increasingly integrated economy of the world

Was it Profitable?

• Some say it was so profitable that there were major elements in the rise of capitalism and the origins of the Industrial Revolution

• Like other things it appeared more profitable than it really was– The trade itself may not have given the most

money • The industry that came out of the slave trade WAS

VERY PROFITABLE

South Africa

• 1652: The Dutch East India Company– Colony Cape of Good Hope

• Provision post• Dutch = Boers

• 1795: English take Cape Colony– 1815 formal British Control– Limited Boers landholding

• 1834: Britain outlaws slavery– Great Trek: Boers leave top be free of government control in

the North• Moving into someone else's land

The Impact of Slavery on Africa.

• “Africa entered the world economy in the slave trade era. Its incorporation produced differing effects on African societies, but many societies had to adapt in ways that placed them at a disadvantage that facilitated later loss of independence during the 19th century. The legacy of the slave trade, as European rulers practiced forced labor policies, era lingered on into the 20th century.”

Terms• factories: trading stations with resident merchants established by the

Portuguese and other Europeans. • El Mina: important Portuguese factory on the coast of modern Ghana.• lançados: Afro-Portuguese traders who joined the economies of the African

interior with coastal centers.• Nzinga Mvemba: ruler of the Kongo kingdom (1507-1543); converted to

Christianity and was renamed Afonso I; his efforts to integrate Portuguese and African ways foundered because of the slave trade.

• Luanda: Portuguese settlement founded in the 1520s; became the core for the colony of Angola.

• Royal African Company: chartered in Britain in the 1660s to establish a monopoly over the African trade; supplied slaves to British New World colonies.

• Indies piece: a unit in the complex exchange system of the West African trade; based on the value of an adult male slave.

• triangular trade: complex commercial pattern linking Africa, the Americas, and Europe; slaves from Africa went to the New World; American agricultural products went to Europe; European goods went to Africa.

• Asante: Akan state the Gold Coast (now Ghana) among the Akan people and centered at Kumasi.

• Osei Tutu: important ruler who began centralization and expansion of Asante.• asantehene: title, created by Osei Tutu, of the civil and religious ruler of

Asante.• Benin: African kingdom in the Bight of Benin; at the height of its power when

Europeans arrived; active slave trading state; famous for if bronze casting techniques.

• Dahomey: African state among the Fon or Aja peoples; developed in the 17th century centered at Abomey; became a major slave trading state through utilization of Western firearms.

• Luo: Nilotic people who migrated from the Upper Nile regions to establish dynasties the lakes region of central Africa.

• Usuman Dan Fodio: Muslim Fulani leader who launched a great religious movement among the Hausa..

• Great Trek: movement inland during the 1830s of Dutch-ancestry settlers in South Africa seeking to escape their British colonial government.

• Shaka: ruler among the Nguni peoples of southeast Africa during the early 19th century; developed military tactics that created the Zulu state.

• Mfecane: wars among Africans in southern Africa during the early 19th century; caused migrations and alterations in African political organization.

• Swazi and Lesotho: African states formed peoples reacting to the stresses of the Mfecane.

• Middle Passage: slave voyage from Africa to the Americas; a deadly and traumatic experience.

• obeah: African religious practices in the British American islands.• candomble: African religious practices in Brazil among the Yoruba. |• vodun: African religious practices among descendants in Haiti.• Palmares: Angolan-led large runaway slave state in 17th-century Brazil.• Surinam Maroons: descendants of 18th century runaway slaves who found

permanent refuge in the rainforests of Surinam and French Guiana.• William Wilberforce: British reformer who led the abolitionist movement that

ended the British slave trade in 1807.

Good stuff to keep in mind

Stuff from this chapter that goes with the APWH Themes

Key Concept 1: Globalizing Networks of Communication and Exchange

• The new global circulation of goods was facilitated by royal chartered European monopoly companies that took silver from Spanish colonies in the Americas to purchase Asian goods from the Atlantic markets but regional markets continued to flourish in Afro-Eurasia by using established commercial practices and new transoceanic shipping services– Commercialization and creation of global economy connected to

new global circulation of American silver– Influenced by mercantilism, joint-stock companies were new

methods used to control the domestic and colonial economies – The Atlantic system involved the movement of goods wealth

and free and unfree laborers and the mixing of African, American and European cultures and people

• The increase in interactions between newly connected hemispheres and intensification of connections within hemispheres expanded the spread and reform of existing religions and created syncretic belief systems and practices– The practice of Islam continued to spread into

diverse cultural settings in Asia and Africa– Syncretic forms of religion (such as African

influences in Latin America, interaction between Amerindians and catholic missionaries, or Sikhism between Muslims and Hindus in India and Southeast Asia) developed.

Key Concept 2. New forms of social organization and modes of production

• Traditional peasant agriculture increased and changed, plantations expanded, and demand fro labor increased. These changes both fed and responded to growing global demand for raw materials and finished products– Peasant labor grew in many places– The Atlantic slave trade increased demand for

slaves – The purchase and transport of slaves supported

the growth of the plantation economy throughout the Americas

• As new social and political elites changed, they also restructured new ethnic, racial and gender hierarchies.– Some notable gender and family restructuring

occurred, including the demographic changes in Africa that resulted from the slave trades (as well as the dependence of European men on Southeast Asian women for conducting trade in region or the smaller size of European families)

Key Concept 3: State Consolidation and Imperial Expansion

• Imperial expansion relied on the increased use of gunpowder, cannons and armed trade to establish large empires in both hemispheres.– Europeans established new trading-post empires

in Africa and Asia, which proved profitable for the rulers and merchants involved in new global trade networks, but these empires also affected the power of the states in interior West and Central Africa