Africa+and+the+Atlantic+Slave+Trade

HW #1. Pgs 435-440 notes

The Atlantic Slave Trade: MI: Early Portuguese contacts set the patterns for contact with the African coast. The slave Trade expanded to meet new demands for labor in the American colonies, and millions were exported in an organized commerce that involved both Europeans and Africans.
 * Portuguese ships pushed down the west African coast and finally reached the Cape of Good Hope in 1487. Along the coast, the Portuguese established **factories**, forts and trading posts with resident merchants. The most important of these was **El Mina** which existed in the gold-producing regions near the forest.Forts such as these allowed the portuguese to exercise great control with limited personnel, also gaining the political backing of local rulers(militarily unable to conquer the large West African states which came into being at this time).
 * Trade was the basis of Portuguese relations with the Africans, but due to the ever-expanding commerce political,religious, and social relations followed suit. Missionary efforts were made to convert the rulers of Benin, Congo, and other African Kingdoms, and the Portuguese remained constantly wary of heavy Muslim prescence in Africa. The Missionaries won a major victory in Kongo, when the royal family under **Nzinga Mvemba** converted to Christianity, and the kingdom soon followed suit.This managed to improve portuguese opinion of Africans due to the possibility of becoming "civilized"
 * Portuguese exploration continued southward towards the Cape of Good Hope and beyond in the 16th century.Early contacts were made with the Mbundu people of the South Kongo in the 1520s, with the permanent settlement of **Luanda** being established roughly 50 years later. This became the basis for the portuguese colony of Angola, which attempted to dominate the existing trade system between the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea.

Trends towards Expansion MI: Although debates and controversy surround many aspects of the history of Slavery,it is best to start with numbers.
 * With a mortality rate of 10-20% on the ships, about 10-11 million African Americans actually arrived in the Americas out of an estimated 12 million slaves.Up to 1/3 of captured slaves were killed before setting foot on the boats, either in slaving wars or forced marches through difficult terrain.
 * The high volume of the slave trade was necessary to the slave owners, because in most regimes of the Carribean and Latin America, slave mortality was high, and fertility was low (male slaves were imported more often than female slaves). Thus, the population could not fully support itself, and there was a tendency towards population loss.The only way to solve this problem is to import more slaves from Africa, beginning the cycle over again.The one exception to this trend was the Southern US, where slave population grew due to the temperate climate, and generally safer jobs.
 * The dimensions of trade varied over time, reflecting the economic and political situation in the Americas. From 1530 to 1650, Spanish America and Brazil recieved the majority of slaves, but after the English and French began growing sugar, the Carribean became an important hub of slavery, though they never rivaled Brazil and the spanish colonies.

Demographic Patterns: MI: The majority of the trans-Saharan slave trade consisted of women to be used as concubines and domestic servants in North Africa and the Middle East, but the atlantic slave trade concentrated on Men.
 * To some extent this was because planters and mine owners in the Americas were seeking workers for heavy labor and were not eager to buy children because of high mortality rates.Also, African societies preferred to sell men, and use the women for concubines to extend kin groups.
 * Atlantic trade had great demographic impact in West and Central Africa. According to estimates, the population of 25 million would have been more than doubled, had there been no slave trade. While it is true that slaves were prioritized men>women>children, captured women and children in Africa greatly increased the proportion of women to men.
 * Finally, as atlantic trade developed, new crops such as Maize and manioc were introduced to Africa, providing new food sources for the population, allowing it to recover more easily from the slave trade.

Organization of the Trade: MI:The Patterns of contact and trade established by the Portuguese at first were followed by rival Europeans on the African coast.Control of the slave trade or a portion of it general reflected the political situation in Europe. African Societies, Slavery, and the Slave Trade: MI: The Slave trade influenced African forms of Servitude and the social and political developments of the African States. Newly powerful states emerged in West Africa; in the Sudan and East Africa regions, Slavery also produced long-term effects. Slaving and African Politics: MI:In the period between 1500 and 1750, as the gunpowder empires and expanding global market began to incorporate more of Sub-Saharan Africa, existing states and societies were often transformed. Asante and Dahomey: MI: Several large states in Africa formed during the slave trade era, perhaps in response to the realities of the European prescence and the process of it's formation.Rulers in these states reinforced their power through luxurious court life/social divisions, and ritual authority. East Africa and Sudan: MI: On the West Coast of Africa ,the Swahili trading cities continued their commerce in the Indian Ocean, adjusting to the military prescence of the Portuguese and the Ottoman Turks. Trade to the interior continued to bring Ivory, gold, and a steady supply of slaves. White Settlers in South Africa: MI: In Southern Africa, a dutch colony eventually brought Europeans into conflict with Africans, especially the Bantu people to the south.Only one group, the Zulu created a powerful chiefdom during the 19th century, and their process of expansion would effect the whole region. The Mfecane and Zulu rise to power: MI: New military organization by lineage and age and centralization occurred under the brilliant tactician Shaka Zulu in 1818. Stricter discipline and new tactics were introduced, such as the idea of using different weapons for different situations(short spears for close range combat) and the permanization of a military force. The African Diaspora: MI: Despite African resistance to enslavement, the slave trade and the horrifying Middle Passage carried millions of Africans from their original homelands.Especially in plantation colonies i the Americas, African cultures were adapted to new environments as slaves became an increasingly large/important segment of the population. Slave Life: MI: For the slaves themselves, slavery meant the destruction of their villages, capture in the war, separation from their friends/family, and eventually a forced march through the jungle to either slaving pens at the coast or interior trading towns to ready them for departure to the New World. American Slave societies: MI: Each American slave society reflected the variation of it's various contributing african societies and european founders, however, there were some common threads between them. People and Gods in Exile:
 * As slave-based plantation colonies grew in importance, competition with Portugal and the Spanish Colonies also increased. The dutch became a major competitor when they took over El Mina in 1637.By the 1660s, the English were eager to have their own source of slaves, creating the **Royal African Company** for this purpose.
 * As similar companies were created, european agents often had to deal directly with local rulers, either paying taxes or offering gifts of iron bars,brass rings, and cowrie shells, leading the Spanish to develop a complex system to directly price slaves. One healthy male slave was called an **Indies Piece** and women/children were viewed as fractions of that worth.
 * It is difficult to calculate the full economic benefits of Slavery because it was so closely linked with the mining and plantation economies of the Americas. During some periods, a **Triangular Trade** existed in which slaves were carried to the Americas, sugar, tobacco, and other goods were carried to europe, and european luxury goods were sent to africa, to begin the cycle again.
 * One of the major justifications for Europeans in the age bof the Slave Trade was that slavery already existed in African society. However, while these pre-existing forms of servitude were millenia old and varied greatly,(from simple feudal-style peasantry system to "Chattel Slavery" in which people are treated as objects), they were transformed by interaction with Europeans.
 * Despite the Great variation in African societies, and the fact that slaves could occasionally rise to positions of trust and power, in most cases slaves were denied freedom of choice about their lives and actions. They were placed in socially dependant or inferior positions, and often outcast from society at large.Also due to the variety of uses for slaves, female enslavement was a major part of African Slavery in most, if not all societies.
 * The pre-existence of Slavery in Africa and the pre-existing trade allowed Europeans to quickly mobilize the commerce and integrate their systems of enslavement into the pre-existing ones.Often, Europeans were aided by regional African monarchs, who were quick to enslave their neighbors in exchange for European luxury goods/commodities.
 * While some African empires such as the Songhay controlled large tracts of land, African societies were overall very fragmented, and this resulting political instability allowed for the enslavement of neighboring states in order to consolidate power and assimilate the weakened provinces.
 * The Long-term warfare promoted the importance of the military and made the sale of captives a major extension of African politics. On Occasion(especially in the Muslim parts of Africa), wars took on a religious overtone, though this is not the case in most western and central parts of Africa, that was not the case.
 * The EUropean prescence on the African coast caused a major shift in concentration of power in Africa. Just as Ghana/Songhay had controlled the gold trade between the West and Trans-Saharan Africa, the Europeans helped play a similar role, but due to white paranoia,the formation of a single, powerful state on trade alone was near-impossible.
 * In the area called the Gold Coast, the empire of **Asante(Ashanti)** rose to prominence.The Asante were descended from the Akan People, a series of 20 small matrilineal states in what is now the Kumasi region of Ghana, an area rich in Kola and gold ore.However, the Oyoko clan was dominant due to it's access to firearms, giving rise to a long period of Expansion and centralization.
 * Under the leadership of **Osei Tutu**(C. 1717), the title of **asantehene** was created to designate civil and religious leaders. His Gold stool became the symbol of the Asante union and the linking of the Akan clans under the Asantehene, but also in recognition of the autonomy of subordinate areas.A council of Asante elders advised the ruler and an ideology of unity was used to overcome traditional clan divisions.
 * The kingdom of **Dahomey** was developed from the Fon/Aja peoples, and began to emerge in the 17th century with a different response to European prescence. By the 1720s, the access to firearms allowed rulers to create brutally enforced autocratic regimes based on slave trade, which was controlled by the royal court, whose armies(including women) were used to take more captives.
 * Much less is known about the interior of Eastern Africa. Kingdoms were largely supported by the heavily populated great-lakes region of the interior. Bantu language was predominant, though the region was culturally diverse, formed largely by an immigration of pastoral peoples from the upper Nile Valley.Later Nilotic migrations, especially of the **Luo** peoples, resulted in the construction of related dynasties in the states near the lakes of East central Africa, eventually establishing a ruling dynasty over the existing Bantu population.
 * Beginning in the 1770s, muslim reform movements began to sweep into Western Sudan, directed at removing traditional pagan practices. Religious brotherhoods advocating a purifying sufi variant of Islam extended their influence throughout the Muslim trade network. This had a great effect on the Fulani(Fulbe) people, resulting in political upheaval as a Muslim Fulani scholar "Usuman Dan Fodio" began preaching a Jihad against the Hausa kingdoms.
 * These reforms were motivated by religious, political, and economic motives, though they were effected by external pressure from Europeans.Large numbers of captives resulting from these upheavals were exported to be used in the slave trade. In larger towns, the use of slave labor increased, especially along trade routes.
 * Politically, chiefdoms of various sizes (most of them rather small) characterized the southern Bantu peoples. Chiefs held power with the support of relatives and with the acceptance of the people, but there was great variation in the style of chiefly authority.The Bantu patterns of expansion lead to competition for land and resources, and political organization resulted in the near-constant formation of new groups and villages.
 * In 1652 the Dutch east India company established a colony at the cape of Good Hope to serve as a provisioning point for ships Sailing to Asia.Large farms developed on the fertile land, and while the colony was originally based on Asian slave labor, it soon grew to incorporate African slaves as well.
 * As the Boers were pushing northward, the southern Bantu were also expanding. Matters were complicated when Great Britain took control of the Cape Colony in 1795. While the British government aided the Afrikaners(settlers) to clear out Africans from farmable land,government attempts to limit the Boers use of slaves were largely unsuccessful, and competition for farming resources lead to many more conflicts in the early 19th century.When Britain abolished slavery in 1834, the Boers staged their **Great Trek** to be free of the foreign government's influence, moving north and east.
 * The Zulu chiefdom became the center of this new military and political organization, which began quickly absorbing and destroying it's neighbors.Shaka's powerful political system stripped power from the governments of conquered people, though his erratic and often cruel ways earned him several enemies among his own people. Though he was assassinated in 1828, his followers built on his reforms, allowing the Zulu to become the strongest force in Africa until the end of the 19th century.
 * The rise of the Zulu was the beginning of the **mfecane**, or the wars of crushing and wandering.As Zulu control expanded, a series of campaigns and forced migrations led to constant fighting. Groups spun off to the north and south, fighting the portuguese,whites,and neighboring chiefdoms. New African states such as the **Swazi** adapted from the Zulu model in order to survive. One state, **Lesotho**, succesfully resisted the Zulu example, eventually developing a government in which the people had strong influence on their leaders, and had less emphasis on military power and organization.
 * Superior firepower allowed the Boers to keep their lands, but it was not until the Zulu Wars of the 1870s that Britain intervened and finally crushed the Zulu power, and even then, at a significant cost.The basic process of conflict between Africans and europeans in large settlements only continued to grow from this point, including competition for land, expansion of slavery, and eventual European government control.
 * The slave trade was the means by which African societies were linked to the growing global economy, and the principle manner through which African and European histories became more tighly linked.
 * African importation of European firearms,Indian textiles, Indonesian Cowrie Shells, and American Tobacco in return for African Gold,slaves,and ivory demonstrated African integration into the mercantile structure of the world.
 * In response towards this, African traders steadily increased the price of slaves, so that trade would begin to benefit them more.In certain parts of Africa, such as WHydah and Luanda, trading communities specializing in slave trade developed to use this position to greater advantage.
 * These conditions were unsanitary and deadly, with nearly 1/3 of slaves dying before even being loaded upon the cargo ships, each of which could hold up to 700 slaves in it's Cargo hold, though most were much smaller.
 * Overcrowding was less of a factor in Mortality than in the length of the voyage from Africa to the new world.While the average rate of Mortality fluctuated, it was on average 18% until the 18th century where it began to steadily decrease. Still, on occasion, disastrous losses occured on isolated ships. Ex-> 1 Dutch ship where 700 of the 716 slaves died.
 * On the **Middle Passage**, Africans suffered not only from poor hygeine and disease, abut also bad treatment/beatings from the Europeans. This lead to a high rate of suicide and mutiny on slave ships.
 * Most societies made a distinguish between **saltwater Slaves** and **Creole Slaves**, those who were born on the long voyage between Africa and the New World, and the slaves who were born/naturalized in America.
 * Among the slaves, slaveholders in America (like the Spanish before them) created a hierarchy based on ancestry and color.Creole and mulatto slaves were awarded more opportunities for safer jobs in domestic service, rather than sent to the mines.
 * This, in turn tended to create new divisions in the Slave society, and prevented their unity against the oppressive europeans. African slaves felt a great resentment towards the Creoles and Mulattos due to their overall better conditions.
 * Religion was an obvious continuity, in the sense of adaptation of the African culture to American society. Slaves were converted to catholicism by the Spanish and Portuguese, and quickly became fervent believers. However, native practices did not die out. In the English Islands, the african religion was named **Obeah**, and men and women who posessed knowledge of it's practices were very valued in the community.In the Brazilian practices of **Candomble,** and Hatian practices of **Vodun(Aja)**, traditional African religions flourished, despite numerous attempts to suppress them.
 * The realities of the Middle Passage meant that religions were easily transferred, even if their direct structure couldn't be copied. As a result, many slaves practiced both their traditional beliefs and Catholicism at the same time, though this was more difficult for Muslim africans, often leading to revolt.The largest of such rebellions took place in brazil, held against whites and nonbelievers alike.
 * Rebellion was common in all areas where slaves were held.For Example, in Brazil in the 17th century, and enormous kingdom of runaway slaves called **Palmares**, managed to resist the power of the Dutch and Portuguese attempts to destroy it for over a century, with only a population of 8000-10,000.In Jamaica, runaway groups such as the maroons were able to gain some independance and recognition of their freedom.Other areas, such as **Suriname** managed to wage near-perpetual war with the EUropeans after escaping into the jungles, and a truce eventually developed.