THE TRANSATLANTIC SLAVERY

The Reasons – Ultimate cause was the discovery of the Americas. In modern language, it was what can be called a game-changer. Sugar was the proximate cause.

Other Causes — Skin tone, rabid racism, and Christianity. If the Pope and Archbishop of Canterbury supported the slave trade, who am I to bulk at God’s representatives? After all, Africans were pagans, probably with no souls. Then them Africans were of a different skin tone, so they were certainly not kin and kith!

Overarching Cause — Money, the love of which is the root of all evil, and then some.

The Means — Superior weapons, to subdue or give to surrogates; cartography to chart Ocean routes; the compass to find direction and not get lost; literacy to inform people about monies to be made from enslaving Africans; seafaring vessels to carry the maximum number of slaves and endure the long sea journeys; financial markets that raised monies for funding slave the slave triangle journeys; collusion by local Africans. Citrus fruits made it possible for their sailors to stop dying from scurvy and so they were able to sail long distances. It was also clear that Africans were too weak to resist enslavement to any substantial degree.

How The Evil Caper Unfolded.

Slavery had existed in Africa before the Europeans took it to another level of chattel slavery. The local or kinship slavery was very different from the Arab and Atlantic slave trades.

After the discovery of the Americas and the Caribbean, Europeans rushed to the New World and claimed various parts and arrogated themselves vast pieces of land. Most Indigenous populations were wiped out or nearly so, by diseases brought by the Europeans. So, labour was needed for the mines, agriculture and domestic work to replace decimated indigenes.

The emergence of sugar, grown in the Caribbean and the Americas, was another cause of our enslavement. That’s the proximate cause. But without the New World, the availability of sugar would have been constrained. So ultimately, the Americas did Africa in. Sugar was a must-have for the ordinary European. Sugar gave a massive energy boost to the toiling classes in Europe as industrialisation set in.

Economies in Europe, Britain and Americas boomed, so all their citizens benefitted by improved standards of living. Insurance companies, banks, ship builders, outfitters and providers of guns, chains, manacles, thumb screws, trinkets, gin, mirrors — to give collaborators — all prospered tremendously.

In total, the Europeans made between thirty-five thousand to forty thousand slave ship voyages in a four-hundred-year period. The Europeans sold goods to the Africans, so their manufacturers were kept busy. These goods were exchanged for slaves whom they sold in the Americas. These slaves, tendered to the plantation owners and middlemen in the Americas, were sold or exchanged for sugar, cotton, tobacco, and rum. These items were then exported to Europe.

Slave pumps — The Europeans created an Atlantic Ocean slave pump. It’s so called because it sucked slaves from the interior of Africa to the Atlantic coast and spewed them through the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas. The problem of saturation of captive slaves in Africa became a non-problem overnight, because of the Americas.

The Main Culprits — The major players were Britain, France, and Portugal. Spain struggled to keep up with the infamous trio. The minor players were Holland, Sweden and Denmark. Sweden made most of chains used in the slave trade. Prussia also dubbed a bit in the slave trade.

Why Africans “Allowed” Themselves to Be Enslaved.

Why did Africans “allow” themselves to be enslaved? It is complicated, to say the least. Firstly, there was home-grown slavery, as mentioned earlier, so slavery was not entirely alien to Africans. And then there were many middlemen, mostly Africans and Arabs, who traded in slaves with the Europeans and the Arabs. Resistance to enslavement was quite widespread. Those who resisted slavery or enslavement were killed or captured by the better-armed slavers. Alternatively, the slavers armed more pliant neighbouring tribes or enemies of the tribes resisting slavery or enslavement. Many middlemen decided that the best way was to make the best of a terrible situation. It was a classic Sophie’s choice: to enslave others or thyself to be enslaved.

The offer of guns from the Europeans and the Arabs in exchange for slaves was an offer that any Africans refusing did so at their own great peril. The Europeans and the Arabs were the stronger party in this sad saga. They had far more advanced weapons, and the profits they were making from the trade made them strong economically.

The figures – The figures of the true number of slaves taken by the Europeans vary, sometimes widely. Remember that for each slave that landed in the Americas alive, at least one died. At least ten million Africans arrived alive as slaves. So, at least another ten million others died during capture, during the trek to the seaports, during the horrible Atlantic crossing and soon after arrival.

The Missing Africans

There is a concept of the missing Africans. Start off with a population of Sub-Sahara Africa that was estimated to be around thirty-five million in 1450 AD. Now, if a society’s population growth is very high, it will double every twenty-five years. If it is growing very slowly, it will double every one hundred years. So, if one takes the population of Sub-Sahara Africa as thirty-five million in 1450 AD, and doubling very slowly every one hundred years, the population in 1850 AD should have been around five hundred million. But alas, the population of Sub-Sahara Africa was only seventy million in 1850 AD! So, what happened to the other four hundred million Africans? The slave trade is the only explanation.