SYSTEM OF SLAVERY

System of Slavery



Abstract

It is through progressive touches, from the fourteen to eighteenth century that Europeans have established slavery in the New World and the Atlantic slave trade developed. This orientation was nothing inevitable in the beginning. She became a result of a collective choice for speculative production (sugar), rapid sources of enrichment. Ultimately, the Europeans have justified these initial choices by legitimizing the enslavement of Africans. In the eighteenth century, Montesquieu has deciphered this approach with a biting irony. Note that the major beneficiaries of this trade are also the owners and their shareholders, wrens Africans themselves who sell their slaves to Europeans. They benefit greatly in terms of wealth but also power, thanks to the firearm they receive in return and allow them to crush their enemies. Ships of the "slave" make the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean within three to six weeks. They contain up to 600 slaves chained in the hold in harsh conditions but the crews of these vessels are treated no better and mortality rates of each other during the voyage proved equivalent. Some hundred thousand African slaves were sent across the Atlantic in the sixteenth century. They are two to three million in the seventeenth century, 7 to 8 million in the eighteenth century and another 3 or 4 million in the nineteenth century.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION4

BODY: DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS4

CONCLUSION6

System of Slavery

Introduction

A history of Africa has to give prominence to the Atlantic slave trade and slave, its moral and emotional significance for its decisive importance in shaping the continent's development. The view taken here is that its effects were extensive, complex and only understandable in light of the characteristics that African societies had already acquired during his long struggle with nature. Slave exports halted population growth in West Africa for at least two centuries. The question stimulated new forms of political and social organization, increased use of slaves within the continent, and a brutal attitude towards suffering. Sub-Saharan Africa had been left behind in technological development, but the Atlantic trade contributed to accentuate their backwardness. However, in the midst of so much misery, it is crucial to remember that Africans survived the slave trade, relatively intact, retaining its political independence and its social institutions. Paradoxically, this shameful period also highlighted the resilience of the human being as their trait that involves more courage. The splendor of Africa lay in its suffering (Theodore, 1998).

Body: Discussion and Analysis

The Atlantic Slave Trade began in 1441 when a young Portuguese sea captain, antam Gonçalvez, kidnapped a man and a woman in the Western Saharan coast to please his master, Prince Henry the Navigator, and was successful because it was Gonçalvez knighted. Four years later, the Portuguese built a fort on the island of Arguin, off the coast of Mauritania, from where slaves bought and, in particular gold, which was scarce so far. After failing in 1415 in an attempt to seize the gold trade through the occupation of Ceuta on the Moroccan coast, the Portuguese sailors ...