Essay

Q1. The experience and Resiliency of Slave Children

The transatlantic slave trade has been outlawed for more than 200 years. However, could it be that slavery still exists, but in a modern form? The literature and key research studies by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) as well as the United States (US) Department of State underpin that wheeling and dealing in human beings still exists. However, nowadays this contemporary form of slavery is hidden and disguised. Still, in essence, humans prey upon humans for money - people are used and abused, and are bought and sold as mere commodities, for the sole purpose of benefiting their exploiters.

Slavery was already a social and economic institution known since antiquity more remote. It had evolved from one form domain postwar situations semi-economic domain indulge them, until the stranglehold of one man by another under pre-capitalist society of the Middle Ages. More than known, we can say that institution at the time of the great discoveries and the initiation of European expansion in the world. America is precisely that which gives new shape and meaning to this ancient form of domination of man by man.

The discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492 and the subsequent conquest of this continent at the hands of Spanish and Portuguese repercussions from the sixteenth century in another region of planet, somewhat removed from the events of conquest comes to Africa. Although the two continents separated by the Atlantic Ocean, with historical, social and economic completely different from the XVI century there is a rapprochement between America and Africa. The cause of this approach is that the conquest of America, with all the wealth natural development prospects offered their conquerors, required for complementation labor necessary for the appropriation of such wealth, and advantages in obtaining economic exploitation of such vast areas.

In reconstructing children's experience under slavery, historians tap a wide range of sources. These include the published testimony of fugitive or emancipated slaves, contemporary letters, journals, plantation records, and oral histories, such as those collected by the U.S. Works Projects Administration during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Recently, scholars have supplemented traditional sources with unconventional forms of evidence, including photographs, slave songs, and artifacts, such as toys.

The narratives published, by the runaway slaves or slaves who became free individuals, provides useful and important information regarding the history of Child Slavery and Trans-Atlantic Slave trade. The publication Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African is a very informative book. It was first published in the year 1772. He was a slave who became free when he purchased his rights for freedom in the year 1766, from a Quaker trader. After his freedom, he travelled across the Mediterranean and Atlantic on British trade ships. He also served in the British Royal Navy and later he became an important leader for the anti-slavery movements in the eighteenth century.

Olaudah Equiano's story also explains that it is a false concept that Africa during the ...