The Atlantic Slave Trade

[Date of Submission]The Atlantic Slave Trade

Introduction

The Atlantic (or sometimes referred to as transatlantic) slave trade is one of the major trafficking activity that took place between the 16th and the 19th century across the Atlantic Ocean. During the period, a great number of black slaves were transported to America or the so-called New World from the African continent. These slaves were sold by Africans to the European traders, who then shipped them to the South and North America. The number of blacks transported as slaves to regions were so great that these blacks have become the largest immigrant population in the North and South America by the end of the eighteenth century. This paper aims at briefly exploring the history of Atlantic slave trade, while discussing how this activity has helped the economies of the countries involving the slave trade.

Discussion

The Atlantic slave trade, which started with the Spanish and Portuguese colonial empires, and have grown proportionally with the subsequent involvement of the Dutch, French and English, with the development of plantation economies in the Americas and the emergence of the so-called triangular trade. The predominant character of this slave trade the element of race: the victims of this tragic incident were only blacks of Africa, to the point of making the term “negro” synonymous with slave in the French language of the eighteenth century. This “racial drift” of slavery has also led to the transfer of a large African population on the American continent whose descendants now form an important part, even as a majority in some cases such as the West Indies.

During the period of European colonial rule, slave trade was one of the most documented events in history because it has been the subject of a detailed legislation (tax, commercial, administrative, public health). The ...