Atlantic Slave Trade Flashcards
Importance for British cities
Trades (sold goods - cloth, metal, guns to Africa - imported - sugar, coffee, tobacco, cotton)
Population (73,000 more people lived in Liverpool post slave trade)
Employment (rope makers, ship builders)
Ports (wealthy, new docks, warehouses)
Individuals (merchants, plantation owners)
Streets and buildings named after traders
Why did it start?
Demand for sugar was increasing in Britain
Racist ideas made the British public think it was acceptable
European workers couldn’t cope with hot climate
Church was involved making it seem more acceptable
Caribbean offered ideal growing conditions for sugar cane but needed lot of workers
Native people died due to overworking and lack of resistance to European diseases
Triangular Trade
Three stages to it (outward, middle and home passage)
Stage 1: left British ports with goods such as guns, alcohols for West Africa (approx 40 days), exchanged for slaves (4-8 months looking for best ones)
Stage 2: slaves were taken across the Atlantic (40-69 days), West Indies slaves were sold and tobacco, rum, cotton were bought
Stage 3: boats then went back to Britain with the raw materials
Impact on Africa
Population (less young people meant less healthy people to produce food = famine, movement of people across Africa meant more diseases to be spread)
Transport networks across the coast improved
More conflict between tribes as the demand for slaves was getting higher
Encouraged racist ideas for years later
Some African leaders were involved in selling slaves leading to a bigger divide between the rich and the poor
The Middle Passage
Beforehand slaves had their hair shaved, clothes taken, branded
Chained together, kept below deck
Had to tumble over each other to get to the toilet which kept overflowing
Food often made them throw up since it wasn’t what they were used to
Fed twice a day, organised into groups to clean the ship and had to sing
1-2 hours of daily exercise, diseases spread quickly
Rebellion on middle passage
Knives, stones, cold chisel were materials used to plot overthrowings
Many deaths were a result of rebellion
At least one uprising every 8-10 journeys
Crew members ended up having wounds
Slave Factories
Large forts Held 1000 enslaved people in cellars Imprisoned for possibly several months Diseases were easily spread and caught In the 1770s 45% of enslaved Africans died waiting for the ship
Auctions
Only wearing a piece of cloth, got their mouths checked, checked for diarrhoea, tar was used to cover up whip marks, made to smell good, got a good meal
Scramble auctions: buyers grabbed the slaves they wanted to buy
Candle auctions: refuse slaves, lasted until the candle burned an inch
Highest bidder auctions
Slaves not bought left to die
Slave Laws
Only allowed to marry if allowed Can’t hit a white man in self defence Can’t own any properties Can’t learn to read or write Can’t refuse to work Don’t have any control over what happens to their children
Life on Plantations
Often worked 18 hours a day and longer during harvest
Started at dawn and ended at nightfall
Men tended to do more skilled jobs and woman worked in the fields or did washing and cleaning
Sugar harvest lasted 6 months
No days off
Only very young and old people didn’t work
Life expectancy was only 7-9 years on plantations
Punishment
Cat dragged down back
Hanged, stocks, ear chopped off, thumbscrew
Impact on the Caribbean
Small farms were replaced by large plantations
Became more violent with multiple slave rebellions
Natural beauty was damaged due to sugar plantations
Slave codes replaced existing laws
Over reliance on sugar - Barbados 93% of economy = sugar
Economies stifled between the islands due to the slave trade
Why was resistance difficult on plantations
Horrific punishments like death or mutilation
Plantation owners offered large rewards for catching escaped slaves
Slaves only had basic weapons against guns
Islands were small so was hard to get off the island
Very strict laws
Easily identified
The Case of the Zong
6th September 1781 442 Africans were on board There was a new crew Missed Jamaica Running out of drinking water Now only 380 survivors In the space of 3 days in 3 groups 132 people were thrown to their deaths from the Zong
Abolitionists
In 1787 Clarkson and Sharp held a meeting which led to the formation of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade
Wilberforce: MP for Hull meaning he had lots of influence, friend of the prime minister, presented a bill to abolish the slave trade every year from 1788 to 1807
They did speeches, petitions, posters
Olaudah Equiano was an ex slave who wrote about his experiences so the public could get an insight to what it was really like
Church soon became against it too proving it was morally wrong
