Chapter 18: The Atlantic System and Africa, 1550-1800

Question 1

Where was the West Indies?

Answer 1

The Caribbean

Question 2

Which Europeans first arrived at the West Indies and what did they do?

Answer 2

The Spanish arrived first, and then the French and English after 1600. They developed colonies based on tobacco (a New World crop) at first.

Question 3

Who introduced sugar cane cultivation to Brazil?

Answer 3

The Portuguese

Question 4

What was the purpose of the Dutch West India Company?

Answer 4

It was chartered to bring Dutch wars versus Spain to the New World.

Question 5

What did the Dutch West India Co. do?

Answer 5

They took 1000 miles of the sugar-producing Brazillian coast and improved the efficiency of sugar cane production. They brought slaves from Elmina, Luanda, etc. They brought the Brazil system to French and English Caribbean colonies.

Question 6

What was the major shift in the colonies in the mid-17th century?

Answer 6

The shift from tobacco to sugar production and from indentured servants to slaves.

Question 7

As sugar production increased, what else rose? Why?

Answer 7

Slave demand rose. Slaves worked for life, which was longer than the contract of an indentured servant. Indentured servants wanted land, which was running out in the Caribbean. As sugar profits increased, more plantation owners were able to invest in slaves.

Question 8

What did plantations do?

Answer 8

They grew sugar cane and processed it into crystals, molasses, rum, etc.

Question 9

Why were large plantations more prominent than small ones?

Answer 9

The technology was simple, but the machinery was expensive and only the wealthiest could invest.

Question 10

What were the effects of sugar plantations?

Answer 10

Soil exhaustion and deforestation. The Arawak and Carib people were pushed to extinction.

Question 11

Spanish tobacco growing faced competition from where?

Answer 11

Virginia

Question 12

What were colonial societies like in the 18th century?

Answer 12

They were the world’s most polarized. 90 percent of inhabitants were slaves, and the power was in the hands of the plantocracy, a small number of very rich men who owned most of the slaves and land.

Question 13

What did the profitability of Caribbean plantations depend on?

Answer 13

Extracting as much work as possible from slaves. Their workday was 18+ hours. Threat and force were used. Everyone had assigned tasks.

Question 14

What were the three labor gangs and what did they do?

Answer 14

• “great gang”- strongest, in prime- heaviest work, ie. breaking up soil
• “grass gang”- children under the elderly- weeding, simple work
• slave gang- headed by a driver- privileged male slave

Question 15

What shortened slaves’ lives?

Answer 15

Harsh conditions and disease, such as malaria that was brought with them. Only slave populations in temperate zones grew, while in tropical Brazil and the Caribbean they declined.

Question 16

What added to the volume of the Atlantic slave trade?

Answer 16

High mortality. Plantations had to purchase slaves every 1-2 years to replace those who died.

Question 17

What was the social structure of free people in San Domingue like?

Answer 17

• “great whites”- wealthy owners of large sugar plantations
• “little whites”- less well-off Europeans- officials, merchants
• free blacks- same # as free whites, but ranked below

Question 18

What did West Indian planters often do with their wealth?

Answer 18

Translate it into political power and social prestige. Absentee planters became elected to the British Parliament.

Question 19

Slaves could be granted freedom through what?

Answer 19

Manumission- legal grant of freedom by an owner. It was more common in Brazil, Spanish, and French colonies than English colonies. The largest group of freed slaves purchased their freedom.

Question 20

What did manumission lead to?

Answer 20

The development of a large free black population. In the late 18th century, it was more numerous than slaves in Spanish colonies.

Question 21

What were maroons?

Answer 21

Escaped slaves/runaways in the Caribbean

Question 22

What were the government voyages like versus the private ones?

Answer 22

The Spanish and Portuguese voyages of the 15th and 16th century were often government ventures, and they tried to restrict overseas trade with royal monopolies. They were expensive and inefficient.

The success of the Atlantic economy in the 17th and 18th century was due to private enterprise. Trading venues were more efficient and profitable.

Question 23

What 2 European innovations enabled private investors to fund the rapid growth of the Atlantic economy?

Answer 23

The ability to manage large financial institutions through capitalism, an economic system of large financial institutions.

Mercantilism: policies adopted by European states to promote citizens’ overseas trade and accumulate capital in the form of precious metals

Question 24

What did capitalism enable?

Answer 24

Merchants and investors to conduct business far from home while reducing risks and raising profits. Banks became central and were entrusted with lots of $$

Question 25

What did mercantilism strongly discourage?

Answer 25

Citizens from trading with foreign merchants.

Question 26

What was the Royal African Company?

Answer 26

A trading company chartered by the English government in 1672 to conduct merchants’ trade on the Atlantic coast of Africa.

Question 27

What happened between the French & English and the Dutch?

Answer 27

The French and English governments used military force in pursuit of commercial dominance/ to break the trading advantage of the Dutch in the Americas.

They had wars with the Netherlands and defeated the Dutch, driving the DWI Co into bankruptcy.

Question 28

What did the English move to revoke?

Answer 28

Monopoly privileges of their own chartered Royal African Company (1697?). They opened trade in Africa to anyone.

Question 29

What was the Atlantic Circuit?

Answer 29

A clockwise network of sea routes that began in Europe, ran south to Africa, west to the Americas, and back to Europe. Each leg carried goods from where they were abundant to where they were scarce and more valuable, which made every leg profitable.

Question 30

What was the major source of slaves on the Bight of Biafra?

Answer 30

Kidnapping since there were no large-scale wars and thus few PoW.

A bight is “a bend or curve in the shore of a sea or river.” (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/bight)

The Bight of Biafra is a “bay of the Atlantic Ocean on the western coast of Africa, extending east, then south, for 370 miles (600 km) from the Nun outlet of the Niger River (Nigeria) to Cape Lopez (Gabon).” (https://www.britannica.com/place/Bight-of-Biafra)

Question 31

Where was the greatest source of slaves for the Atlantic trade?

Answer 31

Angola. Portugal controlled a significant amount of territory.

Question 32

How were the ways Sub-Saharan Africans established new contacts with Europe similar to the older pattern of relations with the Islamic World?

Answer 32

Goods were imported and distributed to Hausa.

Goods were sent back in return.- Gold, slaves, kola nut, cotton textiles.

Question 33

Most African slaves in the Islamic World were what?

Answer 33

Soldiers and servants. The majority were women who served wealthy households and there was a larger proportion of children.

Question 34

What happened at Bornu?

Answer 34

Many PoW were kept or sold as slaves in return for firearms and horses. Muslims, like Christians, saw no moral impediment to owning and selling slaves.