Slave Trade

Question 1

What is an Empire?

Answer 1

A group of countries ruled over by an emperor or other powerful government.

Question 2

What is a colony?

Answer 2

An area of land ruled by another country. For example, India was the most prized colony in the British Empire.

Question 3

What happened in 1783?

Answer 3

Britain suffered a setback when the North American colonies broke away from Britain.

Question 4

By 1900, how much of the world was ruled by Britain?

Answer 4

Britain ruled a quarter of all the people in the world.

Question 5

What was a plantation?

Answer 5

A large farm where slaves and indentured laborers were used to grow sugar, cotton and tobacco in the Caribbean and along the eastern coast of America.

Question 6

What was the name given to the slave trade because of the shape it made on a map?

Answer 6

The Triangular Slave Trade.

Question 7

What was the name of the journey from Africa to the ‘New World’?

Answer 7

The Middle Passage.

Question 8

What goods were transported from Britain to Africa?

Answer 8

Cloth, iron, guns and spirits (strong alcohol).

Question 9

What goods were transported from Africa to the New World?

Answer 9

Slaves.

Question 10

What goods were transported from the New World to Britain?

Answer 10

Tobacco, rum, sugar and raw cotton.

Question 11

How were slaves treated during the Middle Passage?

Answer 11

Terribly. They were either chained down side by side (loose pack) or made to lie on their sides, closer together (tight pack). Many died. Many were raped.

Question 12

How many slaves died during the Atlantic Triangular Slave Trade?

Answer 12

Historians still debate exactly how many Africans were forcibly transported across the Atlantic during the next four centuries. A comprehensive database compiled in the late 1990s puts the figure at just over 11 million people. Of those, fewer than 9.6 million survived the so-called middle passage across the Atlantic, due to the inhuman conditions in which they were transported, and the violent suppression of any on-board resistance.

Many people who were enslaved in the African interior also died on the long journey to the coast.

Question 13

How did Dred Scott resist slavery?

Answer 13

He went to court to claim his freedom.

Question 14

When did the Stono Rebellion start?

Answer 14

9th September 1739.

Question 15

When was the Nat Turner Rebellion?

Answer 15

21st August 1831.

Question 16

What happened to Nat Turner and his followers?

Answer 16

He and 16 of his followers were executed.

Question 17

List three reasons why running away was impractical

Answer 17

1. Slaves had little knowledge of the area outside their plantation.
2. A black person was very suspicious and would struggle to find food and shelter.
3. Your family might be punished.

Question 18

What was the ‘Underground Railroad’?

Answer 18

A secret network of routes and safe houses used by slaves to escape.

Question 19

How did Henry Brown escape slavery?

Answer 19

He got himself sent in a box as a parcel to a part of America where slavery did not exist.

Question 20

Give two examples of ‘foot dragging’

Answer 20

1. Working slowly.

2. Using tools forcefully so that they broke and work slowed down.

Question 21

Roughly how many slaves escaped to Canada?

Answer 21

More than 30,000.

Question 22

Who was William Wilberforce?

Answer 22

Wilberforce was a deeply religious English member of parliament and social reformer who was very influential in the abolition of the slave trade and eventually slavery itself in the British empire.

Question 23

Who was Equiano?

Answer 23

In 1786 in London, he became involved in the movement to abolish slavery. He was a prominent member of the ‘Sons of Africa’, a group of 12 black men who campaigned for abolition. In 1789 he published his autobiography, ‘The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African’.

Question 24

Who was Elizabeth Heyrick (1769 – 1831)?

Answer 24

She was an important figure in the movement to abolish slavery. Elizabeth was a ferocious campaigner. She liked direct tactics and straight speaking.

Question 25

Who was Thomas Clarkson (1760 – 1846)?

Answer 25

Thomas Clarkson dedicated his life to the abolition of the slave trade. As a young man, he wrote an essay ‘Is it right to make men slaves against their will?’ and this convinced him that he had to put all his efforts into stopping the evil trade. He joined with several other people in forming the Committee for Effecting the
Abolition of the Slave Trade.

Question 26

Why was the slave trade abolished?

Answer 26

The struggle to end the transatlantic slave trade and slavery was achieved by African resistance and economic factors as well as through humanitarian campaigns.

Question 27

How did the Atlantic slave trade come to an end?

Answer 27

Ex-slaves were not compensated. Despite the abolition of slave trading by Britain and other countries from 1807 onwards, illegal trading continued for a further 60 years. About a quarter of all Africans who were enslaved between 1500 and 1870 were transported across the Atlantic in the years after 1807.