You might have heard of slave trade from your parents, let's have a little reminiscence of the Ugly incidents that rendered The Black inferior.
Slave trade is the capturing, selling and buying of slaves. Slavery existed through out the whole world right from the early age.
This mostly involved the transportation of slaves from African countries by slave traders mainly to the Americas. The traders regularly made use of the triangular trade route and its middle passage, and it mainly started off in the sixteenth century going on till the nineteenth century. The most of the slaves that were that were transported in the transatlantic slave trade were from the Western and Central part of Africa. The slaves sold to the European slave traders by their fellow Africans. Though a small number of them were captured directly by the European slave traders in coastal raids and took them to the Americas. The economy of South Atlantic and the Carribeans depended mainly on the supply of secure labour for the production of commodity crops, making goods and clothing to sell in Europe. This was really much important to the Western European countries in the late seventeenth century and eighteenth century were competing with themselves to create overseas empire.
The Portuguese Kickstarted the Atlantic slave trade in the sixteenth century. They completed the first transatlantic slave voyage to Brazil in 1526. Then other European countries soon followed.
The ship owner treated the slaves as cargo which were transported to the Americas immediately and at a very cheap rate.
The slaves work on coffee, tobacco, cocoa, sugar and cocoa plantations; gold mine and silver mine; rice fields, construction industry, skilled labour; they also work as domestic servants. The first set of Africans transported to the English colonies were classified as indentured servants.
By the middle of the seventh century, slavery became so hardened. The slaves and their children even became the legal property of the owners of the slaves. The slaves were considered as units of labour and were sold with other goods
The main Atlantic slave trading nations, ordered by the trade volume, were: the Portuguese, the British, the French and the Dutch Empires. Several had their outposts established on the African coast. The slaves were purchased from local African leaders.
These slaves were managed by a factor established near the coast to expedite the shipping of the slaves. The African slaves were kept in a factory while they awaited shipment. Current estimates are that about 12 millions African ls were shipped across the Atlantic ocean. The number bought by the traders was high, many of the slaves died during the passage
Near the beginning of the nineteenth century, different government made move to ban the trade, although illegal smuggling still occurred despite that fact.
In the early 21st century, several governments issued apologies for the transatlantic slave trade incidents.