4a Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade Overview

0:02 okay welcome to the first of a series of lectures this week lectures on Africa and the Atlantic slave trade so just to tell you how this is going to be organized the first lecture today is basically like an overview of the trade itself the second lecture is really on slavery in the British American colonies and specifically really how it began in colonial Virginia and then third we look at slave narratives a bit more interpretive close-up approach so this this first lecture is an overview I'm starting the lecture with this image it's a painting from 1840 by the British

0:47 artist JMW Turner and this image is a painting that's difficult to read at first you see a chaos of brushstrokes in different colors and if you look closely you see mangled hands and bodies bodies torn apart by fish it's a very expressive use of brushwork and color this painting depicts a very famous incident from the history of slavery and the slave trade it took place in November 1781 and it depicts depraved British slave traders who were drowning six slaves in order to claim damages from insurance the slave traders could

1:34 not claim damages from slaves dying of natural causes so this was once again in November 1781 and took place on a British slave ship called the song Z Ong the ship was down for Jamaica however large numbers of African slaves on this on the ship got very sick deathly ill the captain worried and knew that his company would not be able to collect any losses insurance losses if he delivered dead slaves however if something happened on the way perhaps would be able to collect the insurance value of them so the captain decided and

2:21 said instead to throw 120 to living slaves overboard and of course they drowned died in the ocean as you see here this case of the Somme became a huge legal case it became a huge publicity affair that attracted abolitionist anti-slavery pro-slavery activists on all sides it became a huge public affair the insurers actually appealed they refused to pay this and as I mentioned it became a major thing that drew support to the anti-slavery cause the painting itself was done by JMW Turner in 1840 and the name of it is called slavers overthrowing slavers

3:07 throwing overboard the dead and dying so beginning with an overview of the trade itself we'll come back to this slide this slide gives you a an overview of the numbers and scope of the Atlantic slave trade so you will immediately notice that the peak of the Atlantic slave trade was in the 18th century undoubtedly which far surpasses the previous entries before 1600 the number of slaves leaving Africa is relatively modest not to say it's excusable but 18th century is definitely the peak and we'll look at these numbers so the beginnings the African slave trade the Atlantic African slave trade

3:53 one of the most deplorable things in world history initially began on a modest scale as I mentioned before 1600 only approximately quarter million slaves arrived in British America and this small number was only a tiny fraction of the flood to follow of those that came before 1600 most came after 1500 and not in the 1400s when the slave trade actually began so the African slave trade actually began the Atlantic African slave trade actually began in the 1400s in 1441 the Atlantic slave trade began in 1441 when a young Portuguese sea captain named

4:41 Anton Gonzales kidnapped two slaves a man and a woman on the western coast of the Sahara he captured these slaves as a sort of prestige gift to bring back to his employer and Kings Prince Henry the Navigator four years later the Portuguese would build a fort off of an island the Portuguese would build a fort on an island off the coast of Mauritania from which they purchased more gold and slaves so the early slave trade the early early slave trade is really controlled by the Portuguese they're not just trading slaves but gold and surprisingly actually gold not

5:26 slaves remained Africa's most valuable export commodity up until 1700 and that's when the slave trade kicked into high gear and slaves became more valuable than gold at the early stages of a four-year European trade the balance was not so disproportionately way toward slaves and it was a relatively small number of slaves that left still nonetheless the number of slaves in the Atlantic slave trade steadily increased through the 1400s by the 1450s approximately five hundred slaves were being exported by the 1480s the Portuguese were exporting around

6:12 seven hundred slaves per year these slaves mostly went to Spain and Portugal half the slaves were sold to Spain for Spain itself in Europe and the Spanish colonies in the new world but definitely a smaller number went to the Spanish colonies and half remained in Portugal so the early slaves some the majority of them actually went to Europe in the 1500s also a limited number of Portuguese slaves went on to Holland France and England where they were where they were regarded as curiosities and owned as status symbols they were nonetheless a sizeable presence in the iberian countries Spain and Portugal for

6:59 instance African slaves made up about 10% of the populations of Lisbon and Seville by 1550 for the Portuguese slavers it was easy to obtain slaves from some areas where they found the Willing African collabora collaborators and we will discuss how and why in a bit but other areas and people's were notoriously difficult to enslave and let me just show you show you on the map briefly the very earliest areas they are obtaining slaves from is Senegambia mostly in the upper guinea coast but as

7:46 they move southward they encountered other areas and peoples that were notoriously difficult to enslave for instance the Baga people of modern-day Guinea refused to participate in the slave trade throughout its history the crew people of the crew people of modern-day Liberia ferociously resisted enslavement they tried to kill themselves with their masters if they were enslaved and so much so that the Europeans actually stopped trying to enslave this particular people the crew because they had this reputation for being so rebellious and resistant actually a disproportionate amount of

8:32 American slaves forming maroon societies run array societies tended to come from the crew and other stateless societies so the major sources of slaves in the very early trade were Senegambia and the upper Guinea clothes the very early stages then West Central Africa Congo and Angola as we'll talk about in a second as well as the Gold Coast the Gold Coast the Gold Coast so names for the richness of gold there the so you can look on you can look on

9:20 the map here the Gold Coast was populated by Fonte Ashanti an akan peoples and is more or less present-day Donna it would be on this Gold Coast that the portuguese established the first major European trading post in sub-saharan Africa this trading post I have it here on the outline you can see how it's written was called El Mina the Portuguese established the first major European trading post in sub-saharan Africa in 1471 and what's called El Mina meaning the mine and this trading post

10:06 gave them access to slaves and West Africa's rich supplies of gold which provided a major percentage of the Portuguese king's revenue in 1500 about a quarter of the revenue came from African gold El Mina this trading fortress became the model for the so-called slave factory or slaved castle mode of obtaining slaves so let's talk for a second about what the slave factory or slave Castle was this is a picture of El Mina from the time slaves were captured in various ways on the interior of Africa we'll discuss the methods in a bit and

10:52 ship to the coast these forts factories sometimes called castles were established by usually Europeans along the coast of Africa where they held the slaves that they purchased from the local rulers this shows you a slave holding chamber at El Mina its condition today the slaves at these slave castles or factories were purchased by the Europeans protecta for textiles cloth tools guns guns it's definitely a major thing they're trading beads and liquor you sometimes slave ships could stop at one slave factory

11:39 and fill their cargo there but often a trader had to make several stops along the coast to fill up his ships for what was called the Middle Passage the passage across the Atlantic importantly these slave factories sometimes they were in the hands of African traders and middlemen sometimes they were in controlled by Europeans um as for what was traded guns definitely became something that was that was coveted by African rulers very important in the Atlantic trade at the height of the trade between 1750 and 1807 Europeans imported 20 million guns into Africa that's just the height of the trade and if you notice I said 1750 to a toast

12:25 1807 1807 is when the British stopped the trade in slaves not the institution but the trade in slavery was banned by the British in 1807 don't be deceived as I tell you about this trading model the trade I mentioned for you number of goods cloth cloth cloth guns beads liquor European tools don't be deceived because this trade was not necessarily bringing superior bringing supposedly superior European goods into Africa so what I mean is that the Atlantic slave trade was not just across the Atlantic to and from Africa and Europe but along

13:13 Africa's Atlantic coast along Africa's Atlantic coast that is to say African goods were also traded in this trade for instance I mentioned cloth and at the time that at this time the Portuguese are trading cloth that was mostly coming from elsewhere in Africa and it's not European cloth likewise the Portuguese also traded slaves with other Africans so as I mentioned the Atlantic slave trade was not just across the Atlantic but a long Africa's Atlantic coast the Portuguese traded slaves with other Africans between 1500 and 1535 the akan people of Ghana bought between bought approximately 10,000 slaves from the

13:59 Portuguese who were used for various purposes around so as I mentioned to you the Gold Coast was definitely a major source of slaves for the Portuguese in this early period of the trade at the same time the porch would be the Portuguese the Portuguese began to look elsewhere for slaves and that is to say west central africa west central africa the kingdoms of Congo and Angola they become major partners by the sixteen late 15th century let's talk for a

14:44 second about Congo the kazakh slaves from Congo are among many African slaves who come to the new world already Christian it's a big myth to think that they were necessarily converted to Christianity by their white American owners but let's look at the reason why the Portuguese can get contact with Congo the Portuguese first came to Congo in 1483 Congo is of course a kingdom south of the equator of the equator on the lower Congo River here this is a good example of a pattern in the trade in Congo as in other African kingdoms the slave trade became a business

15:32 in which ruler and subject had very divergent interests and basically the trade resulted in the exploitation of the masses so undoubtedly Africans did profit from the slave trade it's just a question of who and at what expense of course so the king of Congo in the late 15th century was eager for new military resources he wanted to solidify his shaky hold over the kingdom of Kongo he wanted to promote the advancement of his kingdom so the king of Kongo in the late 15th century accepted baptism he would be succeeded by his son who took the

16:19 throne in 1500 6 as king in zynga Imbaba who took the european name of alfonso the first so beba took the name of alfalfa alfonso the first the portuguese name he committed himself fully to christianity he committed himself fully to european culture he took the title of Alphonso he adapted portuguese dressed portuguese titles portuguese etiquette portuguese manner he learned to read and white portuguese he was very interested in Western technology especially shipbuilding and Western medicine he wrote Alfonso the first that is he wrote 15 letters to the Portuguese King whom he always addressed as brother

17:05 so under the example of the King Afonso in this way the kingdom of Kongo was converted to Catholicism so Afonso thinks that this political and trade alliance with Portugal would be able to advance his kingdom he could get European weapons technology make his make his role more effective so as part of his political and trade alliance with Portugal Alfonso tolerated the capture of slaves from his own Kingdom particularly outlying areas and he actually approves it so as I mentioned what was good for some was not good for others he's doing this to obtain valuable trade goods and to

17:50 promote the advancement of his kingdom but what began as a trickle a relatively small number of slaves turned into a flood and by the later part of his reign in the early 1500s the Portuguese are exporting two thousand three styles and Congolese slaves per year in vain Alfonso pleaded to the Portuguese King to stop this trade but he never was successful Alphonso only negotiated limitations to the trade regulating it so King Afonso died greatly disillusioned he knew that his kingdom was being to populate 'add and that he himself was responsible for it let me

18:36 read you a letter to the king of Portugal in 1526 so this is from Alfonso the first many of our subjects eagerly cover it covet Portuguese merchandise which our people bring into our kingdoms to satisfy this disordered appetite the number of our free or free black subjects even noble sons of nobles and even members of our own family are seized they sell them to the white people this corruption and depravity is so widespread that our entire land is de populated it is in fact our wish that this kingdom should be a place neither or trade neither for trade or transitive

19:21 of slaves so Afonso rice the King of Portugal a letter urging him to stop the trade of slaves the practice of slavery and I think that spoke for itself that did not happen okay so back to the chronology that we were looking at so the first slaves from West Africa or sent mainly to Portugal and eventually to the new world direct shipments of African slaves from Africa to the Americas began in 1519 and this was not a coincidence

20:07 because it was the time when European diseases were destroying the Ameri Indian peoples in great numbers and it was precisely at this time when African slaves began to replace them in large numbers African slaves had greater immunity against both old and new world diseases because they were from the old world unlike the American Indians by the late 16th century nearly 80% of all exported West African slaves went to the Americas so as I mentioned early on they went to Spain and Portugal itself but

20:54 this this is stopped by the late 16th century so by the late 16th century nearly 80% of all exported West African slaves went to the Americas especially Portuguese Brazil where sugar plantations were really big but still the numbers remain relatively small approximately 3,000 4,000 slaves were imported per year during the 16th century which explains their overall numbers and overall as I mentioned approximately a quarter million African slaves were exported before 1600 so overall the relatively small volume of the of the sixteenth century trade

21:41 really accelerated during the 17th century and of course peaked during the 18th century over 6 million exported slaves during the 18th century and the single largest number of slaves left Africa between 1776 and 1800 approximately 2 million only between the years of 770's 1776 and 1800 let's talk about some changes in the trade itself the most important change in the slave trade took place in the mid 17th century up until the mid 17th century not more than ten thousand

22:27 slaves had been exported each year mainly by the Portuguese to their holdings in Brazil but the 17th century changed the trade the 17th century witnessed a major effort by the Dutch to challenge the Portuguese its empire and challenge their trade monopoly and its going to be largely successful in a nutshell by the 17th century the Dutch will the Dutch not the Portuguese will now dominate the slave trade the details of the Dutch challenging the Portuguese trade and Empire in 1630 the Dutch conquered northern Brazil Brazil in 1637

23:12 they took Almina from the Portuguese in 1641 they they briefly took Luanda a Portuguese trading post on West Central Africa and basically they challenged and destroyed Portugal's monopoly of trade on the West African coast so from this from the mid 1600s onwards the Dutch are now the main suppliers of slaves slaves at low prices to the new sugar plantations in the new world the sugar plantations on the British colonies of Barbados and Jamaica and the French Caribbean islands like Martinique Guadeloupe and Sun de Ming what is now Haiti in turn the

24:01 profitability of the slave trade would also attract growing numbers of British traders who would gradually challenge and replace the Dutch so in the late 17th and 18th century the British challenged the Dutchess hold on the trade and definitely by the 18th century the British become the leaders in the trade the British challenged the Dutch control of the trade by founding a royally chartered joint stock company that was called the Royal African company so the Royal African company was founded in 1616 72 the Royal African company was founded to further England's mercantilist aims and to eliminate

24:48 illegal trading with the dust so if you think back to the Navigation Acts remember per se the Navigation Acts American colonial trade trading with other foreign countries was forbidden per se the navigation acts all trade had to go through England therefore any slaves that American colonists were obtaining from the Dutch was illegal after the Navigation Acts and that is why the Royal African company was founded was founded it was founded in response to that to give American colonists a legal alternative to buying from the Dutch which was forbidden illegal per se that the Navigation Acts

25:34 the Royal African company gave the English a monopoly on the slave trade with the American colonists nonetheless illegal trade with Dutch merchants continued which is one reason why it's difficult to tally total numbers of American slaves in the seventeenth century because much of it was illegal many of these slaves are going to sugar plantations in the New World laborious types of plantation initially the Spanish had found their sugar plantations in the Caribbeans but definitely by the 16th and 17th century their plantations will be surpassed by those of France and Britain such as the

26:21 British sugar plantations in Barbados and Jamaica and by the French colony of sand of Maine which is now Haiti and Sandow Ming with import Sam Sandow Ming would import nearly a million slaves there the 18th century and was the scene of the only successful slave rebellion in history the Haitian Revolution we'll get to that later so as for the destination as for the destination of slaves all in all about 50% of exported slaves went to the Caribbean and 33% went to Brazil 12%

27:11 to Central and South America and relatively a small percent 5% or less than to North America as I mentioned back in week 1 one reason why slavery became increasingly important is sugar as and other addictive commodities as I mentioned in week one sugar became increasingly democratized it was a formerly a luxury commodity that was not affordable by the middle or certainly not working classes but in the 17th and 18th century the price of sugar lowered

27:57 but lower prices for sugar and other Atlantic commodities like coffee etc came at a great moral ethical price the increased production of sugar was directly tied to an increased use of slave labor so I mentioned for you the sugar plantations in the English colonies of Barbados Jamaica the French colonies of all of the Atlantic commodities sugar was one of the most labor-intensive most unpleasant most physically demanding dangerous degrading crops to harvest it's definitely a demeaning type of labor so because it was so labor-intensive and demeaning and dangerous plantation owners increasingly

28:43 turned to forced African labor and again sugar sugar production is very labor-intensive you have to follow a very strict schedule the sugar has to be cut harvested milled the juice extracted boiled down purified and often with dangerous tools along with increasing numbers of exported slaves the 18s after he definitely witnessed a price jump in slaves the prices the price the selling price of slaves in the Caribbean rose by a hundred and fifty percent during the 18th century and this meant increased profits not only for English slavers but West African merchants the middlemen the

29:30 share of that price the the price of slaves in Caribbean rose by one hundred and fifty percent but this also meant that the African middlemen the West African merchants had a anywhere from twenty-five to fifty percent increase in profits if we express this in terms of African merchants buying power slave traders returns improved dramatically a slave that would have been worth two linen cloths in 1674 fetched seventy such linen cloths by 1750 in addition to rising prices the sources of slaves changed over time as we mentioned so we mentioned that early on the first major

30:18 sources of slave were Senegambia and the upward getting coast then West Central Africa the kingdom of Kongo as we discussed with King Alfonso the gold coast which is home to modern-day Ghana and the 18th century moved into the Bight of Biafra especially the Niger Delta which was home to the ebo people so we'll mention this this area in lecture four c1 we talked about a lot of

31:04 equiano's his narrative because he is evil in any case you can just be aware of the sources of slaves changing throughout the history of the trade but definitely the Gold Coast and these areas these three areas here are definitely major sources of slaves during the height of the trade in the 18th and late 17th century as for the trade as for the trade itself the Royal African company offered the following advice to its agents quote enslaving out ships always observe that the Negroes be well liking and healthy from the age of fifteen years and not exceeding 40 and that

31:50 two-thirds of the slaves were to be males and flows generally these instructions were followed in the 18th century 63 percent of slaves arriving in the Caribbean were males and generally male slaves cost anywhere from 20 to 30% more than women so definitely there was a gender imbalance male slaves were favored one factor complicating the history and study of the African slave trade was Africa's domestic slavery what one might call slavery of other Africans in Africa first of all as we look at

32:36 African domestic slavery it's probably helpful to realize that abolition of slavery is a relatively new development in world history and that many if not most societies in world history use slavery or some kind of unfree labor the Greeks used slavery Romans used slavery Sumerians Babylonians Egyptians used slavery so slavery while certainly ethically wrong in every way was a fact of life for much of history Europeans Europeans themselves use types of unfree labor like serfdom and indentured servitude so African domestic slavery the types of slavery that were practiced Africa itself it was very different than the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade

33:22 to follow nonetheless what makes it complicated it was sometimes used by pro-slavery defenders to justify the existence of slavery against calls to abolish it and basically saying look the Africans already had slavery so what are we doing so wrong domestic slavery was different the conditions were very different than the Atlantic slave trade domestic slavery was typically issued as a form of judicial punishment so if you were convicted a guilty of a very serious crime like kidnapping murder or adultery sometimes theft if you were convicted guilty of a very serious crime you might be given an a sentence of enslavement likewise domestic slaves are also

34:09 captured and taken as prisoners of war however conditions are very different domestic slaves were largely embraced as members of the household sometimes even family and generally speaking the position and conditions of domestic slaves was similar to that of servants they were not regarded as chattel chattel travel ch8 t te l chattel means property in the atlantic slave trade Africans human human beings were regarded as chattel meal mere property right however in African domestic slavery Africans were not regarded as chattel property and generally speaking their

34:56 living and working conditions were more or less similar to that of their owners obviously conditions vary greatly but the conditions were nowhere as horrific as Atlantic slavery clearly African domestic slaves more like servants were not fully equal they did not usually eat with their family that owned land they did not sleep or live in the same house or living quarters and they did not enjoy freedom of movement but generally there was less degradation of the African domestic slave they weren't the human eye in the same way that Atlantic slaves war for instance they performed the same types of labor and work as free people did and not just tasks that were

35:42 demeaning degrading or you know just beneath the dignity of freemen so native African slavery was a fact of life owning slaves was a type of status status symbol it was normal for wealthy households definitely for royal households but again it was different slavery was not hereditary hereditary and it was not racially based now I want to move on to talking about the reasons for enslavement and how people ended up in one of those slave factories on the coast so I explained this picture in a second basically there were four major

36:27 reasons why Africans were enslaved they were taken as war captives by a rival people or Society so war captives and prisoners of war enslavement could be a form of judicial punishment slaves could be taken by kidnapping kidnapping merely for profit or for political reasons you know by a rival by a rival Society rival Kingdom King etc and number four in enslavement as a form of debt being enslaved because you were in serious debt I want to give you a little

37:13 bit more detail I'm going to refer to actual testimony of former slaves who were questioned questioned by a missionary in 19th century Sierra Leone so Sierra Leone was originally called Freetown and it was founded by British humanitarian reformers by people who believed that the best way to destroy the slave trade and to help Africa would be to establish a settlement of free blacks on the African coast it was initially called Freetown and here you see some of the first residents of Freetown arriving there so Freetown was

37:59 a colony founded by the British in Africa to resettle free blacks back in Africa the colony's first immigrants were black urban poor from London and they began travelling back to Africa in 1787 so Liberia similarly similarly was founded by the American Colonization Society in 1821 so in any case my evidence here comes from X slaves who lived in this British colony according to the missionary he surveyed 177 freed slaves about their process of enslavement and the vast majority said

38:47 that they had been taken in war the majority said that they were war captives thirty percent of the slaves said that they were kidnapped sometimes even by their own people as in the case of the Congo or by other people potential for enslavement was so great among Evo people a people living in modern Southeast Nigeria that 18th century ebo farmers went to the fields carrying their weapon to ward off potential kidnappers and left the village children under a special guard usually watching century another 11% of

39:34 freed slaves were enslaved by judicial process mostly on charges of adultery kidnapping murder and sometimes judicial enslavement was the result of witchcraft also a significant minority of the slaves that were surveyed in Sierra Leone admitted they had already been slaves of other Africans and we in fact have evidence that Europeans preferred prior slaves prior African domestic slaves because they were less likely to escape and tended to accept their enslavement with less resistance and finally of

40:20 these slaves surveyed ins Sierra Leone 7 7% of the surveyed slaves said they had been sold into slavery to pay for debts from their family ok the last part of today's lecture before we move on to the next one is a little bit on England in the slave trade so England had had little contact with Africa until the mid 16th century the 1500 because they were shut out of the slave trade by first Portugal and then the Dutch recapping what I already told you before in the 17th century the Dutch monopolized the slave trade they stole control of it

41:06 from the Portuguese but gradually after the Royal African company was founded in 1670 to gradually Britain became the largest slave trading nation in the world and brought a tremendous amount of Africans to the new world the new world demand for labour brought an estimated 55 million Africans to the Americas by 1775 and of these about a third were sold to British colonies we already talked about the slave factory model this is the model used by the Royal

41:54 African company and British traders I want to mention briefly the Middle Passage so you have a primary source reading on the Middle Passage the middle passage refers to of course the actual ship passage across the Atlantic on the Middle Passage slaves were packed so tightly that there was no room to breathe there was no room paid to sanitation smallpox disease measles mumps were rampant mortality rates were as high as 40% on many ships slaves committed suicide or tempted to they jumped overboard they starved themselves they refused food and on some

42:42 occasions there were revolts when they tried to take over the ship conditions on the Middle Passage did improve in the mid 18th century when the prices of slaves skyrocketed and originally before eight before the 18th century mortality rates were as high as 40 percent but by the mid 18th century mortality rates dropped to ten to ten percent the Portuguese ships were had a reputation for B for being particularly bad the nickname for the Portuguese ships was the coffin that's what the Portuguese called their slave ships themselves during the 18th century the average Portuguese vessel was 20 meters long 6 meters wide and carried about 300

43:30 slaves so each slave would have had approximately 0.4 square meters of space to him or herself and as I mentioned epidemics like dysentery smallpox or scurvy were very common overall of all of these slaves sent to the Americas between the beginnings of the trade and the end of the trade some 12% of slaves died at sea on the Middle Passage itself um the last point before we move on to the last lecture was revolts revolts took place about on about 10 percent of slave wages on average in each slave

44:18 revolt approximately 25 slaves died in each revolt the risk of death on a slave ship revolt was four times as high as successfully escaping in the history of the trade there were 369 known revolts but only a handful would make it back to Africa free so the the chance of actually being successful in the slave revolt living making it back to Africa or something like one and a thousand the two most well known slave revolts occurred on two different ships one was called the marburo 1752 and another was called the Regina Coley in 1858 in each case there

45:06 were around 275 slaves that escaped they seized control of the ship while it was still close to port and one reason why it occurred on those particular voyages was there they were ships where there was an unusual number of women and women were tended to be allowed a bit more freedom of movement on the ship and that's why these slaves decided to seize control and try to try to make for it nonetheless both of these

45:51 both of these slave world's slave revolts were not successful revolt was the most common in ships sailing from areas with strong military cultures regions like Senegambia upper Guinea and the Gold Coast and also revolts tended to happen on ships with larger proportions of female captives because the female captives were given a bit more freedom of movement okay so this lecture focused just on the history of the trade itself in the next lecture we look at the question of really how the trade and practice of slavery started in the American colonies and how slavery was

46:37 sadly connected to the American notion of freedom from the very beginning and how freedom and slavery went hand-in-hand in American history thank you very much