Atlantic Slave Trade

In the early 17th century, America was full of rich fertile soil capable of being farmed to yield a great amount of capital. And being settled by Europeans powered by a thirst for a better life, and Even though many Europeans traveled to the new world in order to escape religious persecutions or simply in search of a better life, this force was not enough to sustain the amount of work entailed in running a profitable agricultural economy. Even with the initial boom of Indentured servants, who were the initial manual work force in the “New World”, there was still land to expand farms and thus more staple crop to be harvested. Creating a need for a larger labor force. African Americans began to be shipped into the new colonies to satisfy this void of a labor force. The Trans-Atlantic slave trade was a direct result of Europeans taking control of a free labor force, an enslaved one, in order to be able to obtain maximum profit from the America’s valuable exports, and while the enslavement of African Americans did create a prejudice towards their race, this hate or discrimination was not the cause of their enslavement.

Africans were enslaved long before the settlement of the American colonies had begun. Prisoners of war in Africa were enslaved by feuding tribes that were constantly in war. These slaves were usually not enslaved for life and would have the opportunity to buy freedom. This was accepted by Africans because they generally identified with the local group or tribe they were apart of, not with their race as a whole. African Kings sold their prisoners to Portugal who needed a labor force for mines in Brazil, soon the trade spread to the Caribbean, South and Central America, and then to North America. The Trans-Atlantic slave trade became a profitable market for both the Africans who were selling these prisoners along with the Europeans selling and buying them. The empowered Africans who captured and sold to the slave dealing merchants had no regard for the...