O slave trade represents the phase when African blacks were brought from Africa to be slaves.
The trade in African blacks as slaves was one of the main commercial activities of the dominant countries from 1501 to 1867.
Africa-America trade
The practice was managed by six nations: England, Portugal, France, Spain, Netherlands and Denmark.
The commercial justification for sustaining the exploitation of African slaves was that only with slaves it would be possible to maintain low prices for products such as sugar, rice, coffee, indigo, tobacco, metals and stones precious.
The slave trade was responsible for the forced displacement of 12.5 million people from Africa and an estimated one third went to Portuguese America. This was the biggest involuntary displacement of people in all of history.
Of the total, 12.5% were unable to complete the crossing because they were still dying on the ships due to bad conditions. hygiene conditions that allowed the proliferation of diseases or the punishments applied to curb riots.
This commercial practice of slavery constituted the most important objective of interaction between Europeans and Africans, who had previously been separated by the power of the sea.
The discovery of the New World made it possible to expand the production of several products required by Europe, however, the available labor was insufficient.
Indigenous populations found in the new territory, while remaining captive, collapsed as a result of physical extermination and disease in certain territories.
Free immigrants or even prisoners sent forcibly to America were never enough to fill production needs.
It was African forced and unpaid labor that guaranteed European consumers access to precious metals, sugar, coffee and others produced in the colonies.
African slaves
The explanation for the use of forced African labor in the colonies is the subject of several streams of historical research.
In the beginning, it was justified that blacks were inferior, that they had lost a war and could thus be enslaved.
There was also the belief that black Africans were enslaved because the Indian did not allow himself to be enslaved or because he died of diseases brought by the colonizers.
Slavery was an institution present in African societies, but it did not have commercial purposes, and represented domination and power of the strong over the weak.
In the intricacies of African societies, European rule was also favored by Africans who sold slaves to colonizers.
Enemies were the only "commodity" they had to offer and thus be able to buy the valuable objects brought by the Europeans.
In possession of vigorous nautical technology, Europeans forced Africans to cross to the other continent and denied them the right to their own lives. These were handed over to future owners on the sugar and coffee plantations.
Routes
Captive slaves were transported by various routes out of Africa. Even before large-scale commercial exploration began, there were routes to Europe via the islands of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea.
These would have been the first to forcibly leave for America to work on the sugar plantations.
The sugar sector absorbed 80% of blacks removed from Africa. There were two points, the north, of expeditions departing from Europe and North America; and the south, starting from Brazil.
The ports that received the most blacks were located in Rio de Janeiro, Salvador (BA) and Recife; in England, Liverpool, London and Bristol stand out. In France, the city of Nantes was an important place for the sale of slaves. Together, these ports were responsible for receiving 71% of slaves.
The main starting points in Africa were located in Senegambia, Sierra Leone, the Windward Coast, the Gold Coast, the Gulf of Benin and, mainly, West-Central Africa.
Indian Ocean
The Atlantic trade was not the only African slave trade. Already in the first century d. Ç. they were brought in enslaved across the Sahara desert from the East African coast.
These captives were destined for slavery in North Africa, in the Middle East, for which they followed their journey across the Indian Ocean.
Most of this trade was in the hands of Muslim merchants who supplied Muslim kingdoms with slaves for domestic services and concubinage.
Prohibition
The prohibition of the slave trade began in Europe itself after the beginning of an ideological battle. There are historians, however, who point to the high prices of slave labor as a justification for the end of exploitation in a period of growing industrialization.
Debates for the end of the slave trade began in England, despite the auspicious profits of the practice. In 1807, trafficking in blacks was considered illegal by the British and, in the same year, by the United States government.
The government of England began to directly curb trafficking from 1810 onwards, employing 10% of the maritime fleet to intercept slave ships.
In turn, the Brazilian government only acted later in 1850, with the Eusébio de Queirós Law, but only in 1888 abolished slavery.
Brazil
Brazil was responsible for 40% of the trade in blacks for the exploitation of slave labor. Of the approximately 12.5 million exploited people, 5.8 million landed in the country, according to some studies.
Commerce in the colonial era began in 1560 as a way to guarantee workers in the sugar monoculture. The demand was high and in 1630, Brazil was the main sugar supplier to Europe.
read more:
- Brazil Cologne
- Indigenous Slavery in Colonial Brazil
- Abolition of Slavery in Brazil
- African culture
- Spanish colonization
