The Slow Death And Effects Of The Slave Trade PDF

# Chapter 7 - The Slow Death and the Effects of the Slave Trade The growth and expansion of the transatlantic slave trade was a long and slow process, guided more by laws of the economy than by purposeful design. In contrast, its end was orchestrated by people focused on such a goal, aiming to do i...

# Chapter 7 - The Slow Death and the Effects of the Slave Trade The growth and expansion of the transatlantic slave trade was a long and slow process, guided more by laws of the economy than by purposeful design. In contrast, its end was orchestrated by people focused on such a goal, aiming to do it quickly. Unfortunately, for many Africans, that end didn't come fast enough. ## The Golden Age of the Slave Trade During the 18th century, the slave trade was going through its “golden” age in terms of volume and profits. It rose from the sidelines of the global slave trade into one of its most vital branches. With that came important changes to how it was conducted. Since the late 17th century, but even more prominently in the 18th century, slave merchants began crafting specialized slaving vessels. They were built to maximize gains by providing the enslaved with more chances for survival. This included the already mentioned better ventilation but also copper plating and a decrease in the ship’s size, both of which made travel quicker. This also led to a decrease in the triangularity of the transatlantic slave trade, a feature that is often emphasized. This meant that a single ship would carry goods from a European port to Africa in exchange for enslaved people. Then it would travel to the Americas and exchange the slaves in return for spices and other valuable products and finally go back to Europe. ## The Decline of the Slave Trade However, as the 18th century passed, the smaller slaving ships often disregarded taking much of the valuable American produce. Sometimes the slavers didn’t even bother taking any of it at all, especially when prices of, for example, sugar dropped, as their gains wouldn’t be as high. They chose currency or precious metals instead. With this increase in volume and overall prominence also came the increase in notoriety. The transatlantic slave trade started generating serious opposition, which slowly grew in size and willingness to fight what they viewed as a despicable act unbecoming of human beings. These new sentiments could be traced to the ideals of the Age of Enlightenment, an intellectual movement that began to reshape European thought in the 17th century. Many of the famous thinkers of that period, like John Locke or Jean-Jacques Rousseau, believed in the natural rights of humans, which weren’t linked to any laws or customs. One of these chief rights was, of course, freedom. Such ideas inspired the American and the French Revolutions, but they also swayed many people to consider slavery as something inhumane. Thus, many prominent intellectuals began to voice their opposition to slavery and the slave trade. They often believed that stopping the slave trade would eventually lead to the complete abolition of slavery. It was a valid assumption, though it took slightly longer than they expected. These secular ideas seeped over into religion as well, most notably among the Quakers and the Protestant Evangelicals. Prior to that the Old Testament was used to justify slavery, as it referenced it without any negative sentiments. However, with the ideals of natural rights and an overall focus on humanist morality coming to the forefront, some religious groups began interpreting the Bible differently, focusing on the idea of "good will towards all men." This understanding of the holy texts rendered slavery as something completely against Christian ideals. In fact, while the Enlightenment thinkers were still entrenched in philosophical debates over the issue, Quakers were actively working toward the abolition of slavery and the slave trade. They wrote petitions and voiced their concerns in the last years of the 17th century, and by the mid-1700s, they began imposing rules that banned Quaker ties with any slave activities. By the late 18th century, they began forming anti-slavery societies both in the US and England, asking their governments to ban the slave trade. These groups became the primary driving force behind the legal end of the British and US slave trade in 1807. ## Economic and Ideological Arguments Against Slavery Enlightenment ideas also spilled over into the economy. Coinciding with this was the emergence of modern capitalism. One of the chief ideals of this economic system was paid labor. Slavery went against these sentiments, so a serious opposition to slavery formed in the rising middle class. However, this was only partially motivated by moral or philosophical beliefs. Small business owners and industrialists, rising in the economic hierarchy, didn’t employ slave labor for many other reasons. Chief among them was the fact that their enterprises needed a skilled workforce and that they were located in societies that weren’t based on forced labor anymore. As such, they saw slavery as unfair for economic competition. Banning it would also improve their gains, and they also hoped that ending the slave trade would make Africa a more stable market to export finished goods and import raw materials like oil or metals. Animosity toward slavery could also be found in the political competitions between the old high class, whose wealth was at least partially based on forced servitude, and the new industrial high class. The latter was hoping to gain the upper hand by cutting off one source of the former’s profits. ## The Declining Profits of Slavery Apart from that, many scholars have claimed that by the late 18th century, the slave trade and the sugar plantations were generating less profit than before, prompting yet another reason why it was banned in the early 19th century. However, some modern researchers reject these ideas. Their studies show that the British West Indies were still generating substantial profit when the slave trade was abolished, while the southern US states were still mainly financed by their cotton exports. Even after the abolition of the slave trade, and even of slavery in general, British sugar was still competitive in the global market. However, it is important to note that the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution created a lesser need for labor, as at least some processes in both the sugar and cotton industries were mechanized and powered by steam or other types of energy. For example, the first steam-powered sugar mill was installed in Jamaica in 1768. Nonetheless, at the time, these technological novelties were not advanced enough to replace the majority of the human labor, so the use of slaves could still be profitable and useful. ## The Role of Liberated Slaves Another important factor in the push toward abolitionism was the activity of the liberated slaves. Many of the Africans who managed to attain freedom used their experiences to advocate for the ban of slavery, exposing how cruel it was through their own personal stories. Examples of this would be the works of Olaudah Equiano and Ottobah Cugoano in Britain, as well as Jeanne Odo and Jean-Baptiste Belley in France. They provided voices for the hundreds of thousands of voiceless slaves in the Americas. Their activities provided ammunition for abolitionist propaganda, yet it seems that the success of revolt on Saint Domingue played a more crucial role. It proved that if pushed to the brink, the enslaved people could effectively fight back. This prompted some of the politicians, at least those without any direct link to slavery or the slave trade, to opt for the ban as a way to protect the colonies from serious rebellions and maintain European rule over them. Thus, the enslaved, in one way or another, contributed to the end of slavery. ## The Complex Reasons For Abolition In the end, it is hard to determine which of these factors was the chief reason behind the abolition of the slave trade and, in turn, slavery in general. It was clearly an amalgamation of rising humanist ideals that spread compassion for one’s fellow man mixed with economic and political motivations. However, it is important to note that abolition came to fruition only after the idea became profitable, not only in a strictly economic way, to a fraction of powerful people, whose reasons were far from altruistic. ## The Abolitionist Movement and Its Successes Regardless, as the transatlantic slave trade was reaching its pinnacle at the turn of the 18th century, the abolitionist movements began achieving initial success. Here it is significant to mention that their fight against the slave trade was ultimately aimed at slavery in general, yet this part of the slave chain was the weakest link. Merchants had less political power and were less influential, while the Middle Passage proved to be an easier propaganda target, with the enslaved people cooped up in the dark and foul space below the deck. In contrast, owners of plantations often had stronger political ties and were generally part of the older aristocratic families, and the work in the fields was much harder to present to the general public as something shocking or inhumane. As a result, certain US colonies and later independent states began passing laws that limited the slave trade and, in some cases, even slavery. The anti-slave trade associations also managed to press the British Parliament to pass laws regulating the slave trade. By then, it had become apparent that England was moving toward banning the slave trade in general, as the idea was gaining popularity among the wider public. Anticipating such a change to occur, the Danish became the first European nation to pass a law banning the slave trade in 1792 though it wouldn’t come into effect until 1803. As a lesser slave-trading nation, their exiting the slave stage wasn’t as influential. Then came the abolition of slavery in revolutionary France in 1795, though it was short-lived, as Napoleon restored it in 1802. In 1807, Britain finally banned the slave trade, including both on British soil as well as most of its foreign partners. The United States followed suit, banning the import of slaves in early 1807, although the law didn’t come into effect until 1808. This was the turning point in the transatlantic slave trade. Not only were two important slave-trading nations opting out of this economic atrocity, but the English were bent on forcing such ideas on all other countries. ## The Continued Existence of the Slave Trade However, the slave trade was far from over. Most other nations were still interested in continuing the commerce of human beings, most notably Spain, as Cuba was just beginning to develop sugar production. Even the United States was still active in the slave trade, supplying the Spanish despite banning the import of enslaved people. The British tried to use its maritime superiority to enforce its new anti-slave trade position. In 1808, the Royal Navy formed the West African Squadron, which was tasked with enacting a slave trade blockade, searching any suspicious vessels, and seizing them if any slaving activity was found. Furthermore, the British pressured other slave-trading nations, like Portugal, Sweden, and the Netherlands, to sign treaties restricting the commerce of human beings in the early 1810s. By 1815, after the final defeat of Napoleon’s France, Britain imposed the overall condemnation of the slave trade in the Congress of Vienna, securing at least vocal support in the matter from all major European nations and the United States. At the same time, France also abolished the slave trade. ## Eliminating the Slave Trade Although it seems as if the slave trade was all but finished by then, ending it proved to be a much more daunting task. Some of the nations seldom enforced abolition, while illicit merchants from all nations started to satisfy the American markets’ demand. The British reacted by signing several bilateral treaties with some of the nations, like Portugal and Spain, confirming the end of the slave trade along with gaining the legal right to search ships under their flag. Of course, this caused much friction between the nations, as many saw it as Britain trying to protect its slave-free production in the Caribbean against the supposedly superior forced labor of other nations. Yet the idea of abolition started to internalize in those societies as well. The mainland Portuguese, for example, had been retreating from the slave trade for a while, with the business being handed over to the Brazilians instead, who won independence in 1822. Around this same time, other South American colonies fought for their freedom, slowly joining in the struggle against both the slave trade and slavery in general. ## The Legacy of the Atlantic Slave Trade Over the decades, all the nations accepted the ban of the slave trade, with Brazil being among the last major participants to officially do so in 1831. However, the illegal trade continued to flourish. Locally, some of the national navies intercepted the illicit traders, freeing the captured slaves back on African shores, though not necessarily to the region they were originally from. The Sierra Leone region was one of the most notable places this occurred. The illegal trade also brought the morality rates back up, along with the cruel handling of the enslaved people. The merchants were now forced to hide, acting more like pirates than traders. Between 1808 and 1860, the British navy seized about 1,600 ships, freeing roughly 150,000 people. Yet this was just a fraction, as roughly three million enslaved people were shipped between 1810 and 1866. By the early 1870s, the slave trade was pretty much dead, as all the major slave-trading nations not only banned the trading of people but also began to actively fight against it. The last important turnaround was the US Civil War, which saw the end of America’s participation in slavery. ## The Impact of the Slave Trade By then, modern scholars estimate about 12.5 million enslaved Africans had been sent to the Americas. Yet only about 10.7 million arrived. Here it is important to note that the numbers vary, going from as low as 9.5 million to as high as 17 million. The discrepancies in those estimates come from the question of counting embarks or disembarks, adding or disregarding the approximations of people dying in Africa on their way to the slave ports, adding or ignoring the estimations of illicit trades, and other variables. However, the range between 10 and 12 million is an average most scholars agree upon. Regardless of what number is accepted as closest to the truth, it is undeniably a huge number of people who endured through some of the vilest fates imaginable. People were ripped out of their homelands, transported across half of the world in despicable conditions, with many succumbing to various diseases and torture before being worked to death by their new masters. There were other impactful side effects that go beyond the personal trauma of every single human being that suffered from the transatlantic slave trade. The two that probably first come to mind are economic and demographic influences, yet those are highly debated among scholars due to the rather complex nature of the slave trade across the Atlantic. Some claim that the combined surplus of profits from the slave trade and sugar production by the slave workforce enabled an influx of capital that at least helped the industrialization of Europe, most notably England, which was the first industrial nation in the world. This rapid economic growth and development of new technologies, which allowed such advances, coincided with Britain’s participation in the slave trade, yet there are few direct links. Additionally, according to some estimates, the sugar and slave industries generated only between 1 and 5 percent of the total British economy. Regardless, though the slave trade likely wasn’t instrumental in kickstarting the Industrial Revolution, it is possible it provided some early surplus to invest in the development of new technologies. Similar arguments have been made in regard to the African economy. One side argues that the slave trade infringed on it. At the start of the slave trade between the two continents, both Europe and Africa exported or imported both raw goods and finished products. Yet, as the slave trade developed in volume, the Europeans began taking mostly the enslaved while exporting their produced goods, thus, in effect, stifling local industrial capabilities. It is important to note that the Europeans exported weapons and other military products, which affected the African states in their internal conflicts. However, since the trade was largely willing on the African side as well, it is easy to assume that the local elites at least saw gains in dealing with the Europeans. Furthermore, through this trade, some of the important food crops were imported, though this would become more significant in later periods when Africans needed to sustain a much larger population. This leads to the question of demographic impact on West Africa. What is undeniable is that Sub-Saharan Africa at best stagnated in its population over the duration of the transatlantic slave trade, remaining at around 100 million or slightly less. Yet during the same period, its share in the overall world population dropped from about 18 percent in the 16th century to just about 6 percent in 1900. However, scholars disagree on what caused this. Some have argued it was directly linked to the Atlantic slave trade, but this seems unlikely, as over the same period, but more prominently in the 19th century, around fifty million Europeans migrated willingly to the Americas, yet Europe’s population grew. The more plausible cause was the imbalance between genders. In many West African areas, females began outnumbering males, who were chiefly exported to the Americas, making copulation much harder. On top of that, the economic disruption of traditional industries also caused disturbances in population growth, as less material production meant fewer people could be sustained. Some scholars have also stipulated that due to the different nature of their economy, as compared to Europe, the population loss caused by the African slave trade was sufficient enough to cause a demographic and economic demise. Possible proof of this is that its population quickly grew when the slave trade ended, even prior to any significant medical or technological advances arriving in the region. ## The Impacts of the Slave Trade on the Americas A less debatable consequence of the Atlantic slave trade was the formation of a new unique Afro-American population and culture in the Americas. The tightly concentrated slave populations created their own traditions and customs, an amalgamation of their African roots, harsh slave life, and the European influences imposed by their masters. This proved to be important in the development of the young American nations in the 19th century, especially when the formerly enslaved people were the majority. One of the best examples of this would be blues music, which is now a worldwide phenomenon. However, it began its life among the slaves in the cotton fields in the southern US. Other influences can be found in cuisine, clothing, language, and beyond. However, with that came the legacy of racism, which follows the Afro-Americans to this day. ## The Legacy of Racism The transatlantic slave trade wasn’t born out of racism. Yet after centuries of subjugation, forced labor, and various justifications, explanations, or rationalizations, racism undeniably developed as a consequence of the slave trade. Its reach was not limited only to the Americas, as it seeped over to Europe as well. It began as cultural racism, which saw the Africans as lesser barbarians and uncivilized humans. However, by the 19th century, some people believed the Africans were genetically inferior and lesser human beings. This partly explains why some European masters had no trouble being so cruel toward the enslaved people. Unfortunately, this particular negative legacy of the Atlantic slave trade proved to be rather hard to suppress, as racism remains one of the troubles of the modern world. ## The Other Impacts of The Slave Trade Beyond this, there were many other effects and impacts of the transatlantic slave trade, though they were less important in the grand scheme of things. Yet all of those seem to pale in comparison to the suffering and death imposed upon the enslaved African people, who were victims of greed and prejudice. For this reason, the end of the Atlantic slave trade couldn’t have come soon enough.