Research Project: The European Slave Trade

"Recent Trends in the Study of the Atlantic Slave Trade," Indian Historical Review (New Delhi), vol.XV, no. 1-2 (July 1988 & January 1989), pp.1-15

European Review, 2009

For centuries, major European states were involved in the Atlantic slave trade and in slavery in their colonies in the Americas. In the last decade, this subject has attracted serious but uneven attention in Europe beyond the realms of descendants and academia. The British, French ...

The Transatlantic Slave Trade, spanning from the 16th to the 19th century, was one of the largest forced migrations in human history, profoundly shaping both African societies and the New World. This research explores the social, cultural, and economic impacts of the slave trade on African communities, as well as its transformative effects on the Americas. In Africa, the trade led to significant demographic shifts, the collapse of local economies, and the erosion of traditional societal structures. The devastation of communities through warfare, raids, and the capture of slaves disrupted African social and political systems, leaving a lasting legacy of conflict and underdevelopment. In the New World, the arrival of millions of enslaved Africans laid the foundation for plantation economies based on sugar, tobacco, and cotton, which contributed to the rise of European wealth and industrialization. The trade also established rigid racial hierarchies and slave-based societies, creating a deep racial divide that continues to affect social relations in post-emancipation nations. Additionally, African cultural contributions, through music, religion, and cuisine, significantly influenced New World cultures, resulting in a complex process of cultural syncretism. This research highlights the interconnectedness of the Atlantic world and the enduring legacy of the slave trade in shaping global history.

Social History, 2015

This paper is made up of four main themes that all work together to explain the impact that the Transatlantic Slave Trade had on Africa. The first theme deals with the circumstances and consequences that led to the rise of the Atlantic slave trade, the second address what the political, social, and economical impact of slave was on Africa, next we learn about the life typically led by a slave on a plantation in the West Indies, and lastly, we evaluate the morality of slavery both from a Christian point of view and an Islamic standpoint.

2018

2006

2007 marks the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act of 1807, While it was a landmark act, it did not bring an end to the institution of slavery which continued to flourish in the Americas for another half-century. This article gives an overview of historical slavery, from the slavery of ancient societies to the commerce in enslaved Africans that contributed to European prosperity from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. It examines the role of Ireland and the Irish in this trade and looks at the development of the abolitionist movement. The persistence of slavery as part of today's globalised economy is discussed and some suggestions are made to facilitate the exploration of this topic with students.

Evolving Insights on the Domestic Slave Trade in the 21 st Century Few things are as indelibly tied to the memory and legacy of the Old South, as the region's peculiar institution of slavery. It was certainly the most divisive issue in the first century of our nation's history, and the social construct of race which it institutionalized and solidified, continued to divide America along the color line of black and white until the 1960's and beyond. Even now well into the twenty-first century, racially charged issues often continue to embroil the nation in controversy inevitably accentuated by the increasingly polarized media. Like much of America's past, popular history has perpetuated many misconceptions about slavery in its typically white-washed nature.

Few topics in Atlantic history elicit more debate or stronger feelings than the transatlantic slave trade. More than 150 years since the conclusion of the Civil War, we live in a world rife with forced migration and less-than-free labor. In many places across the globe, refugees flee their war-torn homelands and all that they have ever known in search of safety in strange new societies where mixed fortunes await them. Elsewhere, the desperately poor attempt to cross national borders in the hopes of providing better lives for themselves and their families. The private prison complex makes vast profits for its investors on the backs of prisoners, many of whom are young men of color. In other cases, people, women and children in particular, are bought and sold by unscrupulous predators along well-worn national and international networks of human trafficking. The victims' new lives are defined in large part by exploitation and a lack of freedom. The twentieth century witnessed forced migration and unfree labor on an epic scale. Nazi labor camps and the genocidal efficiency with which millions of people were transported to their death during the Holocaust and the Soviet Gulag exhibited two of humanity's lowest points. In the midst of all of this suffering, dislocation, and exploitation, the transatlantic slave trade and Atlantic slavery stand out as particularly cruel and horrifying examples of forced migration and unfreedom. Few topics in Atlantic history elicit more debate or stronger feelings than the transatlantic slave trade. Spanning close to three centuries, the trade in African men, women, and children stands alone as history's largest forced migration, with at least twelve million people captured, sold, transported, and bought. The enslaved who survived the horrors of the Middle Passage provided the labor that served as the economic bedrock on which Atlantic empires and modern nation states were built. Today, tens of millions of descendants of the enslaved live across the Americas and elsewhere, often in harsher socioeconomic circumstances than their fellow citizens. Those who remained in Africa dealt with loss, dislocation, and disruption as their lives and societies were systematically exploited to feed the labor demands of faraway European colonies in a process that began as a proto-capitalist phenomenon and concluded as one that was at the heart of nineteenth-century capitalism. The impact of the slave trade and later European imperialism are intensely felt in Africa today. In fact, the legacy of the slave trade has led some to argue that reparations are warranted for this grievous injustice. Given the immense significance of the transatlantic slave trade and the institution of slavery, it is hardly surprising that scholars have studied and debated these topics for centuries. Some historians have sought to understand the complex interplay of ideas about race, culture, economics, and empire that led to the rise of slavery and the slave trade. Many of these inquiries have been forced to address the challenging topic of African involvement and complicity. Some have concerned themselves primarily with numbers, seeking to quantify the lives of millions of men, women, and children. Such scholars have been aided immeasurably by the creation of Voyages: The TransAtlantic Slave Trade Database (http://www.slavevoyages.org/). Others have examined the economics of the slave trade and its larger impact on regional, imperial, Atlantic, or global economies. Historians have taken cultural approaches to the slave trade, seeking in particular to understand the extent to which African cultures survived the trade and enslavement. Social historians have painted harrowing portraits of life and death aboard slave ships. Others have analyzed shipboard rebellions, or topics related to health, technology or seafaring. Political studies have sought to understand the fight to abolish or defend the slave trade and slavery. Leonardo Marques adds his voice to the field of slave trade studies with The United States and the Transatlantic Slave Trade to the Americas, 1776-1867. Based on a 2013 Emory University PhD dissertation, Marques's book focuses on the role that citizens of the United States and their ships played in the slave trade to other parts of the Americas in the eras spanning from independence to shortly after the conclusion of the Civil War. Impressively researched in English, Spanish, and Portuguese-language archival and published primary sources, deeply conversant with an expansive