topic 2.5 the Atlantic world and the transatlantic slave trade it was not only the Americas in Europe who were transformed by the creation of the Atlantic world back in the eastern hemisphere the African continent was soon drawn irrevocably into the Atlantic world system through the rapid expansion of the slave trade which soon became the primary economic pillar which supported a rapidly emerging system of global commerce unlike in the Americas the Europeans had a long history of established contact with at least some of the peoples of Africa largely via ancient Overland trading routes which ran across the Sahara Desert and along the Nile River but our story begins when in the 15th and 16th centuries Portuguese and some Spanish explorers and traders begin sailing along the African coast the small trading post they established would eventually provide the entrance to West Africa and even produce trading routes to dense previously impenetrable African interiors well these early traders did ship enslaved African peoples back to Portugal and Spain their primary interest was not in slaves but in commodities like gold ivory and spices it would be developments in America that changed the dynamic of the trade relationship and gave birth to this new form of slave trade and slavery primarily the establishment of lucrative new plantations by Spanish colonists while the Spanish had initially supplied labour for their new plantations through the in comiendo the demand for labor soon outstripped the ever dwindling native population by 1600 it became clear that African slave labor provided a viable alternative and thereafter it was the buying and selling of human beings that represented the greatest attraction for European traders along much of the West African coast line from Senegambia to Angola as we have already seen the African continent that these early European explorers encountered was home to a variety of societies and cultures including several large kingdoms and highly populated urban centers moreover we know that literacy was widespread in many regions and luxury goods from as far afield as Venice the Silk Road and the Maldives Islands were traded in places like the forest kingdom of Bornu which is now in northeastern Nigeria along with cosmopolitan culture the institution of slavery was also already present in these West African societies before the arrival of Europeans and it would continue well after the abolition of slavery in the Western Hemisphere it is important to remember that the transatlantic slave trade could never have existed on the scale that it did without the willing participation of some African states and individuals who saw the same economic opportunity in the slave trade that many Europeans did however it is also important to note the slavery which existed in Africa prior to European involvement was of a very different variety a series of ethical norms had governed the inter African slave trade for centuries making them more like serfs and peasants of the European feudal system than the brutal chattel slavery which developed in the Americas significantly this system of slavery was completely separate from the concept of race identifying a particular skin color with enslavement was a European edition the advent of the transatlantic slave trade signaled the end of the ethical norms and standards which had formerly governed the slave trade within Africa the Spaniards and especially the Portuguese were only the first pioneers of a European led transatlantic slave trade that persisted until the 19th century like the other European countries who followed the Spanish and Portuguese depended on African trading contacts along the coast for their supplies of enslaved people's sometimes this meant doing business with powerful African kingdoms like the Congo and other times with African middlemen who dominated trade routes into the interior thus although Europeans began to build some slave dungeons and forts along the coasts most notably in modern-day Ghana for most of the history of the transatlantic slave trade they held only a tentative toehold on the African Shore in fact oftentimes Europeans were reduced to doing all our trading from ships riding just off the coast thus the expansion of the slave trade it needed the willing participation of African traders and nations and this was something that it readily found willing participation on the African side was mostly the result of a sudden influx in outside capital and highly desirable trade goods from Europe mostly fabrics metal utensils guns and alcohol those states who invested heavily in the slave trade saw their fortunes rise throughout the 17th and 18th centuries when the trade was at its height the kingdom of Dahomey now the nation of the need for instance emerged as newly powerful during this period as a direct result of its trade in slaves with European merchants by the second half of the 18th century slaves had become the kingdoms of main source of revenue some nine thousand people were being sold out of Dahomey every year in 1750 the king of Dahomey was netting some 250,000 pounds in personal income from his participation in the trade with so much wealth at stake African traders soon threw away old conventions and scrambled to secure captives for the slave trade in any way possible knowing that there were European traders anchored just offshore or sitting in coastal warehouses willing to pay top dollar for human cargo the slave trade was further complicated by the arrival of newly emergent European powers beginning with the Dutch and then followed soon after by the English and the French while the Spanish remember were bound by the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas and thus had to be content to hire foreign contractors to secure African slaves on their behalf other European nations were determined to launch their own slave trade the English who would soon outstrip every other country in their participation in the trade initially attempted to establish a joint stock in surpr-eyes called the royal african company to monopolize a slave trade in england soon however they found that demand in north america and the caribbean outpaced with a company could supply thus the british allowed more open access to merchants seeking to get involved in the slave trade and suddenly enslaved africans were crossing the atlantic in massive numbers by the peak years of the 18th century the british alone were sending some 40,000 people a year all across Europe traders and investors scrambled to make money in the slave trading business investment in the slave trade came from people of all social classes from kings and princes to ordinary tradesmen and artisans the allure of the slave trade attracted these investments as much as anything everyone knew that there was money to be made although often times the profit yields from slaving voyages were modest at best overall Europeans came to imagine that the transatlantic slave trade was just like any other form of oceanic trade no different than Commerce in mineral wealth like gold or spices in some ways this was true just like any other trade Europeans had to learn what they need to offer in return - in order to purchase slaves ships filled with weapons textiles and luxury goods made the voyage to West Africa in order to exchange these desirable items for slaves and just like other trades there were occasional outbursts of violence especially in the initial years when Europeans proved willing to kidnap African slaves directly but soon this violence settled into a conventional system of barter and trade in which both West African merchants and their European counterparts understood what the other side wanted and were more than willing to peacefully deal on those terms but in most ways the slave trade visited Horrors on its victims unlike any other form of Commerce in the early modern world following their capture by slavers African captives will be marched to the coast a British observer writing in 1790 reported that a typical column of slaves would spend eight hours a day on the road covering some 20 miles they were generally chained together in pairs attached to one another at both the neck and the ankle to make escape more difficult most times these captives were bound for one of the European forts on the coast many of which boasted comfort and luxury for the European traders who inhabited them confined within the dungeons of these forts African captives were often held for months at a time in unsanitary and overcrowded conditions conflicts between different ethnic groups were common in this situation as were revolts against the European slavers themselves between violence and unhealthy conditions many captives died without ever leaving the shores of Africa but for most captives the moment of greatest horror was still to come as they were crowded onto open canoes that transfer them to massive slave ships waiting off the coast the voyage from West Africa to the Caribbean or the Americas often referred to as the Middle Passage generally took six to eight weeks and is infamous for its brutality ship's crews were often outnumbered by their captives by as many as ten to one and they resorted to in human cruelty in order to maintain order the captives could take little comfort in each other as they were generally thrown together without regard to culture or language meaning that generally they could not communicate with each other in such conditions it is unsurprising that loss of life was high on all voyages disease violence malnutrition and psychological trauma were all common causes of death overall some scholars estimate that as many as thirty percent of the victims of the slave trade some 5 million people overall died in the course of the Middle Passage this brutal trafficking in human life produced an economic boom back in Europe as time went on the slave trade became increasingly regulated as each european government sought to harness the wealth of the trade through licensing and legal controls the sudden boom in the trade of African slaves and their use as a labor force in European colonies was not accidental normally the result of economic growth it was the result of intentional government policies designed to further the sale and use of slaves throughout the Atlantic world nor were the economic benefits of the slave trade limited to those who directly invest it or participated in it for instance if you take England for an example goods from all over England from textiles produced in Yorkshire and Lancashire to salt mine in Cheshire - pottery fired in Staffordshire were shipped via canal to big trading centers like Liverpool where they were loaded onto ships bound for Africa Ireland produced much of the food that went to feed both slaves and crews aboard these ships in the colonies after the slaves were offloaded slave grown produce was loaded aboard the now empty ships and transported back east where it was eagerly consumed by all sorts of people sugar and rum came from the vast sugarcane plantations of the Caribbean and Brazil tobacco that was grown in the fields of Virginia and Cuba rice was grown in the swampy climate of the Carolinas and coffee that was harvested from Jamaica and Brazil later in the 19th century enormous quantities of cotton from the southern United States would feed the industrial revolution in textile production and happening back in Britain overall the slave trade and the Atlantic world had propped up transformed all who participated in it directly and indirectly for Europeans it signaled a revolution in their way of life they consumed entirely new crops like tobacco sugar and rice which were grown in the Americas by the African slaves who had been forcibly transported their sugar once an expensive luxury item was now readily available thanks to the vast sugar plantations of the Caribbean that could be mixed with the tea now routinely shipped from China and India in some Europeans were now the primary beneficiaries of the world's first truly global economy but that same global economy produced misery death and despair for millions in the Americas in Africa well we have already seen the suffering of the slaves themselves it is also important to remember that the slave trade ultimately bankrupted large swathes of the African continent dependent on the slave trade many African nations remain underdeveloped poverty thus became rampant both for those who remained in Africa and for the descendants of the slaves who were transported all casualties of this first wave of global networking