It was one leg of the triangular trade route that took goods (such as knives, guns, ammunition, cotton cloth, tools, and brass dishes) from Europe to Africa, Africans to work as slaves in the Americas and West Indies, and items, mostly raw materials, produced on the plantations (sugar, rice, tobacco, indigo, rum, and …
What goods were mainly traded for slaves?
On the first leg of their three-part journey, often called the Triangular Trade, European ships brought manufactured goods, weapons, even liquor to Africa in exchange for slaves; on the second, they transported African men, women, and children to the Americas to serve as slaves; and on the third leg, they exported to …
What goods did the traders give in exchange for slaves?
The first stage of the Triangular Trade involved taking manufactured goods from Europe to Africa: cloth, spirit, tobacco, beads, cowrie shells, metal goods, and guns. The guns were used to help expand empires and obtain more slaves (until they were finally used against European colonizers).
What did the African traders want in exchange for the African slaves?
Africans were either captured in warring raids or kidnapped and taken to the port by African slave traders. There they were exchanged for iron, guns, gunpowder, mirrors, knives, cloth, and beads brought by boat from Europe. When Europeans arrived along the West African coast, slavery already existed on the continent.
What did African merchants trade slaves for?
The first shipment of slaves from West Africa to the Americas, across the Atlantic Ocean, was in the early 1500s. European, Arab and African merchants were now selling humans as well as gold, ivory and spices.
What created demand for slaves?
With the invention of the cotton gin, cotton became the cash crop of the Deep South, stimulating increased demand for enslaved people from the Upper South to toil the land.
Where did most of the slaves from Africa go?
Myth One: The majority of African captives came to what became the United States. Truth: Only a little more than 300,000 captives, or 4-6 percent, came to the United States. The majority of enslaved Africans went to Brazil, followed by the Caribbean.
How were slaves captured in Africa?
Most slaves in Africa were captured in wars or in surprise raids on villages. Adults were bound and gagged and infants were sometimes thrown into sacks.
Where did African slaves come from?
The majority of all people enslaved in the New World came from West Central Africa. Before 1519, all Africans carried into the Atlantic disembarked at Old World ports, mainly Europe and the offshore Atlantic islands.
What was traded from Africa to the Americas?
Europe sent manufactured goods and luxuries to North America. Europe also sent guns, cloth, iron, and beer to Africa in exchange fro gold, ivory, spices and hardwood. The primary export from Africa to North America and the West Indies was enslaved people to work on colonial plantations and farms.
Who captured slaves to trade in Africa?
It is thought that around 8.5 million enslaved Africans were taken to the Americas. British slave ships set off from Liverpool, Glasgow or Bristol, carrying trade goods and sailed to West Africa. Some of those enslaved were captured directly by the British traders.
How was slavery different in Africa than America?
Although African slavery was not a benign institution, slaves in Africa were used in a wider variety of ways than in the New World: they were employed as agricultural workers, soldiers, servants, and officials.
How many slaves were captured in Africa?
Though exact totals will never be known, the transatlantic slave trade is believed to have forcibly displaced some 12.5 million Africans between the 17th and 19th centuries; some 10.6 million survived the infamous Middle Passage across the Atlantic.
What were the effects of African slavery on the Caribbean?
The negative impact of the slave trade on the development of the Caribbean islands. The slave trade had long lasting negative effects on the islands of the Caribbean. The native peoples, the Arawaks, were wiped out by European diseases and became replaced with West Africans.