For centuries, the trade along a triangular trading route, provided the capital to finance the industrialization of Europe and development of the European economy - trade only possible at the expense of slaves. The Triangular Trade consisted of three stops: · The outward passage from Europe to Africa bearing manufactured goods. · The middle passage from Africa to the Americas bearing African captives. · The homeward passage from the Americas to Europe carrying sugar, tobacco, cotton, rice, indigo, and cocoa (Source: Triangular Trade). We know that before the Middle Passage, a slave trade already existed in Africa, but this was different. The Middle Passage was a systematic process of extracting Africans for a specific purpose, as workers stripped of their humanity in the New World. The ill-fated relationship between the Kongolese and Portuguese evolved over time. While the Portuguese struggled to find an asset with which they could entice the Africans to trade, the shift in their subservient position was gradual. The influx of European goods, particularly firearms, slowly disrupted West African cultures. The technological advancement of gunfire brought the Europeans power and wealth, but for some West Africans is empowered them to more efficiently captured slaves. Religious and political structural division within West African states reinforced the slave system and produced a profitable supply of slaves which were traded for European goods, largely guns. Those communities that captured the most slaves received the most European goods, and were the best equipped to expand their power and prestige in West Africa (Source: Scott). The Ashantis and Dahomeans specialized in the art of enslaving. Initially cut off from the Europeans by coastal tribes, who acted as middlemen, these two tribes from the interior of Africa, pushed toward the sea, extending their terror as their power increased. In 1727, John Atkins complained that the triumph of Dahomey had destroyed the orderly patterns of the slave trade. Specialized trading states was matched by the arrival of independent traders who sights were set on acquiring slaves quickly for maximum profit (Source: Scott). It can be argued quite effectively that sugar was the number one crop that produced growth for Europe. Sugar production and potential profits served as the basis for a plantation complex that fueled the need for slaves. Your textbook states that something as evil and gruesome as the Atlantic slave trade was set in motion largely to produce something as apparently benign as sugar. While that is overly simplified, it paints a vivid reality -- trafficking of humans for their labor to satisfy the sweet tooth of Europe and to feed the coffers of capitalists (though they would not have been called capitalists in the 15th century). Sugar was introduced to Europeans by Muslims during the Crusades. Cultivation began in Cyprus and Sicily at least a centuries before the Portuguese started exploring the ...

1. For centuries, the trade along a triangular trading route,
provided the capital to finance the industrialization of Europe
and development of the European economy - trade only possible
at the expense of slaves.
The Triangular Trade consisted of three stops:
· The outward passage from Europe to Africa bearing
manufactured goods.
· The middle passage from Africa to the Americas bearing
African captives.
· The homeward passage from the Americas to Europe carrying
sugar, tobacco, cotton, rice, indigo, and cocoa (Source:
Triangular Trade).
We know that before the Middle Passage, a slave trade already
existed in Africa, but this was different. The Middle Passage
was a systematic process of extracting Africans for a specific
purpose, as workers stripped of their humanity in the New
World.
The ill-fated relationship between the Kongolese and
Portuguese evolved over time. While the Portuguese struggled
to find an asset with which they could entice the Africans to
trade, the shift in their subservient position was gradual. The
influx of European goods, particularly firearms, slowly
disrupted West African cultures. The technological
advancement of gunfire brought the Europeans power and
wealth, but for some West Africans is empowered them to more
efficiently captured slaves. Religious and political structural
division within West African states reinforced the slave system
and produced a profitable supply of slaves which were traded
for European goods, largely guns. Those communities that
captured the most slaves received the most European goods, and
were the best equipped to expand their power and prestige in
West Africa (Source: Scott).
The Ashantis and Dahomeans specialized in the art of enslaving.
Initially cut off from the Europeans by coastal tribes, who acted

2. as middlemen, these two tribes from the interior of Africa,
pushed toward the sea, extending their terror as their power
increased. In 1727, John Atkins complained that the triumph of
Dahomey had destroyed the orderly patterns of the slave trade.
Specialized trading states was matched by the arrival of
independent traders who sights were set on acquiring slaves
quickly for maximum profit (Source: Scott).
It can be argued quite effectively that sugar was the number one
crop that produced growth for Europe. Sugar production and
potential profits served as the basis for a plantation complex
that fueled the need for slaves. Your textbook states that
something as evil and gruesome as the Atlantic slave trade was
set in motion largely to produce something as apparently benign
as sugar. While that is overly simplified, it paints a vivid reality
-- trafficking of humans for their labor to satisfy the sweet tooth
of Europe and to feed the coffers of capitalists (though they
would not have been called capitalists in the 15th century).
Sugar was introduced to Europeans by Muslims during the
Crusades. Cultivation began in Cyprus and Sicily at least a
centuries before the Portuguese started exploring the African
coast. Initially, the Italians controlled the sugar trade. Italians
dominated the European commercial world during the 12th and
13th centuries (remember the Italian Renaissance?). They had
the finances to support the cultivation of sugar cane, acquisition
of the labor force (Slavic slaves) and to purchase equipment to
convert the cane into crystallized sugar. They also had the
business acumen to recognize an opportunity to produce wealth.
It is not an understatement to say that the capitalism and slavery
grew up together and fed each other. There was a major shift
going on in Europe --money and skill acquired in commerce
(trading) was invested in agriculture and industry. The
agricultural side, was labor intensive crops which consumers
demanded with more and more frequency.
It was mentioned previously that, Slavic (from which the term
"slaves" originated) forced labor was used to work the fields.
Then, a couple things happened almost simultaneously that

3. shifted Europe s attention to the continent of Africa for their
slaves. First, Constantinople (Christian gateway, later called
Istanbul by the Turks) was captured by the Turks. This gave the
Turks (Muslims) control of the strait between the Black Sea and
the Mediterranean which was the route the Italians (Catholics)
had used to transport slaves to European islands, which cutoff
the availability of slaves.
The second thing was that the Portuguese acquired the skills
necessary to navigate the coast of Africa. With Italian funding,
the Portuguese established a island off the West Coast of
Africa, produced sugar cane, and developed a relationship with
the Kingdom of Kongo, and seized control of the slave trade
replacing the Slavs with Africans. On the island of São Tomé
sugar production flourished. It was the Portuguese who first
demonstrated on São Tomé that sugar could be produced a
distance from the consumer and that the relationship between
Africans labor and the sugar economy was established.
Therefore, when Europeans established sugar plantations in the
Americas, from their perspective, the logical source of labor
was West Africa.
Individuals from the Kongo region of Central Africa were
befriended by the Portuguese and came in conflict with other
African states, most notably Ndongo. The economies of the
region became more and more dependent on the slave trade.
Increaed warfare and taxation became the means by which
African states made demands upon the Europeans. Trade routes,
depots and caravans were established to bring captives from as
far as 2,500 miles inland to the coast. This tract is referred as
the Continental Passage.
In the 1580s the Ngondo State was invaded by the Portuguese.
While military conquest failed, alliances were able to gradually
undermine the state. Princess Njinga rose to the throne in 1618,
in a State unaccustomed to female sovereigns. (Side note: She
dressed as a male and her consorts, which were male dressed as
females). In 1641, she choose the wrong side and aligned with

4. the Dutch who challenged the Portuguese over Kongo. The
Dutch were defeated, which left Ndongo in a tenuous position.
Though Ngondo was permitted to remain an independent state,
they were forced to permit Christian missionaries. This era in
Ngondo is an example of the complexity of African slavery. The
Princess was an early example of African nationalism, an early
feminist, and an opportunist that willingly involved her State in
the abduction of slaves in order to acquire and maintain power.
In 1685, the Portuguese invaded Kongo, their former ally.
Unsuccessful in their attempt to control the Kongo, they
managed to disrupt the stable community. The king was killed,
which led to instability and dynastic disputes and ultimately to
civil war. By 1710, the Kongo totally disintegrated, which left
the only victors in the turmoil slave traders, both European and
African.
West Africa s experience was distinct from that of Central
Africa. With a greater population and geographic region, no
single community of West Africa suffered as high of per capital
incidence of enslavement as Central Africa. Trade in West
Africa shifted according to local political conditions. Benin and
Warri, were trading partners with the Portuguese, trading other
commodities as well as slaves. Benin s wealth was built on the
diversity of the trading relationship. By 1516, the ruling oba
(king) banned the trade of slaves, which lasted for nearly 200
years. However, as the European appetite for diverse products
declined, so did the wealth of Benin, which lead them to reopen
trade in slaves in the 1700s.
Oyo, Dahomey, and Asante represent three additional states in
West Africa that participated in the slave trade. In order to
increase their military power, slaves were traded for weapons.
Oyo, who had a similar idea, built her military on a horse-based
cavalry, which enabled her to defeat the Yoruba and assume the
dominant role of the slave trade until the late 1700s.

5. Founded in the 14th century, Oyo was situated in the woodland
north of the tropical forest, making it a region ideal for growing
cereal crops and a region free of tsetse flies, making it suitable
for horses. With the increased demand for slaves in the 1780s,
Oyo became a major handler of slaves. The overdependence on
the European appetite proved devastating when wars broke out
between England and France in the 1790s which effectively
reduced the demand for slaves. The loss of income, led to less
wealth to support political constituents in Oyo and over taxation
of peasantry and the decline of the State (Source: Shillington,
2005).
Dahomey was one of the neighboring communities of Oyo that
was forced to pay tribute to the alafin (ruler). Founded in the
early 17th century, Wegbaja organized a loose federation of
communities into a powerful centralized state. Wegbaja took
profits from the sale of captives and invested in firearms to
secure his imperialistic appetite and consolidate power. The
expansion of power permitted them to defeat coastal states in
the early 1700s , thus allowed them to sell directly to European
traders. At least one historian recorded that Dahomian king
Agaja attempted to suppress the exportation of slaves out of
Africa. He is reported to have asked Europeans to establish
plantations in Dahomey using slave labor so that the slaves
would not be actually lost to Africa, a proposal the Europeans
rejected (Source: Shillington, 2005).
The most successful of the states was the Asante, which was
founded by Osei Tutu in 1670. At its peak, Asante controlled
much of the region of modern Ghana, comprising about 100,000
square mile and a population of 3 million. Asante did not export
all of its captives, many were retained to work in the gold mines
and work on plantations. By the 19th century. Asante was faced
with the growing coastal influence of the British, who supported
the Fante confederation. The Asante and Europeans fought in a
series of wars for control of the coast and trade. The first head-

6. to-head battle took place in 1824. The Asante killed the British
governor, giving them the victory. Then in 1874, military
technology shifted the balance of power to the British who
defeated the Asante and burned and sacked their capital.
To America
In the 15th and 16th centuries, world events changed Europe
and Africa forever. The most important of these events was the
European discovery and opening of the New World. It is almost
ironic that the first black captives - Black Christians born in
Spain and Portugal - were with the first European explorers and
settlers. Black explorers - servants, slaves, and free -
accompanied Spanish and Portuguese explorers in the
expeditions in North and South America. Black were with
Pizarro in Peru, Cortes in Mexico, Balboa when he discovered
the Pacific Ocean, and Menendez in Florida. W.E.B. DuBois
said other Blacks accompanied DeSoto and one of them stayed
among the Indians in Alabama and became the first settler. . . "
(Bennett, 1992).
Spaniards, who took the lead in exploration of the New World,
attempted first to enslave Native Americans. An effort that
proved ineffective for a variety of reasons, which led Bishop
Bartolome Las Casas, missionary, to recommend in 1517 the
importation of Africans. The development of large-scale sugar
plantations created a demand for men that could not be supplied
by just kidnapping. So, there was a shift in the previous civil
dialogue between Africans and Europeans to an almost one-way
monologue focused mainly on a trade of humans. Bennett put
the tragedy this way, within a few years hundreds of thousands
of Blacks were crossing the Atlantic each year and the soil of
Africa and America was drenched with their blood. Strange,
said Eric Williams, that an article like sugar, so sweet and
necessary to human existence, should have occasioned, such
crimes and bloodshed (Bennett, 1992).
The numbers of Africans that were transported directly to the
United States range from 400,000 to 1 million between 1619
and 1808, when the importation of slaves became illegal. That

7. did not stop the importation of slaves, but seriously slowed
down the business of importation. And, please do not get the
importation of slaves mixed up with the slave trade. The only
thing that became illegal in the United States in 1808 was
importing slaves, not slavery! That decision was made as part of
the compromises that solidified the U.S. Constitution in 1789
(Berry & Blassingame, 1982).
The first Black immigrants in the Jamestown settlement of 1619
are of critical importance to the history of Blacks in America.
They came the same way that most of the first white immigrants
came - under duress and pressure. The system of indentured
servitude was the means by which poor people came to America,
selling their services for a specific number of years to planters.
Under the system thousands of poor whites were shipped to the
colonies and sold to the highest bidder (Bennett, 1992).
In Virginia, the first Black settlers were absorbed into a well-
established socioeconomic system that was not initially racial in
its nature. Racial distinction and discrimination came later. For
about a 40 year period, Blacks comingled with whites on a basis
of equality. Acquiring property, land and servants, testifying in
courts, and voting. During the 40 years the Black population of
Virginia grew through both natural means and importation. In
the 1624 census, Blacks constituted about 2% of the total
population of 1,227 (Bennett, 1992).
While the historic records indicate thriving communities of
Black Africans in the American colonies, by the 1660s, men
who ran the colonies, made decisions that would lead, step-by-
step to the racist foundation of human labor. Colonial men,
decided to base the American economic system on human
slavery organized around the melanin in human skin. Virginia
and Maryland led the way, enacting laws in the 1660s that
forbade intermarriage and made Blacks slaves for life. Under
the law, children born of African women were ruled slave or
free, according to the status of the mother. Almost immediately
an additional step was taken -the creation of an ideology of
racism that justified the subordination of Blacks (Bennett,

8. 1992).
Lasting Impact
From a historical perspective, the importance of slavery lies in
three areas. First it was the major determinant of American race
relations. Second, slaves played a crucial role in transforming
African culture to a unique Black culture in America. And,
third, African slavery stood as America's greatest accuser.
When one looks at race relations across the centuries, arguably
the most visible example of America's discrimination of its
minority populations is its treatment of African and African
descendants. During the 19th century, Jim Crow laws became
the standard by which America defines its schools, housing,
employment, and justice. Legal separation of Blacks and whites,
was the legal standard until 1954 and many would argue is the
defacto standard by which the nation operates even today.
Black culture in America stands uniquely in contrast to,
sometimes in opposition to, the dominant culture. Music, dress,
religious worship, language patterns, and names are but a few of
the cultural styles that are often explicitly defined by a social
group. In the next lesson we will explore an African connection
by tapping into African traditions.
The third element stands as a mirror by which the nation sees its
reflection. Forever reminded of the tragedy and travesty of
history, slavery is a reality check for the American psyche.
Always having to see its greatest in light of its evil. Its national
story of liberty and justice for all in contrast to its legacy of
chattel slavery. Although some form of involuntary slavery had
existed in all societies prior to the formation of the United
States, none of them had the fundamental documents and
philosophies so unequivocably contradict the very foundation of
the nation (Berry & Blassingame, 1982).