The transatlantic slave trade had complex origins from both Europe and Africa's role in the demand and supply of slaves. Portugal first imported African slaves in the 15th century for labor needs. This grew into a triangular trade route between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Enslaved Africans endured horrific conditions during the Middle Passage voyage where overcrowding and disease were rampant. The slave trade was eventually abolished in the early 19th century due to growing abolition movements, slave rebellions like Haiti, and laws banning the slave trade. However, the legacy of the slave trade continues to impact societies through issues like racism and unequal development.

1. TRANSATLANTIC
SLAVE TRADE
BLACK HISTORY SCHOOL

2. “It takes more than a horrifying
transatlantic voyage chained in the filthy hold
of a slave ship to erase someone’s culture”
Maya Angelou

3. CONTENTS
1. Origins of Slave Trade
2. Triangular Trade
3. Middle Passage
4. Excerpts about Middle Passage
5. Landmark Case recognizing slaves as humans
6. How and why did slave trade start?
7. Abolition Movement
8. Decline of Slave Trade
9. Legacy

4. ORIGINS OF SLAVE TRADE

5. ORIGINS OF SLAVE TRADE
• Portugal heavily import African slaves to ship building
• Economic-driven era
• Mercantilism economy theory
• Appreciation of slave like capital in Europe
• Symbiotic relationship with Industrial Revolution
• Need labor for profitable, but labor-intensive sugar
plantations in the Caribbean and Brazil

7. TRIANGULAR TRADE
European manufactured goods like guns, gunpowder,
glass, textiles traded for slaves
Slaves sent to West Indies
In return raw goods like sugar, cotton, rice, coffee,
tobacco sent to Europe

8. MIDDLE PASSAGE
It is dangerous journey in which slaves were
captured and loaded onto ships
to travel across the Atlantic Ocean

10. REAL FACTS ABOUT MIDDLE PASSAGE:
1. Brutal conditions:
• Poor sanitation
• Overcrowding
• Disease
• Force-fed
• Lack of water
• Forcing to “dance” to stay agile
• Common death

11. REAL FACTS ABOUT MIDDLE PASSAGE:
2. Upon Arrival in Americas covering in grease so that they looked
healthy and more valuable at auctions, branded as possessions
3. Seasoning - “breaking” or “conditioning” slaves for new life of
labor
4. New name, loss of identity and real communication with others

12. EXCERPTS ABOUT
MIDDLE PASSAGE

13. From Slave Olaudah Equiano’s narrative
(The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah
Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African) 1789:
“The noise and clamor with which this is attended,
and the eagerness visible in the countenances of the
buyers, serve not a little to increase the apprehension
of terrified Africans... In this manner, without scruple,
are relations and friends separated, most of them
never to see each other again.”

14. From An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of
Africa by Alexander Falconbridge, a surgeon on slave
ships (1788):
“ Upon the Negroes refusing to take sustenance, I
have seen coals of fire, glowing hot, put on a shovel
and placed so near their lips as to scorch and burn
them. And this has been accompanied with threats of
forcing them to swallow the coals if they any longer
persisted in refusing to eat. These means have
generally had the desired effect. I have also been
credibly informed that a certain captain in the slave-
trade, poured melted lead on such of his Negroes as
obstinately refused their food. . . ”

16. A LANDMARK
CASE RECOGNIZING
SLAVES AS HUMANS

17. ZONG SLAVE SHIP COURT CASE 1781
• London ship navigates to wrong shore
• Not enough resources for the overcrowded ship.
• Crew throws 132 alive slaves into ocean believing that
since the slaves were property, they could claim
insurance

18. • Former slave Equiano found out and alerted Quaker
abolitionists. Case goes to court.
• Court first says it is allowed to kill “animals” for the
safety of the ship, equating Africans to being animals.
• Eventually, landmark decision concluded that the
Africans were people.

20. HOW AND WHY DID
SLAVE TRADE START?
Europe’s Role

21. Portugal and Spain
15-16th century
• Prince Henry the Navigator explored coast of West
Africa by 1460, since North Africa was already occupied
by Muslims
• Initially sought gold, but found profit in slaves
• Spanish Asiento give permission for Great Britain to sell
slaves to Spanish colonies

22. Germany
17th century
• Dutch West India Company controls richest sugar crops
in Brazil
• Copper trade

23. France and Great Britain
late 17th-18th century
• Captain John Hawkins, under the rule of Queen Elizabeth I,
heads first English slave ship voyage in 1562
• First British settlement in Jamestown, Virginia 1607
• France founds Quebec in 1608
• Initially, only British government can transport slaves through
Royal African Company, this changes in 1698 so rich can take
advantage of this profitable trade

25. Economic Impact in Europe
• Eventually jumpstarts Industrial Revolution with the profits
made by sugar and other investments – advancement of
technology
• 2nd half of 18th century, British wonder about the morality of
this slave trade and religious groups of Quakers and
Methodists began to organize and spread abolitionist
messages

26. Economic Impact in Europe
• Wealthy port cities, like Liverpool, UK develop
• Cotton as raw material in textile production
Employment
Shift in roles, women go to work
Stimulate need for transportation
Railroads

27. HOW AND WHY DID
SLAVE TRADE START?
Africa’s Role

28. SLAVES IN AFRICA

29. • Slavery has existed since ancient times
• Global scale with growth of European colonial expansion and
demand for supply of slaves
• European traders rarely go inland for fear of disease and
unknown territory so they trade along the coast
• Civil war and hostile rivalries within Africa led Africans to
capture and sell other Africans to European slave traders in
return for to trade for goods like guns, gunpowder, textile,
glass, iron (M'Bokolo)

30. • Become involved in slave raid (immediate profit return)
instead of build powerful states which require time and
greater cost (roads, border security, government system)
(M’Bokolo)
• King Gezo (1840)
“The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people. It is the
source and the glory of their wealth... the mother lulls the child
sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery...”
(BBC)

31. Impact in Africa
• Before slavery: variety of religious, spiritual beliefs
• By 15th century, Portuguese missionaries spread Christian
beliefs in Africa

32. HOW AND WHY DID
SLAVE TRADE START?
The New World’s Role

33. • First slaves arrive on Hispaniola in 1502 on Cuba, then
Jamaica, South Carolina, Virginia, Colombia
• Arrival of Europeans in New World brought diseases that
reduced the native population drastically
• Only 5% of slaves go to North America, rest go to Brazil and
Caribbean (West Indies)
• Black slaves fulfill labor force on the plantation

34. • “Plantation economy” produces huge number of cash crops
like cotton, sugar, tobacco
more slaves than European settlers ("Africa and the
Transatlantic Slave Trade")
• vs. lineage slavery in Africa, descendants may not share the
same status, slaves were given tasks that free people did not
want to do, not laborious manual labor for the singular goal of
maximizing profit

35. Impact on the New World
United States
• Gabriel’s Rebellion (1800), Vesey Conspiracy (1822), and Nat
Turner’s Rebellion (1831)
• Frederick Douglass aids abolition movement, Civil War,
culminates in Emancipation Proclamation (1863)
South America
• Simon Bolivar – 1826 liberate South America
• Brazil Emancipation (1888) (Chambers 776)

36. SLAVES IN BRAZIL

37. HOW AND WHY DID
SLAVE TRADE START?
Religion

38. Americas
• British slaveholders were afraid that Christianity would result
in slaves demanding freedom (Muhammad)
• Appealing to slave through similar actions of dancing, call-
and-response (ring shout) singing; missionaries say slaves
would bond through a common religion, "social control“
(Muhammad)
• Great Awakening spread messages like "individual freedom"
and "direct channel with God" (same "one god" belief as
those of African religions), concept of heaven, with Baptist
and Methodist churches

39. Americas
• Colonies then passed laws that said conversion did not change
their slave status
• Spanish government promise fugitive slaves freedom if they
came to Florida and converted (Muhammad)
• Several slave rebellions happen
plantation owners fear religion is cause behind these
insurrections, restrict blacks from meeting, tear down
churches (Muhammad)

40. SLAVE REBELLION

41. Americas and Europe
• use Bible to justify slavery – “bring civilization”

42. ABOLITION MOVEMENT
Driven by many reasons, including beliefs
spread by Methodist and Quakers,
former slave autobiographies,
awareness of inhumanity,
French/American
revolution

43. Toussaint L’Ouverture
Notable Figures of Abolition Movement
• leader of successful 13-year slave rebellion in Saint-Domingue
on the island of Hispanola, gaining independence from France
in 1804
• influence from the French Revolution taking place overseas
Click here to learn
• grand-scale influence: Haiti become a refuge for slaves
escaping from Jamaica, inspires Simon Bolivar to fight for
Venezuela's independence, inspires enslaved blacks in United
States to revolt

45. William Wilberforce
Notable Figures of Abolition Movement
• member of British Parliament
• dedicated to the abolition of slavery
• 1807 – 263 to 16 vote in favor of abolishing transatlantic slave

47. DECLINE OF SLAVE TRADE

48. 1. Olaudah Equiano (1745 – 1797) – slave who bough his
freedom after 21 years, involved in the British abolition
movement
2. Haitian Rebellion at Saint Domingue of 1791 – abolish
slavery, gain independence, led by Toussaint L’Ourverture
(Chambers 598-600)
3. British Slave Trade Act 1807 – abolishes slave trade, but not
slavery.
• Began with growing Christian duty, spread by new forms of
Protestantism, such as Quakerism to free the “oppressed
savage” (Rubenstein 267)
• Led by politicians William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson

49. 4. Treaty of Paris 1814 – includes agreement to end slave trade
in 5 years, in 1814 Dutch outlaw slave trade too
5. La Amistad (1839) – slave-led mutiny on ship from Sierra
Leone to Cuba => end up in U.S. court case, United States v.
La Amistad, survivors return to Africa in 1842

50. LEGACY

51. LEGACY
Africa
• Lack of common language and religion
• Tension between state borders caused by ethnic differences
and unequal levels of wealth
• poverty due to lack of industrial/economic growth because
younger generation is sold into slavery
Americas
• Forever alters history racism
• Key issue in American politics – leading to many arguments
between North and South states

52. BLACK HISTORY
SCHOOL
TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE COURSE