Tapestry with polychrome cotton applications, 175×105 cm, made in Abomey, Benin, 2007-2009
L’Océan Noir by William Adjété Wilson
Courtesy of the author
The Atlantic slave trade profoundly affected the history of mankind. In just over four centuries a number between 11 and 13 million African men and women were forcibly deprived of their freedom and transported across the Atlantic Ocean within a system of exploitation which has provided the basis of the capitalist order that still exists today. Enslaved men and women of African origin and their descendants were not only decisive for the economic development of the modern world, but they also made a crucial contribution to the cultural and social history of the Americas.
The Atlantic slave trade reached its trafficking peak in the eighteenth century, when 6,133,000 people – that is 52 per cent of the total number of slaves of the whole Atlantic slave trade – were forced to leave Africa to reach the Americas.
Most of the captives purchased by European traders were boys and men between 14 and 30 years of age, considered more suited to heavy work on plantations; however, many women, as well as children, were victims of the Atlantic slave trade too.
Data contained in Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations in slavery: a history of slavery in Africa, Cambridge UP, 2000
WHAT SET THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE IN MOTION?
It might sound strange that something as sweet as sugar could have caused the suffering and enslavement of millions of people. Yet it was precisely the growing and insatiable European demand for sugar that set the Atlantic trade in motion.
The Portuguese were the first to employ slave labour in the production of sugar. After the ‘discovery’ of the Americas, the combination of sugar and slave labour was exported across the Atlantic, first to Brazil and then to the Caribbean.
THE TRIANGULAR TRADE
European capital, African slave labour, and American fertile soil were combined in what has been called a triangular trade: European traders left for Africa with ships loaded with goods such as fabrics, firearms, alcohol, which were exchanged with African traders to obtain slaves in the forts along the coast of Africa; once purchased, the captives were loaded onto ships and transported to the Americas where they were employed in the cultivation of sugar, tobacco and cotton. The triangle ended with the transport of these goods to European ports, such as Liverpool or Bordeaux.
As opposed to commun belief, most slaves were not destined for tobacco and cotton platations in North America, but for sugar cane plantations in the Caribbean and Brasil, as this graph shows.
Number of slaves exported fron Africa to the Americas during the period of the Atlantic trade (1450-1900); graph created on the basis of the data contained in Paul E. Lovejoy, Transormation in slavery: a history of slavery in Africa, Cambridge UP, 2000
WHAT GOODS WERE EXCHANGED FOR SLAVES?
One of the myths about slave trade is that African traders and political authorities were willing to sell women and men in exchange for goods of little or no value. But it is not so. Once they entered the African economic circuits, objects which in Europe had little value came to be used as real coins.
COWRIE SHELLS
In many West African societies these shells were used as a real currency, for example to buy goods in the markets or to pay taxes. Furthermore, they were used in the production of ritual objects, thus acquiring important artistic and religious functions too.
MANILLAS
Manillas is the Portuguese term for brass or copper bracelets used in the slave trade as early as the 15th century. They were produced by European factories for the African market, often melted down and then used in Africa in the production of tools and weapons.
Photo by Augusto Panini. Thanks to Murano Glass Museum (Venice)
VENETIAN BEADS
Other items used in the purchase of slaves were glass beads produced on the island of Murano, in Venice. At the end of the 18th century, beads constituted half of the whole glass production for international markets, mainly African.
Tastes for colours and shapes changed very rapidly and for this reason Venetian producers created sample folders to distribute to their agents and informants stationed in African ports.
Cowries and beads were among the very few objects that African slaves managed to take with them on ships on the journey to the Americas. Being very small, they could be hidden from the eyes of the overseers. Archaeological excavations in the plantations have brought to light several graves in which shells and beads were buried as ritual objects with the deceased.
De Young Museum, San Francisco Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons