The Transatlantic Slave Trade
Once established, slavery expanded rapidly. During the 1700s, the British colonies imported approximately 1,500,000 enslaved Africans. The great majority went to be the West Indies, but at least 250,000 came to the 13 colonies to labor on plantation and in homes.
Traders purchased slaves from African merchant and chiefs in the coastal kingdoms of West Africa. Most of those enslaved were kidnapped by armed men or taken in wars between h=kingdoms. Although they did not directly seize slaves, Europeans promoted the trade by offering high prices for captives.
Enslaved Africans came to the Americas as part of s three-past voyage called the triangular trade. Slave traders sailed from Europe to Africa, where they traded manufactured goods for enslaved Africans. then, in the Middle Passage, shippers carried the enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to the American colonies. After selling the slaves for colonial produce, the traders returned to the mother country.
The brutality of the Middle Passage was extreme. On a voyage that lasted two mothers or more, enslaved Africans suffered the psychological trauma of separation from their families and village-as they sailed toward a strange land and an unknown future. Slave traders branded their cargo with hot irons, placed them in shackles, and jammed them into dark holds so crowded that the slaves could hardly move. The foul air promoted disease, and the ill might be thrown overboard to prevent the spread of disease. Some Africans, hoping for death, refused to eat. One ship’s surgeon witnessed the following shocking scene.
Primary Source “Upon the Negroes refusing to take sustenance [food], 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.”
Slave traders had an interest in delivering a large and healthy. However, due to the condition, at least 10 percent of those making the Middle Passage in the 1700s did not survive.