Why the trade rose and grew – Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (Triangular Trade) (Senior 1 History and Citizenship) | Ganzaa

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (Triangular Trade)

Lessons

Senior 1 · History and Citizenship

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (Triangular Trade)

4 lessons

Lesson 2 of 4

Why the trade rose and grew

25 min

A boy named Olaudah

In 1789 a book was published in London with a portrait of its author at the front. It was called The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, and it was written by a man who had once been enslaved. Equiano tells us that he was born among the Igbo people, in what is now south-eastern Nigeria:

"… in one of the most remote and fertile of which, called Eboe, I was born, in the year 1745, in a charming fruitful vale, named Essaka."
Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative (London, 1789), chapter 1. Public domain.

He describes a village of farmers, craftsmen and traders, with its own laws, music and religion. Then, when he was about eleven years old, everything changed:

"One day, when all our people were gone out to their works as usual, and only I and my dear sister were left to mind the house, two men and a woman got over our walls, and in a moment seized us both, and, without giving us time to cry out, or make resistance, they stopped our mouths, and ran off with us into the nearest wood."
Equiano, The Interesting Narrative, chapter 2. Public domain.

Olaudah and his sister were soon separated. He was sold from trader to trader for months as he was taken towards the coast, and there he saw the sea for the first time:

"The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea, and a slave ship, which was then riding at anchor, and waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror when I was carried on board."
Equiano, The Interesting Narrative, chapter 2. Public domain.

Equiano's story is one among millions. This lesson asks: why did a trade that tore children like him from their families grow so large, and last for nearly four hundred years?

Definition

Chattel slavery: a form of slavery in which an enslaved person is treated in law as the property (chattel) of the owner, who can buy, sell or pass them on like an object; their children are born enslaved too. Example: the slavery practised on the plantations of the Americas.

Definition

Cash crop: a crop grown to be sold, often far away, rather than eaten by the family that grows it. Example: sugar cane in Brazil, tobacco in Virginia, cotton in the southern United States.

Definition

Racism: the false belief that people can be ranked as better or worse according to their race or skin colour, and the unfair treatment that follows from it. Example: European writers who claimed that Africans were fit only to be enslaved, in order to defend the trade.

Why the trade rose and grew

No single cause explains the trade. Historians group its causes into factors in the Americas, in Europe and in Africa.

Where	Factor	How it drove the trade
The Americas	New lands after 1492	After Columbus reached the Caribbean in 1492, Spain and Portugal, then Britain, France and the Netherlands, seized huge areas of land in the Americas.
	Plantations	Sugar, and later tobacco, cotton and coffee, needed very many workers all year round. Plantation owners wanted labour that was cheap and could not leave.
	Death of Indigenous peoples	Diseases brought from Europe, such as smallpox and measles, together with war and forced labour, killed a very large share of the Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean and Brazil. Colonists then turned to Africa for workers.
Europe	Demand and profit	Europeans bought more and more sugar, tobacco and coffee. Merchants, banks and insurers made large profits from ships, plantations and trade.
	Experience and ships	The Portuguese had already used enslaved Africans on sugar islands such as Madeira and São Tomé in the 1400s. Their ships and their knowledge of the Atlantic winds made the crossing regular. From 1525, ships sailed directly from São Tomé to the Americas.
	Governments and companies	Governments gave trading companies such as England's Royal African Company (1672) the right to trade, and in 1713 Britain won the asiento, Spain's licence to supply enslaved Africans to its colonies.
	Industry and racist ideas	As industry grew in the 1700s, factories produced more cloth, guns and metal goods to exchange on the coast. Laws that treated Africans as property, and racist ideas invented to excuse this, allowed traders and buyers to ignore the humanity of the people they sold.
Africa	Rulers and merchants who traded	Some African rulers and merchants sold captives, often prisoners of war or people seized in raids, in exchange for cloth, metal, alcohol and especially guns.
	The guns-for-captives cycle	Guns made states that had them stronger. Their neighbours needed guns too, to defend themselves, and paid for them with more captives. Wars and raids increased.
	Trade moving to the coast	As you saw in Unit 6, the trans-Saharan routes declined, and trade was drawn to the Atlantic coast, where European ships waited.

Warning

Two common mistakes. First, "Africans sold other Africans" is not the whole story. The captives did not think of themselves as one people with their sellers: a Kongo ruler selling prisoners from a distant enemy did not see them as his own people. And the demand, the ships, the plantations and the laws that made people into property came from Europe and the Americas. Second, not every African ruler joined the trade. In lesson 4 you will meet rulers who fought against it.

Worked example: how reliable is Equiano's account?

Who and why? A formerly enslaved African who became a campaigner against the slave trade in London. He wrote to persuade British readers and Parliament to end the trade, so he chose moving scenes. That is a purpose, not a lie, but we should notice it.
When? He wrote in 1789, more than thirty years after his capture, when he was in his forties, so some details of his childhood may have faded.
What can be checked? Much of his later life has been confirmed: ship records, his sale in 1762, the document that freed him on 10 July 1766, his marriage in 1792 and his campaigning.
What is debated? In 1999 the historian Vincent Carretta found a baptism record from 1759 and a ship's list from 1773 that give his birthplace as Carolina, in North America. Carretta asked whether Equiano's African childhood might be based on other people's stories. Other historians reply that the records were written by officials who may simply have copied what they were told, and that his descriptions of Igbo life are detailed and accurate.
Verdict. Historians still disagree about where he was born. But even if some details are uncertain, his book agrees closely with many other accounts by enslaved Africans and ships' officers. It is valuable evidence of how capture and enslavement were experienced, told by an African himself.

Important

The trade grew because plantations in the Americas needed labour, Europe demanded sugar and other crops, profits were high, and some African rulers exchanged captives for guns and goods.
Laws that made Africans into property (chattel slavery) and racist ideas were used to justify the trade.
Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative (1789) is one of the most important accounts written by a formerly enslaved African.

Tip

Memory hook: "Land, Labour, Luxury, Lucre".Land seized in the Americas; labour needed on plantations; luxury goods such as sugar wanted in Europe; lucre (profit) for merchants and rulers.

OER Project: "The Columbian Exchange Explained: How 1492 Changed the World". Watch the last part on the negative effects: how did the exchange of crops and diseases after 1492 lead to the trade in enslaved Africans?

Discussion

In groups: Equiano wrote his book to change the minds of people who had never seen the trade. Why do you think a story about one boy and his sister might persuade readers more than a list of numbers? Can you think of a story told today that has changed how people think about an injustice?

✦

Practice

In which year was Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative first published?
Explain why plantations in the Americas needed so many workers.
Why did colonists in the Caribbean and Brazil turn to Africa for workers?
What was the "guns-for-captives cycle"?
What is chattel slavery?
Give one reason to trust Equiano's account and one reason to be careful with it.
Evaluate the statement: "The slave trade happened because Africans sold Africans."

Show answersHide answers

1789.
Crops such as sugar, tobacco and cotton needed many workers all year round, and the owners wanted cheap labour that could not leave.
Diseases from Europe, war and forced labour had killed a very large share of the Indigenous peoples, so colonists looked elsewhere for workers.
States with guns grew stronger, so their neighbours needed guns to defend themselves and paid for them with captives, which led to more wars and raids.
Slavery in which the law treats an enslaved person as property that can be bought, sold or inherited, and their children are born enslaved.
Trust: many details of his life are confirmed by other records, and his account agrees with other witnesses. Care: he wrote to persuade, more than thirty years after his capture, and records suggest a possible birth in Carolina.
It is too simple. Some African rulers and merchants did sell captives, but the demand, ships, plantations, laws and profits came mainly from Europe and the Americas; captives and sellers did not see themselves as one people; and some African rulers resisted the trade.

Sources and credits

Extracts from Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789), chapters 1 and 2, via Project Gutenberg (eBook #15399), public domain.
Image: Olaudah Equiano, frontispiece to The Interesting Narrative (1789), engraving by Daniel Orme after William Denton, British Library, via Wikimedia Commons, CC0.
Background facts checked against Olaudah Equiano, Wikipedia contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, adapted by Ganzaa.
Background facts checked against Atlantic slave trade, Wikipedia contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, adapted by Ganzaa.
Video: "The Columbian Exchange Explained: How 1492 Changed the World", OER Project, embedded from YouTube.

The rest of this lesson, its diagrams, tables, worked examples and practice items, and the unit exercises were written by Ganzaa.

This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.

1A boy named Olaudah

2Why the trade rose and grew

3Discussion

A boy named Olaudah

Why the trade rose and grew

Discussion