Search results
This was the era of the African Diaspora, an all embracing term historians have used to describe the consequences of the slave trade. Estimates of the number of slaves transported from their African homes to European colonial possession in the Americas range from 9 to 15 million people.
- The Early Cape Slave Trade
The year 1658 marks the beginning of the slave trade at the...
- The First Slaves at The Cape
On March 28 1658 the Dutch merchant ship the Amersfoort...
- The Early Cape Slave Trade
A distinct type of resistance in exploitation colonies was the slave revolt. The most dramatically successful was the Haitian Slave Revolt, on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, led by Francois Dominique Toussaint Louverture.
Feb 21, 2023 · Overview of Cape slavery which provides a good introduction to the subject. Topics include the slave trade, demography of the slave population, slavery and the economy, the slave experience, and the ending of slavery. Also available in Afrikaans. De Kock, Victor.
- Overview
- Causes
- Effects
verified
While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.
Select Citation Style
MLA
APA
Chicago Manual of Style
By the 1480s Portuguese ships were already transporting Africans for use as slaves on the sugar plantations in the Cape Verde and Madeira islands in the eastern Atlantic.
Spain and Portugal began establishing colonies in the New World about 1500. The Spanish and Portuguese initially enslaved local Indians and put them to work on plantations, but, as the violence of conquest and as European diseases took their toll on the native populations, the Spanish and Portuguese increasingly brought enslaved people over from Africa.
By the 17th century Britain, France, and Holland had also established colonies in the New World. They similarly established plantations that relied on African slave labor.
The system that emerged became known as the triangular trade because it had three stages that roughly form the shape of a triangle when viewed on a map. The first stage began in Europe, where manufactured goods were loaded onto ships bound for ports on the African coast. There the goods were exchanged for enslaved people.
The transatlantic slave trade was the second stage of the triangular trade—the shipment of enslaved people across the Atlantic Ocean.
The shipment to Europe of plantation crops and products made from them was the third leg of the triangular trade. Among the most valuable exports to Europe were sugar, tobacco, cotton, molasses, and rum.
The slave trade had devastating effects in Africa. Economic incentives for warlords and tribes to engage in the slave trade promoted an atmosphere of lawlessness and violence. Depopulation and a continuing fear of captivity made economic and agricultural development almost impossible throughout much of western Africa.
A large percentage of the people taken captive in Africa were women in their childbearing years and young men who normally would have been starting families. The European slavers usually left behind persons who were elderly, disabled, or otherwise dependent—groups who were least able to contribute to the economic health of their societies.
The transatlantic slave trade generated great wealth for many individuals, companies, and countries, but the brutal trafficking in human beings and the large numbers of deaths that resulted eventually sparked well-organized opposition to the trade.
In 1807 the British abolished the slave trade. Another law passed in 1833 freed enslaved people in British colonies.
An act banning the importation of slaves into the United States was passed by Congress in 1808 (though it did not ban slavery itself). By the 1820s other countries such as Spain, Holland, Sweden, and France had also passed laws against the slave trade.
Such laws did not immediately stop the slave trade, however, as there was still strong demand for enslaved people and profits to make from dealing in them. Additional laws and ongoing enforcement efforts finally succeeded in ending the transatlantic slave trade in the late 19th century.
Jun 25, 2021 · Compensated emancipation at the Cape was a major social rupture, ending as it did 182 years of legal slavery, changing the legal status of some 38,000 individuals. But, at the same time, in terms of labour relations in the Colony, especially in the countryside, it was something of a non-event.
- Kate Ekama, Robert Ross
- 2021
Mar 21, 2017 · Gqola offers a detailed overview of the complex and fraught position of ‘coloured’ identity in South Africa and the legacies of apartheid's divisions in post-apartheid identity politics. For discussion of Prestwich Place see Eichmann, ‘The Heritage of Slavery’.
People also ask
How did slavery affect the Cape Colony?
How did the slave trade affect Africa?
Why was slavery a key feature of the Cape Colony in South Africa?
How did colonial rule change South Africa?
Slave Resistance. Slave consciousness of injustice and awareness of issues of abolition of slavery in other parts of the world influenced two significant slave revolts in the Cape Colony. The first ‘mass movement’ against slavery and oppression in the Cape occurred in 1808.
