Cause and effects of Atlantic slave trade on Africa and Americas
Every day, we're reminded of current social inequalities in the United States, from Black Lives Matter movements, to the inequalities in our education systems. Where does this all stem from, and where does it begin? This brinks us to one of the largest slave trades in the world, the Atlantic slave trade. During this time from approximately 1450-1850, Portuguese sailors brought slaves from west Africa to the America's, where they were brutally enslaved and used by colonials. There were many causes for this slave trade, among them being work needed for plantations, a large surge of people migrating from Africa, and increase in trade relations with Africa, which eventually led to many effects, including, wars fought for slaves, large lifestyle changes, and changes in social classes.
The main cause for the Atlantic slave trade was the need for growing labor in plantations. This constant need for a supply of slaves, causes a large population of slaves to be imported, which eventually led to a change in societal classes, but also many deaths. This can be seen in Brazil's sugar plantations, which needed a large import of slaves, due to the deadly conditions. This was because of the humid enviorment, ripe for disease, and the prickly sugar cane as well. This led to a feedback loop, where it led to more slaves being imported, because the current ones kept dying. Another statistic is that there was almost 1 death for every ton of sugar produced, which was terrible and devastating. There were changes in societal classes, because for example, "Mulattos", as a class were created, because of the mixing of African slaves, with the locals. "Mulattos", mixed European and African blood, gained more power in societal classes, solely because there were so many of them that society couldn't ignore them. This eventually caused a long term effect, that can still be seen today, which the current social classes, and demographics in Brazil. This shows that as a direct effect of the slave trade, there were many deaths, and social class changes.
The second cause created by the Atlantic slave trade was the huge surge of people migrating from Africa. This large number of people, caused many lifestyle changes for Africans, including less women, and making education hard to find. A piece of evidence that supports the huge surge, is that almost 16 million people left Africa, which was detrimental. Sixteen million is a huge number, and is substantial enough to cause huge impacts. We can see the specific impacts in the letter the King of Kongo, wrote, were he details that they weren't enough people to teach children. This shows just how much lifestyle changed due to the migration of African people, where they specifically weren't able to learn as much. This also affected the gender demographics also, because almost 2/3 of the slaves were young men, which left mostly women left in Africa. This just shows how big of an effect the migration of people caused Africa, including huge gender ratio changes, and large lifestyle changes.
Lastly, the increase in trade relations with Africa for slaves, was a huge cause, with many impacts. These include there being many, including Portuguese settlers, and a dependence on the slave trade. This can be seen in Kongo, where they specifically changed almost their entire economy, to slave trade, specifically because of the huge demand. This led to slave raids, where they specifically go into batle for slaves, opposed to before, when slaves were byproducts of war. This example shows just how much they depended on the slave trade, so much so that they changed their war tactics, for the trade. This can be seen in other placed in the world, take Europe and China, where because of the immense demand for silver in China, Europe began to value and search for silver more than ever before. These both relate by showing an external country's demand that changes a country's goals and incentives. The main impact of this was Portuguese settlers, which changed race demographics greatly, in a way we can still see today. This is shown in Ndongo, where the slave need was so great, that the Portuguese started to create colonies in Ndongo, eventually causing Ndogo to collapse. This is one example of Portuguese colonies changing race demographics in Africa, specifically for the slave trade.
In conclusion, we see that the causes of the slave trade, which included work needed for plantations, large surges of people migrating from Africa, and increases in trade relations, created many effects, including wars, lifestyle changes, and social class changes. I hope by seeing all these long term impacts, we can think of our actions, and hope to think about the long term effects they might actually have in the real world.