According to Davis, slaves and peasants were perceived and subjected to common stereotypes regarding the color of their skin, the customs many of the enslaved peoples had before they were conquered, and how the elite upper classes and literate people looked down on them as a dehumanized object. To support this theory, he looked into the role that color symbolism and how physical appearance had a large impact on this misconception. (Davis 50, 57) Another sample he looked and discussed was Islamic and Christian geographic expansions and conflicts that led to the creation of the term Racism that is linked to historic events involving slavery. (Davis 54, 60) Winthrop argues that Slavery and Racism was created at the same time. He supports this argument by looking closely at the meaning of the symbolism behind the color black.
There was no space and everyone was cramped, often having to crouch or lie down. Women and children were kept in separate quarters which gave them limited freedom, however it also exposed to them violence and sexual abuse. * There was a constant threat of disease, the air was foul and seasickness was very common. Lack of sanitation and suffocating meant that there was a constant threat of disease such as smallpox, scurvy and measles. When these diseases spread, the sicker Africans were often thrown overboard.
Each model impacted African culture and government. The African model of slavery was very different from the Islamic or European model of slavery. African slavery had different forces propelling it, and what it meant for the lives of the people enslaved was vastly different. After the Bantu migration spread agriculture across the continent of Africa, slavery became common in all parts of Africa. In Africa, as in other places around the world, the vast majority of slaves were war captives, criminals and individuals banished from their clans.
Slavery, which was a major uproar from colonial America to the civil war, is the racial epidemic of the enslavement of people for money and cheap labor with extensive abuses. The question that could be asked is were the slaves dignified, did they still keep their dignity? The word dignity is the conducting of self-respect as a person sees himself or herself rather than, how others perceive that person. Slavery has been around for years and slaves have been treated unfairly for countless of reasons and situations. Did they still keep their self-respect?
(McKay, Chap 21, pg 570) In order to get a good perspective on what being a slave was like, we will look into a narrative written by Olaudah Equiano. Equiano was a native of Iboland who was captured at the age of eleven. He describes how some villagers would wait until the adults would go out in the plantations to work to abduct their younger children. Once Equiano was sold to the Europeans he says that they were treated horribly beaten and cramped on a very small boat. The reason that the slaves were treated badly could have been due to the fact that the Europeans had to pay a high price for them or just due to a lack of space.
African Diaspora and Pan-Africanism 1) What is the African Diaspora and how does it relate to the slave trade? -The African Diaspora was voluntary and the involuntary movement of Africans and their descendants to places throughout the world. They mainly moved to the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East and to other various places around the globe. This relates to the slave trade because the Africans and their descendants were enslaved and shipped to the Americas threw the slave trade. 2) Describe and discuss the small-p pan Africanism and capital-p Pan Africanism?
March 7, 2011 Dr. Hill Midterm The Regional Differences of Enslavement To fully understand the global aspect of African Diaspora, you must first grasp the meaning of the world Diaspora, which is the movement of a population from their homeland. The capture of Africans caused a greater dispersal of Africans around the world resulting in an identity change in populations developed from their new location. The trans-Atlantic slave trade brought numerous of Africans, under forced and brutal condition to the “New World”. Enslavement in the “New World” had regional variations; slavery in Brazil was different compared to slavery in America and The Caribbean. After Africans arrived in the Americas, their identity changed to enslaved persons.
The arrival of the Portuguese and the growing demand for labor in the New World and islands of the Atlantic initiated the enslavement and transportation of Africans by boat to such destinations.4 The experience of the slave became extraordinarily different during such times, with many intense hardships endured, and as a result, an effect on African society that would last into the times of present day society. Before the Atlantic slave trade was initiated, Africa knew of slavery to a reasonably large extent. Slavery had been a relatively minor institution throughout pre-Roman to modern times.5 Many of Africa’s states were free to buy and sell slaves, and traders searching for gold deposits began transporting slaves along caravan routes that lead across the Sahara to the North of Africa to work in mines.6 The expansion of Islam in the eighth century saw an increase in the trade. The number of slaves one had was a
Research Question: How did the abolitionist movement impact the slave trade? Thesis Statement: The Abolitionist movement impacted trade by forming and supporting the Underground Railroad, Causing the Civil War, and gradually ending discrimination. The American Anti-Slavery Society was established in 1833, but abolitionist sentiment antedated the republic. For example, the charter of Georgia prohibited slavery, and many of its settlers fought a losing battle against allowing it in the colony, Before independence, Quakers, most black Christians, and other religious groups argued that slavery was incompatible with Christ's teaching. Moreover, a number of revolutionaries saw the glaring contradiction between demanding freedom for themselves while holding slaves.
The impact of the slave trade in the 15th century, had devastating effects on Africa as a whole. The centuries of slave capturing and exporting drained Africa of millions of its strongest and most capable youth between the ages of 15 and 25. It is difficult to pinpoint the exact number of Africans who were taken away from the continent during the period between the 15th century and the 19th century. The European slave merchants did keep records on the sale and transport of slaves but it is difficult for any objective person to accept these records as being valid and accurate. Many slaves were transported illegally after the trade in human cargo was deemed illegal in England and America during the middle 19th century.