The History of Slave Trade and the Middle Passage

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The history of slave trade and the Middle Passage The middle passage was the backbone to the succession of slave trading in the new world. Without the completion of that leg of a voyage the Europeans would not have had the manpower to produce their agricultural goods in a massive production. That quickly led them to their wealth and well developed colonies. In Africa slave trading existed long before the Middle passage began. But a much different slave trading than the one created by the Europeans. The Africans that were enslave by their own country were the one who committed a crime, had unpaid debt and the ones that were prisoners of war. However; the Europeans held innocent Africans captive for their own purpose. They even viewed them as a piece property and treated them as if they were wild beast. Unfortunately because of the struggle to survive the African people adopted slave trade and started capturing and trading their people for European goods. Portugal’s started slavery in the fourteenth century with West Africa. The West Europeans developed a trading system in the sixteenth century but it was not successful as expected because the slaves tried to escape the hardship of labor. Later slavery expanded leading to the” Triangle Trade.” This was where ships left Europe went to Africa and then Americas. The Middle Massage was called “The Middle Passage,” because it was the second and longest part of a three part triangle trade that started from Africa and ended in North and South America, and the Caribbean. The first cargo leaving Europe contained brandy, firearms, gun powder and, iron. The first cargo was then taken to Africa Slave Coast where it was exchanged for human cargo or slaves. The capture and sale of African slaves and ending with them being forced to live in America. This journey took about six weeks, the slaves had both their hand and foot

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