Royal African Company - chartered in 1660s to establish a monopoly over the slave trade among British merchants; supplied African slaves to colonies Barbados, Jamaica, and Virginia 4. triangular trade - commerce linking Africa, the new world colonies, and Europe; slaves carried to America for sugar, and tobacco transported to Europe 5. Asante - established in Gold Coast among Akan people settled around Kumasi;
Max Bruckner History 203 Makimura Book Review #2 The Two Princes of Calabar: An Eighteenth Century Atlantic Odyssey by Randy Sparks The largest forced migration in human history, the African Slave Trade, has left little documentation records for historians to work from. Given the long lasting historical repercussions of the estimated eleven million African captives forced to cross the Atlantic from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, we know amazingly little about the individual experiences of the horrific middle passage. Randy Sparks’s book corrects this silence. It tells the remarkable story of two African princes enslaved at Old Calabar in the Bight of Biafra, taken first to the Caribbean and then shipped to Virginia. They then escaped to England where they sued for their freedom, and finally made their way back to Old Calabar.
Western Europe, Africa and the Americas are all regions that have greatly affected the Atlantic World throughout history. Although several aspects of these regions have changed in the pursuit of economic and social success in the Atlantic World, several vital, as well as hindering, continuities have stayed with these respective regions. In the period 1625 to 1825, the Americas became colonized by the Europeans and later experienced revolutions that would result in the independence of several countries, Western Europe experienced revolution politically, socially, economically and scientifically, and Africa experienced the creation of several new kingdoms as well as European colonization in the pursuit of Raw materials and the conversion of
British wanting to establish mercantilism policy, they made Navigation acts. Another purpose was to exclude Dutch smuggling into colonies. First Navigation Act (1660) stated that every thing that was shipped to England had to Trans- Atlantic trade was an international trade primary between New England colonies, Europe, West Indies, and Africa. During the 100 year period, colonists were participating in the triangular trade New England ships carrying rum sailed to Africa, where slaves were brought to the West Indies or Charleston in the Middle Passage, and the West Indies sent sugar and molasses back to New England to make rum. Other variations include manufactured goods from England for colonial tobacco, fish, grain, and naval stores (mast, pitch, tar, and turpentine) and foodstuffs and lumber for sugar, molasses, and slaves from the West
New Imperialism Between the years 1870 and 1920, European imperialism accelerated due to political, economic, and social forces. Imperialism is the domination over undeveloped countries using these forces. The Industrial Revolution helped advance the European nations through technology. Other nations were able to control over many other less-developed areas around the world. Imperialism began in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century’s affecting many countries, for example, China, India, Africa, and South America were all affected by imperialism.
During the years between 650 an 1750 AD, the Indian Ocean saw changes and continuities in commerce through new methods of transportation, new commodities, and new European involvement. Innovation in transportation, new and unexpected commodities, and the Europeans spurned change in commerce in the Indian Ocean region from 650 to 1750 AD. Change in commerce in the Indian Ocean began with the invention of the Dhow. An Arab invention, Dhows are ships whose sails can maximize monsoon winds that are often found in the Indian Ocean. This enabled trade that region to occur faster than ever before.
The Middle Passage The middle passage was when African Americans were forced to go from the West Coast of Africa to the Caribbean’s where they were marketed, and sold for profit to the plantations owners. This journey was listed as the “Middle Passage” because it was considered the middle leg of the trading triangles, and this was constructed in the early stages of the colonial period. The Middle Passage started from even before 1619 an it was the arrival of the very first African slaves in British Northern America. However, as it developed it was initially amongst Portuguese and the West African mariners in the latter part of the fifteenth century. The Africans were taken or for better word use they were kidnapped by the Europeans and, by other Africans mostly for trading spoils of
The countries involved in the ‘Scramble for Africa’ were Britain, France, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Germany and Italy. A key economic feature of colonialism was producing and exporting raw materials either agricultural or mineral, precious metals such as gold, silver and copper. Tropical products for luxury consumption such as coffee, sugar, spices, timber and fabrics like cotton. Later when Britain, France and Germany were competing against each other for colonies in Africa in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the international market had changed rapidly with a huge demand for raw materials for manufacturing such as jute, cotton, rubber and sisal (Bernstein, 1992:48). Mass consumption demand such as tea, sugar and vegetable oils (Bernstein, 1992:48).
In the 19th century most of the European states had already a developed system of colonialism in Africa and Asia that was essential for the development of industry, as the colonies became the customers of the metropolitan products produced on the base of raw materials brought from colonies. The struggle for the suppliers of the raw materials was essential in this period of time, because the existence of suppliers would guarantee the prosperity of industrial production and goods exchange. As nearly all of the countries of Europe became free from the feudal system of relations (the last one was Austro-Hungarian Empire in late 1840ies and Russia in early 1860ies, where the economic and social reforms on the transition to capitalist form of relations began the latest in Europe), there appeared a need in the rapid development of the production which could be realized only with the introduction of new technologies in every sphere of industry, in order to ease or sometimes even totally substitute the labor of a man. It became possible with the invention of the steam power, steam engine and steam-based transportation-locomotive. The
Access to commodities such as fabrics, spices, and gold motivated a European quest for a faster means to reach South Asia. It was this search that led the Portuguese down the coast of West Africa to Sierra Leone in 1460. Due to several technological and cultural advantages, Portugal dominated world trade for nearly 200 years, from the fifteenth to the sixteenth centuries. While, in the fifteenth century, the rest of Europe was decimated by the Black Plague, Portugal was protected by its physical isolation. Additionally, Portugal had an unusually strong national identity, due to its natural geographic borders, allowing the pooling of the considerable economic resources necessary to fund these ambitious explorations.