Slavery and Servitude: Causes and Effects of Trans-Atlantic Trade

SLAVERY AND SERVITUDE IN THE WESTERN WORLD: THE CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF TRANS-ATLANTIC TRADE
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Slavery refers to the condition of owning other human beings. It is often referred to as the ‘peculiar institution’; however, this practice is not peculiar to the West. Slavery has been a common practice in every society across the world except in Australia, where there is no documented evidence of humans owning others. The 17th and 18th centuries saw the kidnapping of people from Africa to work as enslaved people in American colonies. To aid in the westward expansion and survival of American colonies, hundreds of thousands of Africans were put under slavery and servitude. Slavery in America is recorded to have a significant starting point in 1619. This continued throughout the 17th century as European settlers used enslaved Africans as a cheap source of labor when compared to poor European servants. This paper will focus on the causes and effects of the transatlantic slave trade.
The trans-Atlantic slave trade started in the mid-sixteenth century and continued until the late 1860s. European slavers loaded African men, women, and children at dozen points on the African coast into Atlantic slave ships for shipment and later sale in America. This oceanic trade was brought about by the Portuguese and Spanish after establishing sugar plantations in the American colonies. European settlers cultivated huge tracts of land where they planted profitable crops. The farm work was labor-intensive, and thus African and Indian slave laborers plus a few European indentured laborers were required. The majority of slave laborers were blacks captured from the west and central Africa. Even though slave trade and servitude propelled the economic development in major regions of the Americas, it led to far-reaching consequences in Europe, the Americas, and Africa.[Knight, Franklin W. "The Atlantic Slave Trade." The Historian 63, no. 2 (2001): 470-470.]
Causes of Trans-Atlantic slave trade
The use of enslaved Africans was not a new concept since the Spanish and Portuguese had already enslaved Africans and put them into servitude as early as the 16th century. However, the trans-Atlantic slave trade was of a greater magnitude and scale, leading to the probe of the reasons behind it.
The growth of plantations in the west Indian colonies is one of the major reasons for the massive transportation of enslaved people across the Atlantic. After the Europeans conquered the Americas, they came across large tracts of fertile lands. Due to the tropical climate, this land was favorable for plantations. Unlike the small farms in Britain, the new plantations were, on average, 80-100 acres and proved to be very efficient for farming. Consequently, plantation farming became a popular economic and social institution. Since plantations were big businesses, they required a huge labor force that enslaved people could only provide. Plantation owners sought to purchase enslaved people in huge numbers leading to a demand crisis. As the demand for enslaved people increased in the Americas, slave traders had to increase supplies which meant more enslaving Africans. As plantations...