Transatlantic Slave Trade: Why Africans were Enslaved and not the Europeans

Transatlantic Slave Trade Research Proposal
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Transatlantic Slave Trade Research Proposal
Introduction and Thesis Statement
Before modernity, the slave trade was a common phenomenon globally. Various forms of slave trade emerged and were conducted in different slave routes. The transatlantic slave trade was a phenomenon where many enslaved Africans were transported to America across the Atlantic Ocean. The trade forms part of the triangular trade where Africans received arms and textile from Europe in exchange for enslaved people from Africa to America. At the same time, Americans transported sugar and coffee to Europe to complete the triangle. In the Atlantic slave trade, the Africans played a vital role as commodities. The research evaluates why Africans were enslaved and not the Europeans. The American settlers turned to the slavery of Africans due to the inadequate number of enslaved Europeans deployed to work in mines and plantations.
Historical significance
The Atlantic slave trade and plantation slavery were both founded by Europeans at a period when they had already abandoned slavery in their own countries. In the early European commercial missions, enslaved Africans were encountered, but the lack of labor in the Americas sealed the Africans' destiny (Williams, 1944). The main issue the research evaluates entails the turning of Europeans to enslave Africans. Why were Africans enslaved? How did the European rights relate and apply to Africans? When sickness decimated the American Indian population and European labor became scarce, American settlements were doomed to failure (Eltis, 2000). It was impossible to mine or cultivate tropical crops with European or Amerindian free labor or Amerindian labor. African slavery was a viable option because it had already been tested and proven successful on sugar plantations in the Gulf of Guinea. As a result, even after the practice of enslaving Europeans had all but ceased, American colonists discovered that the allure of acquiring African slaves was too strong to resist.
Slavery in Africa evolved into a legal idea and a significant economic force. Slave ships and colonial plantation slavery were subject to various laws, all of which were based on the concept of the "slave" (Bertocchi, 2016). Africans were traded in the same way as any other commodity: as cargo on transport vessels and as plantation property. Almost all African slaves were brought to the Caribbean and South America. By 1825, the United States was home to one-quarter of the world's African diaspora (Kanu, 2013). African slaves endured a perilous and harrowing journey through the Middle Passage. Both men and women were segregated, and toddlers and infants were imprisoned in filthy conditions with no access to food or water (Da Silva, 2017). Approximately 12% of the slaves died on the journey.
Location of primary sources
The major primary sources for the research include museums, history archives, and digital libraries. For the research, the National Museum of American History provides reliable information about ...