The Slave Trade

The Slave Trade

1. Before Europeans

   • Slave trade happened mainly between 1400s and 1700s
   • Ancient Greece
     • Mines, farms, house servants
   • Romans
     • More slaves than Romans!
   • Abbasid Empire
     • In 600s, they enslaved black Africans
   • Muslim traders sold 5000 people every year as slaves in Europe or Middle East
   • West African tribes

2. With Europeans

   • Portuguese went to Africa in 1415
     • Began trading for slaves to work on plantations in Canary Islands or Madiera
   • Spanish set up plantations in West Indies after1492
     • Portuguese began selling slaves to spanish
   • By 1600s, British, Dutch and French set up slave posts in Africa to sell slaves to Spanish
     • Britain dominated slave trade and owned plantations in West Indies and America
   • At least 11 million people died on travel across Atlantic

3. Conditions

   • Africans were taken from their villages and sold to white European slave traders
   • 10% of slaves died in first year of slavery
   • Some slaves protested
     • Break tools
     • Work slowly
     • Escape
       • The Underground Railroad smuggled escaped slaves to Northern States of America or Canada
     • William Wilberforce and Granville Sharp protested in courts and parliament
     • In 1807, slavery was banned in British Empire
       • Keeping slaves was banned in 1833
         • Slaves were paid
         • No-one under 6 was allowed to be a slave
         • If they were already a slave, they only worked for 4 years
           • Part free, part slave