Slavery

INTRODUCTION TO AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES

Exam 1

The Atlantic slave trade provided most if not all the African slaves in America. The exact number of slaves from Atlantic slave trade remains unknown, but estimates around eighteen million Africans made it across the transatlantic. African slaves were acquired through many different means. War, crop failure, drought, political instability, raiding, taxation, judicial and religious punishment were some of the factors that provided people to the slave trade. Prisoners of war, criminals, political dissidents, famine victims and even normal African families found themselves sold into slavery. An agent for the French Royal African Company, John Barbot, explained how people became enslaved and how they were treated. He wrote “Those sold by the Blacks are for the most part prisoners of war.” Most Africans were either taken in fight, pursuit or outings into their enemies’ land. Others were taken by their countryman, who were selling their own children, extended family or neighbors. It was noticed often by Barbot that an “abundance of little Blacks” which is African children of both female and male were stolen by their neighbors when out of the sight of their parents. An eleven-year old Ibo from Nigeria named Olaudah Equiano was kidnapped, along with his sister, by two men and a woman right from their house. He wrote this in his autobiography about his kidnappers: “without giving us time to cry out, or make resistance, they stopped our mouths, and ran off with us into the nearest woods.” He was held captive in West Africa for seven months until he was sold to British slavers. Ironically, his father had slaves of his own. Equiano was first shipped to Barbados and then Virginia. Some people even sold themselves into slavery in times of famine, to prevent themselves from starving, not aware of what they were truly getting themselves into. Any West African, regardless of status, could be sold into slavery, a Muslim merchant,...