Portuguese Fort in Luanda constructed in 1576

Transatlantic Slave Trade from Africa, 1551–1850

Plantation Scene, Antigua, British West Indies The sugar made at the mill in the background was sealed in barrels and loaded on carts that

oxen and horses drew to the beach. By means of a succession of vessels the barrels were taken to the ship that hauled the cargo to Europe. The importance of African labor is evident from the

fact that only one white person appears in the painting.

Punishment for Slaves

In addition to whipping and other cruel punishments,

slave owners devised other ways to shame

and intimidateslaves into

obedience. This metal face mask

prevented the wearerfrom eating or

drinking.

Cudjoe, Leader of the Jamaican Maroons, Negotiates a Peace Treaty In 1738, after decades of successful resistance to the British, the maroon Cudjoe negotiated a peace treaty that recognized the freedom of his runaway followers. Unable to defeat the maroons, the British also granted land and effective self-government to the maroons in exchange for an end to raids on plantations and the promise to return future slave runaways.

A Jamaican Maroon In Jamaica and elsewhere in the

Caribbean escaped slaves banded together to form maroon

communities.This man’s gun and sword show that

the maroons organized themselves to protect their independence from

European colonialists. While some joined maroon

communities, other escaped slaves joined Amerindian societies or the

crews of pirate ships.

A Slave Sacrifice at Dahomey The Atlantic slave trade cheapened life in Africa as well as in the Americas. The kings of Dahomey based their power on slave raiding and trade with the Europeans. Here members of the Dahomean royal family, and two European observers, await the sacrifice of slaves about to be thrown from the

heights in honor of the king. The umbrella is a symbol of monarchy in parts of West Africa.

The artist who produced this engraving carefully drew every individualAfrican on board, showing each wearing only a loincloth, and the men

with their ankles chained.Shown here are 482 slaves. On an earlier voyage, before a 1788 law that

regulated the slave trade, one Brooks captain had crammed 609 Africans in this same space: 351 men, 127 women, 90 boys, and 41 girls.

Gateway to Slavery. Of the 12 million slaves shipped from Africa to Americas, a good number passed through this small island in a bay just off the coast of Senegal, near Cape Verde. Beginning in the 1500s, Europeans began to ship Africans from this region to the Americas as slave labor on sugar plantations. The island was first occupied by the

Portuguese and later by the Dutch, the British, and the French.

A New World Sugar Refinery, Brazil Sugar, a luxury in great demand in Europe, was the most important and most

profitable plantation crop in the New World. This image shows the processing and refinement of sugar on a Brazilian plantation. Sugar cane was grown, harvested, and

processed by African slaves who labored under brutal and ruthless conditions to generate enormous profits for plantation owners

The African Slave Trade Decades before the discovery of America, Greek, Russian, Bulgarian, Armenian,

and then black slaves worked the plantation economies of southern Italy, Sicily, Portugal, and Mediterranean Spain—thereby serving as models for the American form

of slavery.

Tobacco Factory Machinery in Colonial Mexico City The tobacco factory in eighteenth-century Mexico City used a horse-driven

mechanical shredder to produce snuff and cigarette tobacco.

Quilombo in Palmares , BrazilMany slave rebellions occurred, colonial authorities were always able to

reestablish control. Groups of runaway slaves, however, were sometimes able to defend themselves for years. In both Spanish America and Brazil,

communities of runaways (called quilombos in Brazil and palenques in Spanish colonies) were common. The largest quilombo was Palmares in Brazil.

The Sale of Slaves. The slave trade was one of

the most profitablecommercial enterprises

of the eighteenth century. This painting

shows aWestern slave merchant negotiating with a local

African leader over slaves

at Gore´e, Senegal, in West Africa in the late

eighteenth century.

Jean-Baptiste Colbert

Minister of Finance of Louis

XIV from 1665 to

1683

Principles of MercantilismPhilip Wilhelm von Hornick (1684) Austria

• 1- To inspect the country’s soil with the greatest care and not to leave the agricultural possibilities of a single corner or clod of earth unconsidered.

• 2- All commodities found in a country, which cannot be used in their natural state, should be worked up within the country, since the payment of manufacturing generally exceeds the value of a raw material by several folds

• 3- For carrying out the above rules, there will be need of people, both for producing and cultivating the raw materials and for working them up. Therefore, attention should be given to the population

• 4- the gold and silver should always remain in circulation.

• 5- the inhabitants of a country should make every effort to get along with their domestic products.

• 6- the luxury goods (Indian spices or tea etc.) should be obtained from foreigners, not for gold or silver, but in exchange for other domestic wares.

• 7- The foreign goods should be imported in unfinished form and worked up within the country.

• 8- opportunities should be sought night and day for selling the country’s superfluous goods to the foreigners.

• 9- No importation should be allowed under any circumstances of commodities of which there is sufficient supply of suitable quality at home.

The Atlantic Economy

By 1700 the volume of maritime

exchanges among the Atlantic continents had begun to rival

the trade of the Indian Ocean Basin.

Silver trade to East Asia laid the basis for

a Pacific Ocean economy.

The African Slave Trade, 1500–1800

West African States and Trade, 1500–1800 The Atlantic and the trans-Saharan trade brought West Africans new goods and

promoted the rise of powerful states and trading communities.

Luanda, Angola Luanda was founded by the Portuguese in 1575 and became the center of the slave trade to

Brazil. In this eighteenth-century print the city’s warehouses and commercial buildings line the city streets. In the foreground captives are dragged to the port for shipment to the Western

Hemisphere.

Traders Approaching Timbuktu As they had done for centuries, traders brought their wares to this ancient desert-

edge city. Timbuktu’s mosques tower above the ordinary dwellings of the fabled city.