The Role Columbus' Discovery made in the Slave Trade.

Hello my name is Jisue Kang and I am in class 22. My topic is to tell you about the Role Columbus’ discovery made in the slave trade. First I will tell you about what slave trade means, then origin of slave trade, and finally I will close with how Columbus’ discovery impacted slave trade.




Just to begin, shortly slave trade means traffic in slaves; especially in Black Africans transported to America in the 16th to 19th centuries. It also means the capturing, selling, and buying of slaves.



Now I will go on about slave trade origin. Slavery has existed throughout the world from ancient times, and trading in slaves has been equally universal. Slaves were taken from the Slavs and Iranians from the ancient times (so the times preceding the Middle Ages) to the 19th century, from the sub-Saharan Africans from the 1st century AD to the mid-20th century, and from the Germanic, Celtic, and Romance peoples during the Viking era. Elaborate trade networks developed: for example, in the 9th and 10th centuries, Vikings might sell the East Slavic slaves to Arab and Jewish traders, who would take them to Verdun and León, where they could be sold throughout Moorish Spain and North Africa. The transatlantic slave trade is perhaps the best-known. In Africa, women and children but not men were wanted as slaves for labor and for chain descendant (lineage) incorporations; from circa 1500, captive men were taken to the coast and sold to Europeans. They were then transported to the Caribbean or Brazil, where they were sold at auction and taken throughout the New World. In the 17th and 18th centuries, African slaves were traded in the Caribbean for molasses, which was made into rum in the American colonies and traded back to Africa for more slaves.



Now, I will start on how Columbus’ discovery effected slave trade. African slaves were first brought to the new world after its discovery by Christopher Columbus. And they could be found on Hispaniola (site of present-day Haiti) as early as 1501. In the Bahamas, Columbus himself captured seven of the natives for their "education" on his return to Spain. However, the slave trade only began in 1518, when the first black cargo direct from Africa landed in the West Indies. The importation of black slaves to work in the Americas was the inspiration of the Spanish bishop, Bartolomé de Las Casas, whose support of black slavery was motivated by "humanitarian" concerns. He argued that the enslavement of Africans and even of some whites would save the indigenous Ameri-indian populations, which were not only dying out but engaging in big battle as they opposed their extremely harsh conditions. As a result, Charles V(the 5th), then king of Spain, agreed to the asiento (or slave trading license) in 1513, which later represented the most envied prize in European wars as it gave to those who possessed it a monopoly in slave trafficking. The widespread expansion of the oceanic slave trade can be attributed to the enormous labor demanded by sugarcane, one of the first and most successful agricultural crops to be cultivated by slaves. The earliest money making Spanish sugar plantations were in the Caribbean and West Indies on the islands of Haiti, Cuba, and Jamaica, while Portugal controlled large areas of Brazil. However, Spanish and Portuguese domination of the trade was soon challenged by other Europeans, including the British. One of their earliest adventurers, Sir John Hawkins, undertook his first voyage between 1562 and 1563 and as a direct consequence of his gains was knighted by Elizabeth I. By the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the Dutch had also secured prominence by founding the Dutch West India Company, taking control of northern Brazil, and conquering the slave-holding fort of Elmina on the West African coast. Among Britain's major slave-trading successes was Barbados (and later Jamaica, seized from Spain), upon which sugar was cultivated by Africans imported by the Royal African Company, founded in 1672 to protect a British monopoly in the trade. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Britain's transatlantic slaveholding empire was incomparable. By using vessels that embarked from the ports of Liverpool, Bristol, and London, Britain traded slaves from diverse areas of the African continent: from Senegambia south to the Gambia River as well as within Sierra Leone (later a settlement of British missionaries), the Gold Coast, the Bight of Benin, and West-Central Africa. The main African tribes associated with the slave trade were the Ibo, Mandingo, Ashanti, Yoruba, and Ewe and each responded very differently, with various consequences, to white processes of enslavement.



So today I talked about the meaning of slave trade, origin of slave trade, and how Christopher Columbus impacted slave trade. Thank you.