The History of Slavery

Slavery is a VERY old practice, and although most people in America think of the enslavement of black Africans when the word “slavery” is mentioned, it has existed for thousands of years with many people of different races, ethnicities, and social classes who acted as slave labor. An example would be the Romans who enslaved their poor and homeless, regardless of their ethnicity…

The earliest known civilizations to have slavery existed as far back as 10,000 B.C. and most likely developed at the same time as agriculture. The massive Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Arab empires all had slaves…

People often became slaves when they were conquered, as mentioned earlier the poor also were forced into slavery in some societies, and in other situations some people were sold into slavery by their own rulers!

After the discovery of the New World settlers in the Americas and Caribbean created huge plantations to grow cash crops like tobacco, sugar, and cotton. Massive amounts of labor on these plantations was needed but not readily available. There were not enough colonial settlers to work the land and most Native Americans had been run off by the settlers or had perished due to a lack of immunity to European diseases.

To plantation owners looking for labor Africa was the answer; powerful African Kings were willing to supply the slaves and plantation owners were ready to purchase them…

During the period of great African Kingdoms, local rulers would often supply outsiders with slaves, selling the members of conquered tribes and sometimes members of the lower class. This was an economic activity and was a common practice. This is one reason the Europeans searched for slave labor in Africa; the demand for slaves in the colonial period was high and the supply of slaves being sold in Africa was too…

West Africa became the geographical center for this slave trade because of the regions easy access to Africa’s interior or center, the Caribbean, and the Americas….

This began a connection between the Americas, Europe, and Africa known as the Triangle Trade. On this trade route slaves were bought in Africa and sold in the Americas, there the slaves labored away on plantations who’s crops were exported to markets in Europe where the profit from their sale could be used to purchase more slaves….

The toughest “leg” of the Triangle Trade route was known as the “Middle Passage”, this was the trip slaves made on slave ships from West Africa to the Americas.