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2 Section I

 Europeans first began growing tobacco on large plantations  Chartered companies were private investors with trade monopolies in colonies  Dutch West India Company – private trading › Seized sugar-producing areas in Brazil › Shipped slaves to Brazil › Paid stockholders huge dividends 3

 Expansion of sugar plantations = sharp increase in the African slave trade  Barbados best illustrates the dramatic transformation of the sugar plantations  Indentured servants cost ½ as much as slaves  France and England expanded Caribbean holdings by attacking older Spanish colonies 4

 English colony of Barbados demonstrates how quickly production went from tobacco to sugar  By attacking older Spanish colonies, England and France were able to increase holdings in the Caribbean  Sugar plantations caused environmental damage - soil exhaustion & deforestation  90% of population was slaves on islands 5

6 Section II

 Sugar cultivation and production requires factory production methods in addition to farming sugar cane  The cultivation and production of sugar required farming AND factory production  French plantation economies were more diverse because of coffee and cacao production 7

 “grass gangs” slave children doing simple, lighter work  “Plant-o-cracy” = a small # of rich men who owned the land and slaves  Men outnumbered women – twice as many men were imported  “Drivers” were male slaves over other slaves  Slaves worked to escape punishment  Life expectancy of Brazilian male slaves =23 yr  Most slaves died of disease  Slaves lost their African culture traditions by › learning colonial languages › Converting to Christianity › Mixing slaves from different parts of Africa 8

 Three categories of free people › Wealthy owners – grands blancs – great whites › European colonial officials, retail merchants, or small-scale agriculturalists – petits blancs – little whites › Free blacks – owned property & slaves  Manumission – slaves purchase or receive freedom  Maroon – a communities of runaways  Jamaican maroon 1 st to sign treaty – recognized as independent 9

10 Section III

 Companies bought insurance to reduce the risks of overseas trading  Capitalism = economic system of large financial institutions – banks, stock exchanges, and investment companies  Mercantilism = a government policy that protects trade and demands gold & silver  English Navigation Acts = confine trade to English ships and cargo 11

 Atlantic Circuit= clockwise network of trade routes connecting Europe, Africa, and the Americas that underlay the Atlantic system  Middle Passage =part of the Atlantic Circuit involving the transportation of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas  Death was the principal cause of mortality on slave ships 12

13 Section IV

 Atlantic African slave trade was a partnership between European and African elites  The Atlantic and the trans-Saharan trade brought West Africans new goods and promoted the rise of powerful states  To stay competitive, Europeans had to trade muskets and gunpowder – which added to Africans’ military power 14

 Greatest source of slaves for the Atlantic trade was from Angola  Bight of Biafra – slaves were kidnapped form interior  Portugal – controlled a significant amount of territory and acted as middlemen between caravans and ships  Most slaves at markets were prisoners of war 15

 Most slaves in the Islamic world were soldiers and servants  Islamic law prohibited the enslavement of Muslims  Women for concubines and servants – majority of African slaves in the Islamic world  Islamic trade was MUCH smaller  Europeans gained far more wealth from the Atlantic slave trade than Africans 16

 Population loss in Africa as a results › Areas near the Slave Coast lost most › Even at peak, the population of Africa remained large › New foods from the Americas helped offset population losses due to the slave trade › Loss was reduced by the fact that more men were traded into slavery 17