1. The Establishment of the African Slave Trade
The Americas became a great source of profit for many Europeans Elite. The great civilizations of South and Central America had gathered large amounts of gold and silver, which the Spanish took.
Europeans also found another way to grow rich from the Americas-sugar plantations. Plantations were farms designed to grow a large group on a large scale. They required many laborers.
Europeans established sugar plantations in Brazil and on Caribbean islands such as Jamaica, Barbados, and Cuba.
As plantations made sugar more widely available, Europeans started to eat more candies, pastries and other sweet things.
Chocolate, which came from the Americas, became a special favorite. Europeans’ taste for sweets increased demand for sugar, which led to more plantations.

3. Producing Sugar
Although sugar tasted sweet, producing it was bitter, hard work.
Sugarcane grew only in the hottest climates and to be hand planted and hand cut.
At harvest time, workers cut the canes, crushed them with large millstones, and boiled the juice into molasses or sugar.
They often worked 20 hour days to process the harvest. Sugar plantations were deadly places. Many people died from heat and exhaustion. Others were killed in accidents.
Owners of the first sugar plantations enslaved natives and forced them to do the work. Soon, however the natives died out or escaped so plantation owners turned to enslaved Africans.
Many sugar plantations were so profitable that a plantation owner could afford to buy a group of slaves, work them to death and then buy a new group to replace them.
The switch to a workforce of enslaved Africans paved the way for slavery to spread to North America.

5. The Growth of the African Slave Trade
The growing number of sugar plantations created new demand for laborers.
Many African rulers took advantage of this new slave market. The king of Kongo was one example.
Like most African leaders, the King of Kongo did not sell his own people. Instead he gave traders shell money and allowed them to travel to key slave markets where they could buy African captives.
Some Africans were also kidnapped and enslaved by both Africans and Europeans. Growing numbers of slaved trading ships left the ports of Kongo and other kingdoms carrying human cargo to the new World.
By the early 1600s more than one million enslaved Africans lived in the Americas.

8. Questions on Beginnings of Slavery
1.How did the European Elite grow rich from the Americas (3 ways)?
2. What is a plantation?
3. What crop did they grow on the plantation?
4. Why was working on a sugar plantation so hard?
5.Why couldn’t the Europeans use the natives?
6.How did Africans become apart of the slave trade?(2 ways)
7.How many Africans slaves were brought to the Americas by the early 1600s?