Answer to Question #267680 in History for SS.M

Question

Discuss the impact that the Atlantic slave trade had on Europe, Africa and the Americas. Substantiate your discussion by using examples from each region. 

Answer 1

SLAVE TRADE IN AFRICA

Perhaps the hardest of these areas to address is the impact on Africa, because of the lack of reliable statistical information. Historians’ estimates of the effects of the slave trade range widely, from those who see the trade as fundamental to the problems that blighted Africa both then and later, to those who see it as only a marginal factor in Africa’s historical development.

Whatever the African impact of the Atlantic trade, it was at its greatest in West Africa, which supplied the largest number of captives, although at the height of the trade many other parts of Africa were also used as a source for slaves. In addition, the trade had a disproportionate impact on the male population, because male slaves were the most sought after in the Americas; it is thought that roughly two-thirds of the slaves taken to the New World were male, only one-third female.

SLAVE TRADE IN EUROPE

The impact of the slave trade on Europe is another area of historical controversy. Some historians of the slave trade are keen to stress the ways in which the trade had significant economic effects in the home countries. However, historians of European industrialization have often given little attention to the contribution of the slave trade, although there are exceptions. Readers are left asking themselves: is there any way of reconciling such approaches?

At the center of the debate is the economic transformation of Britain. During the eighteenth century, Britain became the first country in the world to “industrialize”, in terms of an unprecedented economic shift towards manufactures and commerce, and the progress of technology. These were also years of large British involvement in the slave trade. So were these two trends related?

Undoubtedly the slave trade affected the British economy in a number of ways. The British cotton mills, which became the emblem of the “Industrial Revolution”, depended on cheap slave-produced cotton from the New World; cotton would have been more costly to obtain elsewhere.

SLAVE TRADE IN AMERICA

The American leg of the trade between Europe, the Americas, and Africa focused on the cultivation of raw materials and cash crops to be sent to markets and manufacturers in Europe. The wealth generated by sugar plantations was then used "to prime the economic pump" (stimulate the economy) back in England. This cycle involved the investment of this capital (money) into industries that created the products the African elite wanted, which could then be traded for more slaves. Thus, the triangular trade was born.