The Effects of the Slave Trade on African Societies

HOMEWORK

1. The Effects of the Slave Trade on African Societies

Can you remember some of the reasons why the traders chose to steal their slaves from Africa?

Source A is an extractfrom The Slave Trade by David Killingray, published in 1974

Source A

The slave trade scattered millions of black people throughout the world, mainly to America but also to parts of Asia and the Europe. This is the greatest effect. Africans suffered terribly from the slave trade. The youngest and best workers were sold into slavery, kings fought wars to get slaves, and the ways of the whole communities were changed. The close contact of Africa with Europe also brought some trading advantages. New trade goods were introduced and so were important food crops such as maize from America.

Source B is an extract from The Atlantic Slave Trade by Herbert S Klein, published 1999.

Source B

The end of the trade to America did not end slavery in Africa. Nor did its ending destroy the economy of any major African states. Most of the major states of West Africa were able to make up for the loss of slaves by switching to palm oil or other exports, often producingmore money than had been possible during the period of the slave trade. Moreover it must be remembered that trading with other countries (the Atlantic slave trade) was only a small part of the African economy; trading goods and slaves withinAfrica accounted for much more.

Source C is an extract from The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell in 1791 on the value of the slave trade.

Source C

It would be cruel to the Africans to abolish something which in all ages God has sanctioned. It saves a portion of them from massacre or intolerable bondage in their own country. It introduces them to a much happier state of life. To abolish the trade would be to ‘shut the gate of mercy on mankind’.

Source D is from the writings of the abolitionist, Thomas Clarkson, in 1786.

Source D

Through non-stop labour by the continual use of the whip, and the most inhumane treatment that imagination can devise, you overwhelm the genius of Africa and stop it from developing. The unfortunate slaves have no hope of riches, power, honours or fame. They have no hope but this, that their miseries will be ended by death. The wretched slaves are torn from their country for as long as slavery continues.

1. Compare the views expressed in Source A and B on the effects of the slave trade on African societies.

1. Compare the views in Source C and D about slavery.

1. How did the slave trade affect African societies? (short essay)

[You should include points regarding why traders chose Africa, the benefits of the slave trade to the Africans and the loss of family members]

2. The Experience of Europeans in African Factories

For Europeans in the factories, life was not much better than that of the slaves. A few months before his death from malaria or yellow fever, Nicholas Owen wrote:

Source A
A man in this country can have but little pleasure in his life, with all the inconveniences of the wilderness. These three months nothing remarkable has happened. I have no affection for this place or its people. We spend the best years of our life among Negroes, scraping the world for money, the god of all mankind, until death overtakes us.

Source Bis by Bosman, a Dutchman, described the English traders at CapeCoastCastle as:

Source B
Miserable wretches, they excite my pity. They waste their strength in drinking and lusting after local women. As a result they fall easy victims to disease.

Study Sources A and B and answer the following questions in sentences.

1. Make a list of the problems that Europeans faced living and trading in factories on the African coast.
2. Why did these Europeans put up with these hardships?
3. Do you agree that these Europeans were little better off than the slaves they sold? Explain your answer.
4. Imagine you were a slave arriving in a European slave factory. Write a short story at least half a page long describing your experiences. Mention your surroundings, what happened to you there, and your feelings about your treatment.

3. Profit

The money that the slave trade earned is difficult to work out, partly because the figures are not complete, and partly because prices have changed so much in 200 years. To give a rough idea, a working person could earn about £35 a year, or about 65p a week.

TheEnterprise carried 412 slaves across the Atlantic in 1803. Each cost about £25. They sold all except one, though another 19 died on the voyage.

The table below shows what the costs and profit were.

Cost of fitting out the ship / £26,151
Cost of cargo (slaves) / £8,896
Total costs / £35,047
Sale of slaves / £41,475
Profit / £6,428

Not all ships made as much profit, though some made more. Liverpool probably made about £300,000 each year from what they called ‘the African trade’.

Study the information above and answer the following questions in sentences.

1. How much profit did the Enterprise make on one voyage?
2. Assume that the average wage today is £275.00 a week. How many times have prices and wages increased since then?
3. Work out roughly how much the Enterprise’s profit would be worth today.
4. Work out how much Liverpool made from ‘the African Trade’.
5. Explain why captains, crew and merchants in towns like Liverpool took part in the slave trade.

4. Resistance: Part One

In what ways did slaves resist on the Middle Passage?

One of the greatest fears of the captain of a slave ship was that the slaves would rise up and try to take over the ship. With several hundred slaves on board and only thirty or fewer crew, the danger was that if a few slaves got loose they could free the rest, and then kill the crew.

John Newton was a slave ship captain. He kept a journal as a record of his voyages.

In Source A he describes, in extracts, a voyage from Africa to the West Indies.

Source A
As long as I dared I allowed the slaves to move about freely in their rooms. As the ship filled up before we left the African coast I put the men and larger boys in shackles.
I discovered a plot among the men slaves to rise upon us just a few hours before it was due to happen. A young man who has been out of irons the whole voyage, first on account of a large ulcer and then since because of his seeming good behaviour, gave them a large steel spike down the gratings. Happily he was seen by one of the crew. The slaves had the spike about an hour before I made a search for it, in which time I found that near 20 of them had broke their irons.
I punished six of the ringleaders. The next day I found they had also loosened the timbers. Their plot was exceedingly well laid, and if they had been alone for an hour longer must have given us a good deal of trouble.

On his next voyage Newton also had trouble…

Source B
While collecting slaves I allowed the boys to go out of irons. When there were seventy one slaves on board, four of these boys found a chisel, some knives and stones and passed them to the men. By chance I surprised two men as they were getting their irons off. I put the boys in irons and slightly in the thumbscrews to urge them to a full confession.
I afterwards put some of the men in collars as well as shackles and handcuffs. I also had two of my crew in irons because they were plotting a mutiny against me.

Activity 1

Study the information about slaves resisting on the middle passage and answer these questions in sentences.

1. Why are Sources A and B valuable evidence of the dangers of slave trading? Give three reasons for your answer.

1. How far do you agree that Newton brought some of his troubles on himself?
2. Which voyage, the first or second, was in greater danger? Explain your answer.
3. What advice would you have given Newton on preventing an uprising by slaves?

Another captain of a slave ship who made many successful voyages was William Snellgrave. He tried to prevent trouble as far as possible.

Source C
Wherever I have been in command it has been my principal care to have the Negroes on my boat kindly treated. I have always got my white people to treat them with humanity and tenderness. My first action is to let the Negroes know, through an interpreter, that the rumours about white men liking to eat black flesh are untrue. They have been bought to do farm work in the white man’s country. I give them instructions on how to behave, and an assurance that any abuses will be investigated. I allow them on deck all day from seven in the morning, and give them tobacco every Monday. I do keep the men separate from the women and children.

Snellgrave could also be firm. Source D extract is from The Shameful Trade by F.G. Kay,published in 1967.

Source D
Another ship in the area, the Elizabeth, had 120 slaves on board, but was short of officers as the captain and first mate had died of disease. That night firing broke out on the Elizabeth, and Snellgrave led a boarding party to find out what was happening. On the way across to the Elizabeth they saw two Negroes in the sea being eaten by sharks, and two more holding on to a rope, whom they pulled on their dinghy. The Elizabeth’s crew had regained control and herded the slaves back into the hold by the time Snellgrave got aboard. The crew were standing around the body of the crewman who had been on sentry duty, and had been killed with an axe. He found out that one of the men pulled from the sea had started the trouble.
With several captains from ships nearby on the coast, Snellgrave organised a court. The slave was to be hung from the ship’s mast as a warning to others. All the slaves in the surrounding ships were brought up on deck to see the punishment. The killer was hoisted up by his arms, and then his body riddled with shot by a firing party. It was then lowered, and the head was cut off and thrown into the sea. Although the slaves were on board a further four months, there was no further trouble.

Activity 2

Study Sources C and D and answer these questions in sentences.

1. How reliable is Source C as evidence of the way slaves were treated on board slave ships?
2. ‘Firm but Fair’. How far do you accept this description of Captain Snellgrave? Explain your answer which should be at least two paragraphs long.

5. Resistance: Part Two

Source A
The captain used to move about with an armed escort at the slaves’ meal-time, putting pepper and palm oil into the bowls of rice. In mid-Atlantic the slaves suddenly swarmed around him and beat out his brains with their wooden feeding bowls. The chief mate ordered the crew, who had barricaded themselves on the quarter deck, to fire into the slaves with charges of partridge shot. Eighty Negroes were shot or jumped overboard. On two further occasions they tried to take over the ship, then gave up altogether. Some even starved themselves to death. The slaves were sold very cheaply, as experience showed that resistance, once started, continued. Many of the slaves hung themselves on the plantation in a mass suicide.

John Atkins, a ship’s doctor in the Royal Navy, spent some time on the African coast.

Here he tells of the fate of another attempted uprising led by Tomba, formerly an African chief, who persuaded a woman on the ship to smuggle him a hammer.

Source B
Tomba persuaded four of his countrymen to help him break out, but only one did. They and the woman crept up on the sentries and killed three of them before the alarm was raised. Tomba and his accomplices were arrested and tried. The captain was going to hang Tomba and his friend until Tomba pointed out that he would lose a lot of money. So the captain took the three others of Tomba’s men, who were much poorer specimens, hung one and then forced the others to eat his liver and heart. Then they were hung. The captain then hoisted the woman up by her thumbs, and had her flogged and slashed with knives till she died.

Study the information above and answer the following questions in sentences.

1. In Source A, who would you blame for the slave uprising? Explain your answer.
2. Give at least two reasons why the owners of the ship in Source A were unhappy with the results of the voyage.
3. ‘Experience showed that resistance, once started, continued.’ What evidence is there in Source A to justify this?
4. How just were the punishments described by Atkins in Source B? Explain your answer.
5. Make a list of the methods used to prevent resistance by slaves on slave ships.
6. There are very few pieces of evidence recording slaves successfully resisting on board a slave ship. Write down as many reasons as you can for this. [Think about it.]

6. The Importance of the Slave Trade to Britain

Read the following sources and answer the questions.

Source A is from a book by the British historian, Christopher hill, written in 1969.

Source A

The slave trade was the corner-stone of our 18th century position of dominance in the world. The profits of the slave trade, and of slavery, contributed greatly to the vast amounts of wealth raised in the country which made Britain the country of the first Industrial Revolution, and so strengthened her position as the greatest world power.

1. Why was the slave trade important to Britain in the 18th century? (Use Source A and recall)

Source B is from Capitalism and Slavery by Eric Williams in 1944

Source B

In the first place, the Liverpool slave trade created huge profits. These built the town of Liverpool, encouraged the growth of Manchester’s factories and stimulated the development of Lancashire as an industrial area.

Secondly, the Triangular Trade made an enormous contribution to Britain’s industrial development. The profits from the trade developed the industries of the country. For three hundred years there was a trading system based on slaves.

Source C is from The Transatlantic Slave Trade by James Rawley in 1981

Source C

It is difficult to prove that the growth of Britain’s industries depended on either the slave trade or the Triangular Trade. The estimates on the number of slaves transported has been drastically cut and this has meant that the total profits were also much less. Secondly, it seems that the profits of the slave merchants were moderate. Only in the period 1761 to 1780 were the profits from the trade significant. Likewise the profits from the slave trade were only a tiny part of the money invested in Britain’s growing industries.

1. Compare the views expressed in Sources B and C as evidence of the importance of the slave trade.

1. The Abolitionists:

Olaudah Equiano

The autobiography of Olaudah Equiano provides a detailed insight into the experience of a captured slave. The following account was adapted from Equiano’s ‘The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African’ by H. Y. Wheeler.

Olaudah Equiano was born in 1745 in the African country that is now Nigeria. The adults worked in the fields during the day leaving the children to fend for themselves in the village. Older children were often given the task of acting as lookouts and if they saw any traders approaching they would let out a loud cry. AIEEEEEEEEEEYAH!

Olaudah and his sister were in the hut when they heard the cry. Looking out of the door, Olaudah saw the traders hurrying into the village and knew that there was no time for them to reach the safety of the trees. He and his sister crouched in the corner of the hut and held their breath. Their hearts were pounding and their ears were strained. He and his sister were seized and their mouths were filled with dirty cloths to stop them from crying out. Sacks were placed over their heads and they were carried away. After a while they were put down on the ground and their hands were tied behind their backs. They were carried again until nightfall. Although they were offered food that first night the children were unable to eat. They felt too sick from the fear, the dirty rags that had been in their mouths, and the confinement of being tied up.