Lincoln on Slavery: http://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/slavery.htm
"Bad Black People." Why Bill O'Reilly Is Wrong Even When He's Right"
"Bad Black People." Why Bill O'Reilly Is Wrong Even When He's Right"
The Atlantic Slave Trade in Two Minutes
315 years. 20,528 voyages. 15 million lives.
Usually, when we say
“American slavery” or the “American slave trade,” we mean the American
colonies or, later, the United States. But as we discussed in Episode 2 of Slate’s History of American Slavery Academy, relative to the entire slave trade, North America was a bit player. From the trade’s beginning in the 16th century to its conclusion in the 19th,
slave merchants brought the vast majority of enslaved Africans to two
places: the Caribbean and Brazil. Of the more than 10 million enslaved
Africans to eventually reach the Western Hemisphere, just 388,747—less
than 4 percent of the total—came to North America. This was dwarfed by
the 1.3 million brought to Spanish Central America, the 4 million
brought to British, French, Dutch, and Danish holdings in the Caribbean,
and the 4.8 million brought to Brazil.
This interactive, designed and built by Slate’s
Andrew Kahn, gives you a sense of the scale of the trans-Atlantic slave
trade across time, as well as the flow of transport and eventual
destinations. The dots—which represent individual slave ships—also
correspond to the size of each voyage. The larger the dot, the more
enslaved people on board. And if you pause the map and click on a dot,
you’ll learn about the ship’s flag—was it British? Portuguese?
French?—its origin point, its destination, and its history in the slave
trade. The interactive animates more than 20,000 voyages cataloged in
the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database.
(We excluded voyages for which there is incomplete or vague information
in the database.) The graph at the bottom accumulates statistics based
on the raw data used in the interactive and, again, only represents a
portion of the actual slave trade—about one-half of the number of
enslaved Africans who actually were transported away from the continent.here are a few trends worth noting. As the first European
states with a major presence in the New World, Portugal and Spain
dominate the opening century of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, sending
hundreds of thousands of enslaved people to their holdings in Central
and South America and the Caribbean. The Portuguese role doesn’t wane
and increases through the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, as Portugal brings millions of enslaved Africans to the Americas.
Inside the Slave Ship
History of American Slavery, Ep 2: The Atlantic slave trade during its heyday and the remarkable life of Olaudah Equiano.
In the 1700s, however, Spanish transport diminishes and is
replaced (and exceeded) by British, French, Dutch, and—by the end of the
century—American activity. This hundred years—from approximately 1725
to 1825—is also the high-water mark of the slave trade, as Europeans
send more than 7.2 million people to forced labor, disease, and death in
the New World. For a time during this period, British transport even
exceeds Portugal’s.
In the final decades of the trans-Atlantic slave trade,
Portugal reclaims its status as the leading slavers, sending 1.3 million
people to the Western Hemisphere, and mostly to Brazil. Spain also
returns as a leading nation in the slave trade, sending 400,000 to the
West. The rest of the European nations, by contrast, have largely ended
their roles in the trade.
By the conclusion of the trans-Atlantic slave trade at the end of the 19th
century, Europeans had enslaved and transported more than 12.5 million
Africans. At least 2 million, historians estimate, didn’t survive the
journey. —Jamelle Bouie
Slate Academy: The History of American Slavery
Also on Slate:
Correction, June 30, 2015: The
interactive originally displayed incorrect locations for Quilimane (also
spelled Quelimane), Malembo, and Cardenas. They are in Mozambique,
Angola, and Cuba, respectively, not Sudan and Spain. Furthermore, the
map had located a port called “Spanish Americas” in eastern North
America. The revised map does not show this port or voyages to it.
Correction, June 25, 2015: The
interactive originally displayed incorrect locations for St. Vincent
and Zion Hill. They are in the Caribbean, not in the U.S. and Canada,
respectively.
Jamelle Bouie is a Slate staff writer covering politics, policy, and race.
No comments:
Post a Comment