During the seventeenth century, some 1.9 million African slaves were shipped across the Atlantic to the New World. In the eighteenth century this number exploded to 6.5 million, representing one the largest, albeit forced, migrations in human history. The number of African slaves brought to the New World during that time period more than tripled the number of Europeans who immigrated. They largely came from an area ranging from present day Senegal to Angola, with 57% going to the Caribbean, 35% to Brazil, 6% to the Thirteen Colonies, and 3% to New Spain. The removal of so many people from the African continent, stagnating its population growth, would have a significant affect on its economies and cultures for centuries. Though the African slave trade had been in place since the fifteenth century, a number of factors combined to fuel this nightmarish growth.
By the start of the eighteenth century, the New World was facing a renewed labor shortage. Native populations had significantly collapsed due to disease, warfare, and general ill treatment, and the number of people willing to sell themselves into indentured servitude had shrank dramatically thanks to improved economic conditions in Europe. Between 1500 and 1750, the population of Europe had doubled thanks to improved medicine and food production, an event which destabilized the continent economically, culturally, and politically, but by the start of the 1700s things had begun to stabilize, especially in western Europe. For the New World, this meant greater demand than ever for products like sugar, tobacco, rice, indigo, fruit, and lumber, but a need to keep costs down given the increasing competition from the growing European colonial presence in India. The solution they came up with was not a novel one for the time, but it was most certainly horrific both in scale and the taking away of humanity from millions of people.
While the New World was facing a looming labor shortage and economic crisis, the situation in Africa was creating a growing cheap supply of human servitude. Split by political and familial rivalries, the powerful Kingdom of Kongo collapsed into a violent forty-year civil war. The resulting greatly increased demand for European firearms and the need of the eventual victors to make a large number of people disappear dropped the price for slaves significantly. At the same time, the British, who had come to dominate the slave trade in the latter half of the seventeenth century, privatized the trade at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Prior to this point, European trade with Africa required royal charters which granted monopolies to various companies and individuals. The British privatizing the trade meant anybody who could scrape enough money together to buy slaves and charter a ship to carry them across the Atlantic could do so. The other major players in the slave trade, the most dominant being France and Portugal, soon after followed suit and numerous new trading posts sprung up on the African coast. Slaving ventures became a major investment for the wealthy of Europe and the New World, with complex financial instruments which allowed investors to purchase small shares in multiple ventures to mitigate risk being created.
What followed was one of the worst crash courses in economics in history. The greatly increased number of traders in the market drove down prices in the New World, resulting in a significant increase in demand, but drove up prices in Africa. This significantly cut into the traders margins, forcing them to cut costs however they were able, which mostly involved terrible levels of wanton cruelty in the name of profit. At the same time, the higher price spurred the African kingdoms who sold slaves to go to greater lengths to supply the demand. Most Africans sold as slaves were either criminals or individuals captured in raids and wars with other ethnic groups. Though a greater number of crimes became punishable by enslavement, the lion’s share of the new supply came from the latter rather than the former. As one can probably imagine, this did not sit well with the neighboring kingdoms and city-states. Though many of them had historically refused to sell slaves to the Europeans, many began doing so, desperate to get their hands on the European firearms needed to defend themselves. The resulting growing number of suppliers lowered the price, which increased demand, which triggered a cycle with ever growing terrible consequences.
At this point, I shouldn’t have to tell you again about the horrific consequences of stripping away the humanity of millions of people and turning them strictly into a commodity. Numerous examples have already been stated previously and numerous more will be made before this history of the United States is done. The mass cognitive dissonance involved is terrifying. In Africa, it was deemed all right because those sent over were criminals or came from a different ethnic group. They were in some way others. Though the common people may not have been aware of the terrible fate with awaited those sold, with some rumors even circulating that the Europeans were cannibals who were eating them, which certainly isn’t better, the elites certainly did. It was not uncommon for African diplomats to cross the Atlantic, and some former slaves returned home.
On the other end, amongst the traders and those who bought the slaves in the New World, it was also deemed okay because those enslaved were others. They looked different and talked different. They were easily differentiable, and the more differentiable somebody is the easier it is to treat them like shit. At first, given the price of slaves, it was only the wealthy who had to do this, a group of people who throughout history have shown a willingness to turn a blind eye when it results in the greater accumulation of wealth. However, as slaves became affordable to the growing middle class of the New World, sparking the significant increase in demand, the dissonance and differentiation needed to grow. It was not just okay to do it because they were different, it was okay to do it because they were less than human, little different then livestock, their enslavement ordained by god. Slavery was not a new concept in the eighteenth century, but its combination with capitalistic efficiency created a terrible machine never before seen.
