CHAPTER 18

Systems of Slavery

IN THIS CHAPTER

Summary: As the Columbian Exchange united the Eastern and Western hemispheres across the
Atlantic Ocean, the exchange of human beings created a new interaction between Africa and the
Western Hemisphere. Slave systems, already a part of life in African kingdoms, became a part of life
in the Western world. The result was the unification of three cultures—African, European, and
American—in the Americas.

Key Terms

impressment
indentured servitude
Middle Passage
triangular trade

Beginnings of the Atlantic Slave Trade

Portugal’s quest for gold and pepper from African kingdoms brought it into contact with systems of
slave trade already in existence in Africa. The subsequent development of the trans-Atlantic slave
trade was an extension of trade in human beings already carried out by Africans enslaving fellow
Africans. The slave trade within Africa especially valued women slaves for use as household servants
or as members of the harem.
The long-existent trans-Saharan trade had already brought some African slaves to the
Mediterranean world. In the mid-fifteenth century, Portugal opened up direct trade with sub-Saharan
Africa. Portuguese and Spanish interests in the slave trade increased when they set up sugar
plantations on the Madeira and Canary Islands and on São Tomé. The first slaves from Africa arrived
in Portugal in the mid-1400s. Europeans tended to use Africans as household servants.