20 Atlantic African, American, and European Backgrounds to Contact, Commerce, and EnslavementAtlantic African Diaspora. Th e trans-Saharan slave trade,
beginning sometime near the 12th century, was used by
the Portuguese aft er 1448, decades before they established
castles and fortresses along the Atlantic African coast. With
European interests in acquiring slaves increasing expo-
nentially aft er the establishment of colonies in the Atlantic
islands and the Western Hemisphere, the former trans-
Saharan slave trade shift ed from North Africa to the Atlantic
coast by the late 1490s to early 1500s. Th us, the indigenous
African forms of slavery and slave trading facilitated the
role that Europeans would begin to play in Atlantic World
aff airs.
In addition to the existence of indigenous forms of
slavery and slave trading in Africa, several key factors
contributed to the decisions made by Europeans to rely so
heavily on enslaved African labor in the Western Hemi-
sphere. Due to their exposure to a tropical disease ecol-
ogy, Atlantic Africans had developed natural resistances to
malaria—a disease that wiped out large numbers of Native
Americans and Europeans. Th us, the rice swamps of the
Carolinas or the tobacco fi elds of the Chesapeake were not
as deadly for enslaved Africans, making them an ideal labor
pool. Another important determinant was the fact that the
vast majority of enslaved Africans came from agricultural
surplus- producing societies. Th is meant that Atlantic Af-
rica was densely populated and thus a prime location to use
as a foundation for a substantial labor force. It also meant
that, unlike the subsistence to small surplus-producing
Native Americans encountered in the Caribbean, coastal
Brazil, or North America, enslaved Africans were more
likely to be used to the intensive labor required for cash
crop cultivation. Th is was especially true in the case of rice
cultivation in the Carolinas and Georgia. In both colonies,
enslaved Africans from Sierra Leone and Senegambia had a
particularly useful expertise in rice cultivation, which gen-
erated enormous profi ts in the Southern colonies. In this
regard, both African brawn and brains made them an at-
tractive group of dependent laborers for European planta-
tions throughout the Americas.
Finally, because men and women tended crops in At-
lantic Africa, both groups could be enslaved by Europeans,
ensuring a self-reproducing labor force. Th is circumstance
proved advantageous to European planters on a number
of diff erent levels. First, early attempts to enslave Algonki-
ans in the Chesapeake had utterly failed, mainly because
of the unique gender division of labor among this nativeunderstood the labor theory of value, which contends that
human eff ort is the principal means to derive value or rev-
enue from natural resources and raw goods Indeed, in a
sense, owning land amounts to owning dirt and land only
really becomes valuable when human labor is applied to it.
So the principal thrust of military conquest in Atlantic Af-
rica focused on acquiring additional tributaries and labor,
not territory.
Slavery, pawnship, clientage, indentured and debt ser-
vitude, and other forms of forced labor were means to guar-
antee agricultural surplus and steady fl ows of revenues for
powerful states in Atlantic Africa. Th is private ownership
or control over labor does not mean that forced labor was
central to Atlantic African economies. It does mean that
the idea of humans becoming commodities predated the
arrival of Europeans in Atlantic Africa and set the stage for
the Atlantic slave trade.
Th e preexistence of slavery and other forms of forced
labor was augmented by a long-standing trans-Saharan
slave trade, which was the fi rst step in the formation of an
Th is plan of a British slave ship, included with the Regulated Slave
Trade Act of 1788 , depicts, in horrifying detail, the inhumane con-
ditions used by the slavers. Th e plan notes the ability to transport
over 400 slaves on the lower deck, with many of the human cargo
cramped into spaces underneath closely packed shelves. (Library of
Congress)