Question

Discuss four reasons why the transatlantic slave trade lasted for a long time​

Answer 1

Europeans developed the Atlantic slave trade, and American plantation slavery, at a time when they had turned their back on slavery at home. African slavery was encountered in the early European trading missions, but it was the shortage of labor in the Americas that sealed the Africans’ fate. The swift collapse of the population of native peoples in the Americas through disease, and the relative scarcity of European labor, made the development of American settlements tenuous. Neither European free labor nor Amerindian labor (free or enslaved) was adequate to the tasks of mining precious metals or cultivating tropical and semi-tropical produce. African slavery offered a solution, not least because it had been tried with great success on the sugar plantations in the islands in the Gulf of Guinea. Thus, at a time when the idea of enslaving fellow Europeans had disappeared, settlers in the Americas found African slaves an irresistible temptation.

Answer 2

Europeans developed the Atlantic slave trade, and American plantation slavery, at a time when they had turned their back on slavery at home. African slavery was encountered in the early European trading missions, but it was the shortage of labour in the Americas that sealed the Africans’ fate. The swift collapse of the population of native peoples in the Americas through disease, and the relative scarcity of European labour, made the development of American settlements tenuous. Neither European free labour nor Amerindian labour (free or enslaved) was adequate to the tasks of mining precious metals or cultivating tropical and semi-tropical produce. African slavery offered a solution, not least because it had been tried with great success on the sugar plantations in the islands in the Gulf of Guinea. Thus, at a time when the idea of enslaving fellow Europeans had disappeared, settlers in the Americas found African slaves an irresistible temptation