Question

Can someone help me out with these history questions?

Q 1: Why did Portuguese kings encourage colonists in Brazil to establish plantations for growing sugarcane?
Q2: How did the sugar trade contribute to the development and growth of the slave trade?
Q3: How did the transatlantic slave trade affect Africans and Europeans?
Q4: Instead of using slaves, how might Europeans have solved their labor- shortage problem in the New World?
Q5: Instead of using slaves, how might Europeans have solved their labor- shortage problem in the New World?

Answer 1

1: Sugar, which is made from sugarcane, was a rare luxury in Europe, and it's important that huge profits for Portugal and its colonies. Plantations were needed to grow and process large quantities of sugarcane for a lucrative sugar trade.

2: Europeans enjoyed their sugar and were causing the inhumane Atlantic slave trade. The conditions for enslaved people on sugar plantations in the Caribbean were especially brutal. Driven by profits, plantations owners saw enslaved labour as a less expensive way to produce sugar.

3: Plantation owners, merchants, traders, and Europe's rulers all made money from the transatlantic slave trade. The effects of the Africans were disastrous: many died or were subjected to brutal treatment, whole communities and cultures were destroyed.

4/5: They might have set up a system in which you have to work for food.