Question

“Black Africans . . . played only a small part in . . . Mediterranean slavery before the middle of the fifteenth century. . . . Two . . . events . . . chang[ed] that situation. The capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 made it much more difficult for Christian ships to reach the slave ports north of the Black Sea. At the . . . same time, the Portuguese voyagers down the coast of Africa made effective contact with sub-Saharan ports . . . and tap[ped] the sources of the slave trade that had previously flowed north across the Sahara. For the next century, Lagos and Lisbon in Portugal replaced the Black Sea ports as the main centers of supply for the Mediterranean slave trade.”

— Phillip D. Curtin, historian, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex, 1999

The patterns described in this excerpt most directly foreshadowed which of the following developments?

Answer 1

The excerpt from Curtin's work foreshadows the advent of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, which was characterized by the shift from Mediterranean to Atlantic slave routes and the involvement of European powers and African chiefs in the trade.

The patterns described in the excerpt from Phillip D. Curtin's The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex most directly foreshadowed the development of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The capture of Constantinople and the Portuguese maritime explorations along the West African coast shifted the dynamics of the slave trade from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. As Europeans established sugar plantations in the Americas, they increased the demand for enslaved labor, leading to an expansion of the slave trade from Africa to the New World.

This change marked the beginning of an era where European powers, starting with Portugal and followed by others, established a network of trading posts along the coast of Africa. These posts functioned as collection centers for enslaved people who were then transported across the Atlantic. The participation of African chiefs in these trade networks, by supplying captives in exchange for European goods, notably firearms, played a significant role in the escalation of the slave trade.