Virginia, Carolinas
Tobacco
Caribbean islands
Sugar (French, British)
S. America
Sugar (Portuguese, French, Dutch)
Native American slaves
*Indentured servants (Europeans) vs. African slaves
Theories
Racism
Cost
Disease
Sugar cane
1st cultivated in New Guinea, SE Asia
Crystallized sugar processing
India, 6th c.
Sugar cane cultivation and sugar processing
Islamic empire, 8th c.
Italian and Portuguese production in Mediterranean and Atlantic, 14-15th c.
Sicily, Madeira, Canary Islands, Sao Tomé
Italian trade in Black Sea "Slavs"
Ottoman control of Constantinople, 1453
Africans enslaved
New World, 16th c.
Boiling Season, Oct.-Jan.
Cane ground and boiled within a few days
High death rate
18 hours, 7 days per week
Low reproduction rate
2/3 of slaves were males
High infant mortality
Slaves (Africa)
Tobacco and sugar (New World)
W. European sugar consumption
Manufactured goods (Europe)
Textiles, guns, metals
*"Societies with slaves"
*"Slave societies"
Transatlantic slave trade
Scale
*Olaudah Equiano
*Abolition
African profit
Europeans vulnerability
Cheaper goods for consumers
Disrupted political structures (guns)
Increased warfare
Increased slavery
Native American depopulation
New peoples
Environmental disruption
1. How was sugar cane cultivation transmitted from India to the Americas between the 6th and 16th centuries?
2. Why did African slaves become the main form of labor on New World plantations? Why did slaves on sugar plantations have extremely high death rates? Why did slavery grow as sugar consumption increased?
3. What was the triangular trade? What was its impact on Europe, Africa and the Americas?
1. Answer lecture study questions 2 and 3 above based on the Hansen reading. Compare to lecture.
2. What was the abolition movement? What role did Olaudah Equiano play? How did it succeed in abolishing the British slave trade in 1807?
1. Based on Equiano's account, what was the traditional role of slavery in African society? How did the transatlantic slave trade affect African society?
2. Based on Equiano's account, who treated slaves more brutally: African or European slave traders? Why?
3. Based on your reading of Equiano's story and today's reading in Voyages in World History, is Equiano a trustworthy source about slavery in Africa?
1. Why is sugar cane cultivation an example of the Columbian Exchange? Why did slavery accompany the production of sugar?
2. Why did Europeans create colonies and sugar plantations in the Americas rather than Africa prior to the 19th century?
3. Judging from Olaudah Equiano's story in the Human Record, was the American and European practice of enslaving Africans to work on plantations based on purely economic "logic"? Were other factors such as racism involved?