European Slave Trade

What is referred to as the “European slave trade” created the division of the black and white races in world history. The capture, exploitation, and dispersal of Africans by European nations, for the purpose of free labor, created a distorted image of Africans that continues to affect the African-European relationship. The European institution of slavery took on a harsh, brutal, and dehumanizing form. However, the enslavement of Africans predates European contact with West Africa. From the 10th to the 14th century, Arab nations bought and sold African captives in Islamic markets. A large number of those enslaved were African women, who were purchased to work as servants or concubines. The captives were relocated north across the deserts of northwest Africa to the Mediterranean coast. There, in markets such as Ceuta (which is now Morocco), Africans were purchased to work as servants or laborers in Spain, Portugal, and other countries. This marked the start of what is referred to as the European slave trade.

The inception of the European slave trade occurred when the Portuguese and Spanish developed a relationship with North Africa after the Moorish invasion of the Iberian Peninsula. Although Spain and Portugal had access to the natural and human resources of Africa along the northern coast, they were not content with this trade and moved further south along the western coast of Africa. Between 1420 and 1441, Spain and Portugal were the first European nations to trade for natural resources with indigenous Africans. In 1442, the Portuguese explorers returned from the western coast of Africa with gold dust and 10 Africans. This essentially began the enslavement of Africans by European nations.

Although Portugal was the first European nation to establish a permanent relationship with indigenous Africans, the Spaniards followed in 1562. Soon afterward, the British made their appearance in the trade of Africans. Then the Dutch became involved in human trade in about 1620, followed by the French in about 1640. The Swedes, Danes, and Prussians attained the full extent of their involvement in the 18th century.

In 1482, the Portuguese forced their way onto the Guinea coast in present day Ghana to control trading with Africans. This location was referred to by the Portuguese as Elmina (which means “the mine”) [Page 237]because of the productivity of the nearby gold mines. Although originally built for trade in gold, ivory, and other resources, this trading post was the first of many trading posts built by Europeans along Africa's western coast that was used to export Africans.

From its outset, the relationship between Europe and Africa was economic. Portuguese merchants used the trading posts to trade with Africans. They exchanged items such as brass and copper for such products as pepper, cloth, beads, and Africans. Europeans did not have the power to overcome African states before the late 19th century, and gold production, centered in Akan gold fields in the backcountry of present-day Ghana, remained in African hands.

However, after the voyages of exploration, European nations began a frenzied scramble for the human resources of Africa they needed to clear the lands and build the cities of the Americas. Thus, before the start of the 1500s, nearly 200,000 Africans had been relocated against their wills to Europe and the Americas. By the mid 1500s, the colonial powers of the Caribbean islands and Brazil had begun to invest in cultivating sugar, a crop that demanded constant attention and strenuous labor.

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