The Atlantic Slave Trade

I really enjoyed this reading because the subject of slavery has always intrigued me. Reading the section, Slave Trade in Context really broke down the thought of slavery and how it began. I found it very interesting that in the 15th century slavery was widely accepted as a perfectly normal human enterprise. To me, slavery has never been an acceptable subject. Slave trade seemed to rely on the Mediterranean World. Trade between the Europeans and Africans all took place in that area. Europeans provided things like sugar, honey and fruits, where Africans sole provided a wide variety of slaves.
    Looking at the charts on pg 454 was really shocking. The first chart was of the rise and decline of slavery. Slavery seemed to start off very slow until around the 1600's, then out of the blue it boomed. The peak of the slavery was between 1751-1775, importing over 60 thousand slaves to the US. It seemed to last until around 1870, until slavery was abolished. The second chart shocked me even more than the first. It showed the destination of slaves in the eighteenth century. I thought the Americas would for sure have the highest number of slaves, when in fact it was the lowest. British North America and US had a mere 348,000 slaves combined with Spanish America that had 578,600. Brazil and the Caribbean combined had over 5,000,000 slaves between 1450-1750. The high amount of agriculture in the region called for a higher need for slaves. The fast expansion of slavery was an incredible topic to read about.