The Impact of Slavery on British Colonialism. (The Atlantic slave trade) - Term Paper Example

The treatment the slaves received during this time in history cannot be compared to any other type of annihilation on human beings and culture. The New world consisted of north, central and south America. The Atlantic slave trade began as a trade between the Old World and the New World in the Americas began to increase. As technology on European ships, became greater and gave ships a better ability to travel through the rough waters of the Atlantic Ocean. A process of triangular trade started to occur.

The first portion of the triangle would be from transporting the goods from Europe to Africa in order to purchase slaves2. The second would be the trade of slaves from Africa to the Americas. The third portion of the triangle would be the final goods being exported from the Americas to Europe. This triangle of trade is the system that was used throughout the bulk of the Atlantic slave trade era. Europeans believed the use of slaves would help fix their labor shortage problem3. They overworked the natives of the New World, and many would die from being run into the ground or from diseases.

The Europeans labor supply in the New World was dwindling and so their solution to their immediate problem was to import labor from Africa in order to expand their production and wealth. The Atlantic slave trade became a vital part in the Industrial Revolution. Portugal was the first European country to participate in slave trading. Other European countries that were participating in slave trading were England, France, Spain and the Netherlands as well as the United States from across the Atlantic Ocean4.

These nations would purchase slaves from African community leaders, and they would pick them up from outposts that were created for the purpose of the slave trade on the western coast of Africa where the slaves were taken from the central and Western parts of the continent. They would then be boarded onto ships like cargo and were transferred to the Americas cheaply and quickly. The slaves then became the legal property of the proprietor and could be sold at the market; much like material goods or services5.

It has been estimated that the number of slaves brought across the Atlantic Ocean amounts to 12 million individuals with about a million individuals dying during cargo ship transportation. The highest number of immigrants from the Old World into the New World, actual numbers of slaves procured from slave traders has accounted to be much higher. The racism we see today towards individuals of African descent stemmed from the slavery they were subjected to6. Human beings would be on equals otherwise, as are all born as such.

Walter Rodney’s perspective on racism states that "Above all, it was the institution of slavery in the Americas which ultimately conditioned racial attitudes, even when their more immediate derivation was the literature on Africa or contacts within Europe itself. It has been well attested that New World slave - plantation society was the laboratory of modern racism. The owners contempt for and fear of the black slaves was expressed in religious, scientific and philosophical terms, which became the stock attitudes of European and even Africans in subsequent generations7.

Although before and after the slave trade era there had been contributions to the racist philosophy, the historical experience of blacks being enslaved by the whites for four centuries established the tie between racist and color prejudice, and created individual racists, as well as