Why did many african rulers participate in the slave trade?
Answers
In order to operate huge tracts of land as effective farms, thewhite land owners of the New World, which included what laterbecame America, the Caribbean, and South America, sought slavesfrom Africa to do the work required to make the white men rich.Slave trade between Africa and the Americas began soon afterColumbus arrived in the New World, but it grew slowly at first. Forabout the first hundred years, starting in the early 1500s, it wasmainly indentured white servants brought from Europe, and nativeAmericans, who worked the farms, partly because slaves were tooexpensive at the time to be bought in mass numbers. Slavery hadalready existed worldwide for thousands of years, including inAfrica, before the first slaves were brought to America. Blackslaves in the millions were captured by other blacks, as well as byArabs and others, in the interior of the African continent, andsent to other countries, largely to Muslim nations. Though Africanshad also enslaved other Africans for thousands of years beforeslave trade with the Americas, and slaves living in Africa weresometimes subject to abuse and death that non-slaves were not, itwas not marked by the same kind of lifelong servitude as occurredto African slaves outside Africa. Slavery as practiced by Africanswas originally similar to European serfdom, which was the conditionof most white Europeans at the time. Slaves could marry, ownproperty and even own slaves, and slavery usually ended after acertain number of years of servitude. Also, African slavery wasnever passed from one generation to another. However, since theslave trade between Africa and other countries was rather differentfrom European serfdom, largely because slaves were less oftenallowed to become free, were more often considered property, and itwas practically impossible for them to return to their homecountries, along with the color of their skin setting them apartfrom non-African populations, it set the stage for accentuatingperceived power differences between light-skinned and dark-skinnedpeople worldwide, and helped fuel the further abuses to follow.Slave trade specifically between Europe and Africa began about 50years before Columbus came to America, started by Portugal andSpain, with the Dutch joining in soon after; England was the lastto join in this trade. Slaves were sent to west coast ports inAfrica, and shipped to other countries, mostly to Spain andPortugal. Soon after European settlers arrived in the New World,the slave ships began transporting some slaves to North and SouthAmerica and the Caribbean islands. Only a little more than 3percent of the total number of slaves exported to the Americas weretraded between about 1500 and 1600. Even at this early stage, theywere sold as property, like horses and cows, the men and women werekept on the plantations, and in return for their labor, receivedmeager food and housing. During this first hundred years ofEuropean agriculture in the New World, during which nativesthroughout the Americas were robbed of their lands (due to thementality of greed that the riches of the New World fostered inmany Europeans, and set the stage for what was to follow), farmseventually expanded to massive size, requiring far more workersthan could be supplied by indentured servants and natives; also,massive numbers of natives had died due to diseases brought byEuropeans, further reducing their "contribution" to the work force.The slave trade served as the source for replacement workers.During the next 100 years, between about 1600 and 1700, about 16percent of the total number of slaves sent to the Americas weretraded. In 1642, Massachusetts became the first colony to legalizeslavery, though it already existed without significant opposition.Expansion continued at an even faster pace for the next hundredyears. More than half of all slaves from Africa to the Americaswere exported between about 1700 and 1800. Crammed by the hundredsinto ships, under conditions that killed as many as a fifth of thepeople on each voyage, slavery to the Americas grew as neverbefore, and became far more brutal than ever. Many were prohibitedfrom learning to read, for fear that they would become too educatedto control. Many slaves were treated well physically, due to theirexpense, but at an average price of 10 to 20 dollars each, many ormost male adult slaves could be worked for at least 20 to 30 yearsbefore they were "worked out" and died, usually of malnutrition,overwork and bad treatment, which continued even if they managed tolive into their old age. Women could be worked in the fields too,and also could be trained to work in the house, as cooks andcleaners, and baby nurses. Children were the future workers of theplantation, so the owners encouraged lots of births, both for useat the plantation, and for sale to others, since slavery in theAmericas, as in ancient Rome, included a clause that the childrenof slaves were also considered slaves, and thus property.