Slavery is defined as a coerced labor that relies upon intimidation and brutality, and dehumanization. It wasn’t just a cultural system, it was a legal one. Slavery is the treatment of human beings as property in which they are deprived from their own personal, unalienable rights. The need for slaves in the Americas ultimately led to the Atlantic slave trade.
The mass influx of African slaves being brought to the Americas is the greatest evil because we are still struggling with its legacy. Slavery, contrary to other opinions, began as an equality issue. The belief that a group of people are superior over another group is shown to be the case as to why slavery began. Records have shown that even the ancient Greeks, Romans, Incas, and Aztecs all had slaves. Slavery is not just an issue that occurred in the Americas, it has occurred in many forms throughout the world.
In fact, slavery is a universal issue that is still taking place today. Globally, there are an estimated 45.8 million slaves, a greater number than at any other time in history, according to The Global Slavery Index. The current refugee crisis is also fueling the market for child slavery. Slavery is morally, the worst crime that one can commit. Slavery takes many forms, but sexual, labor-based, and human trafficking are the primary modes today. American history often disregards the negative and focuses on the positive. For example, Africans were not the only peoples who were enslaved.
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What is rarely mentioned in American history is Native Americans were also enslaved and the labor was incredibly intensive, thus it put them at risk to the many diseases brought over by the Europeans. Many of them died from disease, while the others effectively resisted. This lead to the need for the Atlantic slave trade. The Atlantic slave trade, occurring from the late 15th century to the mid 19th century, spanned three continents and forcibly brought more than 10 million Africans to the Americas. Africans were mistreated by the captains and crew onboard. Being forced to cram below deck, proper sanitation was nonexistent and cause many to dies from disease. Some captains would even cut off slave’s ears in order to ensure their profits as proof of purchase.
To avoid suffering, many would commit suicide by jumping off deck. Believing that in death, their souls would return home. The impact it would leave not only affected these slaves and their descendants, but the economies and histories of large parts of the world. African slavery had existed for centuries in various forms. Some slaves were indentured servants, with limited terms and the chance to buy one’s freedom. Others were more like European serfs. When the slave trade was finally outlawed in the Americas and Europe, the African kingdoms whose economies it had come to dominate collapsed, leaving them to conquest and colonization.
The increased competition and influx of European weapons fueled warfare and instability that continues to this day. The Atlantic slave trade also contributed to the development of racist ideology. Man used color as a criterion for classifying races, while also assigning moral and intellectual capacities to each race. These concepts became a permanent part of 19th century anthropological thought. This started the foundation for 19th century beliefs about race that resulted in racism.The invention of the race classification system, racism is taught. Africans had their culture stripped away from them. With their freedom and pride stripped away.
They became practically inhuman. Perhaps if slavery were to never take place we wouldn’t have racism. Most African slavery had no deeper reason than legal punishment or intertribal warfare, but the Europeans who preached a universal religion, and who had long ago outlawed enslaving fellow Christians, needed justification for a practice so obviously at odds with their ideals of equality. They claimed that Africans were biologically inferior and destined to be slaves, making great efforts to justify this theory. Thus, slavery in Europe and the Americas acquired a racial basis, making it impossible for slaves and their future descendants to attain equal status in society. In the Americas, slave life was treacherous. On cotton plantations, most slaves worked in gangs, usually under control of an overseer, or another slave called a driver.
This was back-breaking work done in the southern heat and humidity, and so it’s not surprising that whippings, or the threat of them, was used to get the slaves to work. It is easy to talk of the brutality of slave discipline, but it can be difficult to internalize it. Sadly, the brutality, the whippings, branding, and rape, was real and intentional because in order for slavery to function, slaves had to be dehumanized. This enabled slaveholders to rationalize what they were doing, and it was hoped to reduce slaves to be simply property. Most slaveholders didn’t think of their slaves as human, and because of that, slaves didn’t think of themselves as human either. Enslavement of black people began in 1619 and was abolished in 1865. This meant it took 246 years for slaves to regain their freedom that was forcibly taken from them.
That is not to say that slaves just simply waited until they were free. Slaves partook in many different forms of resistance against oppression, from running away, armed rebellion, and even killing their own white masters. Africans didn’t want slavery, nor would they have chosen it. They were forced to believe they were inferior and that they were meant to be enslaved. Slavery creates a divide between people who love and care for one another. It ultimately creates a division between people who are meant to be equal. The Atlantic slave trade did no create slavery in America. The need for slavery in the Colonies clavery is not over.
The lasting effects it left behind remains to this day and its history should not be forgotten. The treatment of slaves was horrific. They were tortured until they were barely breathing because they were needed. Slavery is the worst because no one should have their freedom stripped away from them. Let alone be made to believe they are inhuman. To be enslaved is not a choice. Slavery and its legacy needs to be known in order to prevent further enslavement.
