Title: The Turning Point: European Conquests of the Americas (1492-1800)
Headings: The Turning Point: European Conquests of the Americas (1492-1800)
The Turning Point: European Conquests of the Americas (1492-1800)
Content: The first truly global trade was also the most nefarious. It set the precedent of using African slaves to create cash crops to be sold abroad in a global market. Eighty percent of the 11 million enslaved Africans who came to the Americas went to sugar plantation regions of Brazil and the Caribbean (90). The slave trade certainly had enormous political, economic, and social implications in western and central Africa. Europeans could not conquer African nations because many were powerful and because various diseases, such as malaria and yellow fever, made it extremely dangerous for Europeans to enter into the interior of the continent. Along the coasts the Portuguese (followed by the Spanish and English) traded firearms, tobacco, cotton, Indian cloth, iron bars, and liquor for enslaved people. It is estimated that central and west Africans acquired over 20 million guns from Europeans during the slave trade, mostly between 1650 and 1850 (Getz 96). This global trade shattered the stability, wealth, and human capital of African nations. On the brutal Middle Passage alone, 1 to 1.5 million Africans died of sickness, abuse, and dehydration (90). African kingdoms and empires were forced to make tough choices about whether they would join the “slaves for guns” trade to compete against their neighbors.