Title: Riches & Misery: The Consequences Of The Atlantic Slave Trade - OpenLearn - Open University
Headings: Riches & Misery: The Consequences Of The Atlantic Slave Trade
Riches & Misery: The Consequences Of The Atlantic Slave Trade
The Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on Africa
The Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on the New World
The Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on Europe
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Content: Powerful Africans who engaged in slave dealing could make a sizeable profit from the trade, especially in view of the relatively high prices that European merchants were prepared to pay for African slaves. By the eighteenth century, slaves had become Africa’s main export. But this may have been to the cost of African economies. It seems that the period between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries was a time of economic stagnation for Africa, which fell further and further behind the economic progress of Europe as the years passed by. Little wonder, then, that some historians interpret this as a sign that the Atlantic trade was seriously holding back Africa’s economic development. The possible negative consequences of the trade were not only economic. Politically, as African rulers organised the capture of slaves, traditions were created of brutal and arbitrary intervention by the powerful in people’s lives. Meanwhile, as rival African rulers competed over the control of slave-capture and trading, wars could result. On both counts, the Atlantic trade badly affected the political landscape of Africa, and set disturbing precedents for the future. Admittedly, not all the consequences of slavery for Africa can be attributed specifically to the Atlantic slave trade.