What are the reasons for african slave trade?

Question

thX in advance

Answer 1

Plain and simple profit! There was a demand for cheap labor in the booming agriculture of the Western Hemisphere. Plantation agriculture was large scale farming producing cash crops which were grown at a profit. In Central and South America the crops were sugar cane and bananas. In North America the crop was tobacco at first and later of course cotton. Rice and indigo as well as coffee and coco beans were important crops at different times. It was more profitable and reliable to buy slaves to work on the plantation than to have to hire workers and pay them wages for the work. Africans became the unfortunate targets of this trade because they did not have the weaponry that Europeans had and therefore could not effectively fight off European domination. Native Americans were enslaved in some areas but because of their familiarity with the landscape were more difficult to keep on a plantation.

Answer 2

Hard to say really how the African slave trade came to be, but it's origins came about the time Portuguese prince Henry the Navigator made seafaring expeditions all along the west coast of Africa in the mid-15th century. Ships at that time stuck close to the coastlines due to prevalent superstitions and myths of the time (sea monsters, the world being flat, etc.). But it is true that the Portuguese and other Europeans later on viewed the black Africans as heathen and ultimately inferior to the white Christian Europeans. The evolving mentality came to be that capturing and placing Africans in a life of bondage and servitude would "save" them from the pits of Hell. That and the fact that African slaves would be useful as a cheap source of labor, especially once the New World established more settlements.

Answer 3

Europeans didn't have any trouble not seeing Africans as human beings due to the cultural and religious differences. That an the race to become the biggest imperial power amongst European countries pretty much reinforced it.

Answer 4

money and political power , slaves were counted as 2/3 of a vote for their owner

Answer 5

1. It made money for the Arabs in Africa who sold them.
2. Cheap labor for plantations.

Answer 6

its part of triangle trade

Answer 7

free labor.

Answer 8

Money!
Power!
Greed!

You are welcome