If the Atlantic Slave Trade never happened...?

Question

we were discussing this in class the other day (college level world history) and my teacher said that if the Slave Trade never happened, Africa would have about twice the population it has today.
So I asked "how would that effect Africa, do you think?" (because we were doing a round of "what if" questions). Well nobody said anything so I said, "When I think of africa, the most dominant thoughts in my mind are war, genocide, mass rape, starvation, and poverty. If the population was twice what it is now, I'd imagine these things would be even worse, or that they would eliminate the extra population anyway."

Well my teacher acted like I was trying to justify slavery, so I got shut up real fast, but I wasn't trying to justify anything. I'm just saying that maybe alternative paths of history wouldn't have been much more shining bright and happy.

so anyway, what do you think would happen if the Atlantic Slave Trade never happened?

I would also like to hear rebuttles to my hypothesis. I'm very open to thoughts. message me if you'd like to discuss it.

Answer 1

awesome topic here. If the slave trade had never happened, Africa's population would certainly be vastly greater than it is now - however doubling it is doubtful.
HOWEVER! Consider this: the AST (atlantic slave trade) can be considered a large part of history that opened the gates to colonialism in Africa, which didn't end until about 40 years ago. Many factors / consequences of colonialism are responsible for the "genocide, starvation, mass rape, poverty," etc that you think of when you think of Africa.
Country's borders were drawn with no regard to cultural ones, colonial leaders racialised ethnicities, as in the case of the Hutu and the Tutsis, the two "tribes" involved in the infamous Rwandan Genocide of 1994. This created tension that wasn't there before - now these people were sharing land and competing for jobs, whereas before their only conflict could have been a livestock raid or two, or over a bit of borderland. Colonialists told the tutsi, for example, that because they were taller and of lighter skin, they were clearly superior to the Hutu. They gave the tutsi all the important government jobs that Africans were allowed to hold while the colonialists still held power, and made the hutus suffer terribly at their own hands and at the hands of the tutsis. Then, when the country claimed independance, guess who the colonials left in charge? The Hutus. Nice turn about, eh?
The economies of these African colonies, and now the countries, were set up in a way to serve Europe and the West - not to benefit Africa. For example: they have VAST natural resources, but were never given the industry to process, package, ship, and sell their own goods. They grow the sugar cane: the sugar cane gets sold at $.05 a stick to an industrialized country, that country turns it into sugar in a box, and sells it back to Africans at $5.00 a bag. messed up, right?
My point here (and if you'd like to discuss more specifics, you can email me) is basically that the AST was a big fat stepping stone to colonialism and the result is the messed up continent that we see today. If the AST hadn't happened, there might be more Africans - but they might be better off!

Another interesting consequence of erasing the AST from history would be that the United States would not be the super power it is today - not even close. We needed to exploit that free labor for as long as we did to build the foundation of this great country. We couldn't have PAID people to work 20 hours a day sowing our fields, caring for our livestock, watching our children, preparing our meals, washing our clothes, 'entertaining' our husbands, or harvesting all that tobacco and cotton we had to sell. Without slavery, this country, at the ripe old age of - what are we now, about 230? - might be considered *gasp* third world!

It's messed up dearie. Messed right up.

Answer 2

I am afraid your teacher is wrong. The problem is that the "atlantic" part of the slave trade was a very minor part of the whole "business". What he seems to represent is the fashionable trend to overlook the "contribution" to the slave trade made by the arab/muslim invaders- who not only spent much longer "on the job" but also made a combined enslavement, extermination and colonisation of the "emptied" territories

Another "contribution" made by them was the spreading of diseases inside Africa- a most notable example would be the introduction of the "sleeping sickness" into the Congo bassin by the repeaded invasions of Sudan based slavers (who even created their own "state" (Tippoo Tib) in present day Ruanda/Burundi

During the Muslim/Ethiopian (Ibrahim Gragn) wars the main "prize of war" for the arab/muslim mercenaries were the slaves captured in Ethiopia

The biggest slave market in Africa was on Zanzibar- that's on the EAST coast of Africa. Not exactly intended to cater to trans-Atlantic trade, isn't it?

You may inform your teacher, BTW, that slavery is alive and well even today. In fact there is a perfectly legal slave market in Chartoum in Sudan. SFAIK an African muslim man costs the equivalent of about 100 US$. A Mali born girl costs 60$.

If the slave trade never happened? nothing much would have changed. The wars would still have been fought. Maybe the main difference would have been more slaughter of prisoners instead of leading them away to be sold

Answer 3

It's tough to do he "what ifs", and you're right the teacher probably steers away from too much controversy, as their job is tenuous at best in these days of everyone having a lawyer.

Africa was the cradle of civilization, with their elders still there, they may very well have built a continent that rivaled N. America or Europe, one with lots of natural resources. Or, factors of more people could have furthered the exploitation of the forests into deserts,(keep in mind in the 1700's Ethiopia was heavily forested) and brought worse climate issues then all the Co2 in the world.

I'm an optimist, so I'll go with it would be better....

Answer 4

Slavery was already happening in Africa before the Atlantic slave trade even began, and, in fact, even while Africans were being forced into slavery in the Americas. Humans can be horribly cruel to one another, regardless of whether that cruelty is directed toward foreigners or those from their own homeland. I agree with you that even if the Atlantic slave trade hadn't occurred, something equally horrific would have occurred in it's place anyway, largely due to the depravity of man. It doesn't sound like you were trying to justify slavery at all, and I totally get what you were saying. Your professor clearly misunderstood.

Answer 5

That's absurd. Africa's population would not be doubled. West African rulers sold loads of slaves to all kinds of people, not just European slavers. Many of the slaves were prisoners of war - wars between African peoples that would have occurred whether the white man was around or not. There is this romantic notion that Africa was some harmonious, utopian paradise where everything was perfect before the white man came. Most of Africa's problems have nothing to do with the white man - the continent could not support or sustain that kind of population growth with or without the slave trade.

Is the number of people of African descent in the Americas today even close to the population of Africa? No.

Edit:
Mesopotamia was the cradle of civilisation, Mike. Africa was the cradle of Mankind.

Answer 6

Your teacher hates white people.