The continent of Africa endured over five centuries as the main epicenter of the world’s spotlight on slavery. The European powers, Spain, Britain, the Dutch Empire, France, and Portugal explored their military comparative advantage and enforced slavery on millions of Africans who were forcefully sold and forced into labor before being shipped like cargo, through the deadly journey of no return across the Atlantic, to Europe and the new world.
The transatlantic slave trade was established throughout the middle of the 17th century, and witnessed European vessels which carried merchandise, arriving on the western coastline of Africa. The goods on these vessels, mainly gin, gunpowder, mirror and tobacco were traded with black middlemen in exchange for mainly young men, women, and children who were forcefully abducted from their homes usually after deadly raids. Through this partnership, African intermediaries conducted violent raids in remote settlements to seize energetic youths who would eventually get sold into slavery on the coast, and subsequently get shipped across the Atlantic to industries and plantations in the Europe and the new word.
The system of slavery went beyond just forced labor and control. It operated as an entrenched monetary cartel that exploited human misery. Industrial labor and agricultural plantation work carried out by Africans drove economic growth that financed the successes of overseas empires. The existence of this system created and perpetuated a harmful idea that wrongly claimed Africans were inferior beings, which, unfortunately persists in some quarters to this day.
In the nineteenth century, both enslaved people and abolitionists started opposing slavery as an institution. Despite the refusal of numerous slave-trading nations to concede to change, the system dissolved because the economics no longer supported it. Slavery received its end label, but enslaved people did not achieve freedom. A different form of domination took over that continued to keep Africans in a state of perpetual subjugation throughout their homelands.
The scars of the transatlantic slave trade continue to persist till date, while the fight against oppression championed by those who resisted it also persisted even after slavery ended. Their acts of defiance, bravery, and real-life accounts necessitate permanent recognition.
