History

During the early development of slavery Portuguese sailors began to explore the West Coast of Africa. Initially, the demand for slave labor was very small. Portugal and Spain has limited interest in such trade, and the rest of European nations had no interest at all but with the exploration of the New World by the Europeans, the demand for slave labor increased dramatically. The Africans had their own agenda and way of living before they were encountered by the European settlers. According to From Freedom to Slavery: A History of African Americans, "Africans captured each to thwart European attempts to move into the interior. Africans became the perpetrators and victims of the Atlantic slave trade" (Franklin, 2009). The Europeans traders wanted to establish contact with an African ruler, representative or a local merchant to secure the desire in assisting with the slave trade since most of the slaves were obtained by the negotiation between the Africans merchants or ruler and the Europeans. Slaves were then seen as one commodity among many commodities to be traded. The mining of natural resources and especially the development of sugar cane plantations in Central America stimulated the slave trade. According to the movie Amsted, the slaves were captured and held in a cave anywhere from six months to a year or more where they were shackled together as a group and then sold to the Europeans. According to From Slavery to Freedom the Europeans would buy mostly women because they were purchased for the use of being wives, concubines, household servants, and agricultural laborers and as where male slaves were used as miners, porters, craftsmen, herdsmen, brewers, soldiers, traders and attendants.