Presentation critique - Essay Example

The 18th century saw great movements to abolish the trade stem up and grow. In the early years of 19th century however, Britain as well as US declared the trade illegal and in 1833, the entire British Empire consented to the abolishment of the trade. The slave trade thrived in the Atlantic regions as was necessitated by the various commodities that were exchanged between Europe, Africa as well as America. The African continent offered Africans as slaves in exchange of commodities and in often times without any gain to America.

The American continent on the other hand provided Europe with cotton, Tobacco and sugar. Africa then benefited through textile, rum as well as manufactured goods from the Europeans. The concern here would be how literature would reveal the mutual benefit between the three continents while in actual sense the Africans lost as slaves were fetched from them through disguise. Spain, France, Portugal, Norway, Netherlands, Sweden as well as England were the major countries from Europe, which participated within the slave trade.

The main merchandize of trade from the European continent were Brass utensils, beads, pewter, guns, gunpowder, spirits as well as food commodities. Trading nations were identified through hoisting of the flag and a specific slave trader would be stationed there for maintaining good relations with the African correspondences participating in the trade. Slaves were obtained through negotiations with the natives as well as by raids that were organized periodically by the Europeans. It is worth noting that the Africans played the two roles of perpetrators and victims to the slave trade.

The Portuguese were strategic in the trade by targeting the African countries that were at war and they would side with one side and acquire slaves from the loosing country. The Africans therefore were wittingly used to capture and trade fellow Africans for trade under the disguise of collaboration while in other instances, Europeans would raid Africans for such supplies. The actual journey in trade involved the transport of the slaves through water where depending on the number of slaves on board, the terms ‘loose-packing’ and ‘tight-packing’.

Loose packing meant that few slaves would be packed together with large quantities of cargo. Tight packing on the other hand had a higher percentage of live to dead slaves on board was bigger to that of loose packing. Tight packing however dominated much of the slave trade. The slaves suffered extreme conditions of heat, congestion in docks, sexual harassment, staying in chains as well as exposure to unhealthy conditions. In extreme cases, the slaves on transit would rebel and this would result too many deaths through suicide and violence.

Nevertheless, there were exceptional cases where slaves received fair treatment from their captors as shown by the case of Olaudah Equiano who was capture at age 11 and received good treatment all through. The second presentation however covers much of regulations and laws that were crafted to address the slave trade at different regions. For instance, in America, slavery was a common feature though existing policies and laws inhibited the rights of citizenship of the slaves there. The Northwest ordinance provided the boundary between states that adopted slaves and those that abolished it.

Indentured servants were the commonly used aids instead of slaves within the Free states. There was a noted