The Enslavement of Africans - Essay Example

The Enslavement of Africans affiliation The Enslavement of Africans In the age of the Atlantic slave trade, Slaves were always Africans and this was due to numerous factors. Europeans sometimes vindicated the enslavement of Africans by claiming that slavery was already present in the African continent. In addition, African societies had built up numerous forms of servitude and bondage that varied from a type of peasant status to something much more like chattel slavery. This was where individuals were seen as things, in short a property with a soul.

For another thing, the dissimilar morals of societies in the Atlantic region was a contributing factor and more specifically how groups of individuals implicated in forming a trans-Atlantic community viewed themselves in relation to others-in summary, how Africans defined their identity. Before 1900, every community offered an unthinkable solution to the question on which group is to be termed suitable for enslavement, and usually they did not recruit massively from their own communities. A rebellion in ocean-going technology offered the Europeans the capability to get unremitting access to remote individuals and move them against their will over very long distances.

Though it was cheaper to find slaves in Europe than to transfer them from Africa, Europeans opted to ferry them. This was mainly because Africans had a narrower idea of who was suitable for enslavement than the Europeans. Many Africans viewed these as a way of gaining status and wealth since in their countries they were faced with abject poverty. This dissonance in the European and African ideas contributed to enslavement of Africans. Therefore, without this difference of opinion and the emergence of the ocean-going technology, there would be no slavery of Africans in the Americas.