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Quintavious Jeffery
Peter McDade
US History Until 1865
04/29/15
The Atlantic Slave Trade/ Middle Passage
The Middle Passage was a slave trade route; slaves were taken from Africa to America
and the Caribbean and sold for goods. Millions of Africans were stolen from their native lands
leaving behind their families. The first part of the journey was from Europe, mainly Portugal to
Africa. Many of the goods produced in Europe were not available in Africa or America. The
Europeans traded manufactured goods, weapons, and beads to African kings in exchange for
gold. Africans were seen as very hard workers who were skilled in agriculture. “For two hundred
years, 1440-1640, Portugal had a monopoly on the export of slaves from Africa. It is notable that
they were also the last European country to abolish the institution – although, like France, it still
continued to work former slaves as contract laborers,” (Boddy-Evans, Alistair. “An Overview of
the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.”)
The Dutch Slave trade can be called a triangular trade because it involved three stages
and three different continental regions. “European goods were shipped from there to Africa,
where they exchanged for slaves, who in return were taken across the ocean to some destination
in the Americas” (Johannes Postma 149). Once they arrived to modern day USA they were
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exchanged for tropical agricultural produce, cash, or promissory notes. Once it became apparent
that a profitable slave mission could be undertaken, the interested authorities got ships for the
job. The Heren X and WIC created missions for a specific chamber specifying the year and the
African & American destinations. While the ships were being built, a crew had to be hired and
merchandise for the African trade had to be obtained. The making of the ships took several
months. Standvastigheid, one of the last legal Dutch slavers, took from March 1802 to
September 1802 before it was ready to sail.
Slaves were identified by a number burned on their skin, either an individual number or
one that identified them with the ship they sailed on. “The slaves came from different cultures
and a race different from their European owners, which were used as rationales to justify this
inhumane system” (Johannes Postma 227). This was not a harsh experience for just African
