Read or listen along for today's lesson, as we try to answer the following questions:

Why do European kingdoms expand the slave trade?

Why are African kingdoms unable to stop it?

How does it affect each society?

When you finish reading, take the quiz!

The history of the European seaborne slave trade with Africa goes back 50 years prior to Columbus' initial voyage to the Americas. It began with the Portuguese, who went to West Africa in search of gold. The first Europeans to come to Africa's West Coast to trade were funded by Prince Henry, who hoped to bring riches to Portugal.

In 1441, Portuguese sailors obtained gold dust from traders on the western coast of Africa. The following year, Portuguese explorers returned from Africa with more gold dust and another type of cargo: 10 Africans. A year later, Portuguese explorers returned from Africa with nearly 30 slaves.

Europeans did not introduce slavery to Africa. As African rulers rose and fell, their political opponents, people of high social status, and their families were sold to promote internal political stability. Poor people were sold to reconcile debts owed by themselves or their families. Chiefs sold people as punishment for crimes.

Gangs of Africans and a few marauding Europeans captured free Africans who were also sold into slavery. Domestic slaves were resold and prisoners of war were sold. Africans themselves carried out the capture and sale of other Africans for enslavement — few Europeans ever actually marched inland and captured slaves themselves.

Elmina Castle and the Business of Slavery

Forty years after that first human cargo traveled to Portugal, Portuguese sailors gained permission from a local African leader to build a trading outpost and storehouse on Africa's Guinea coast. It was near a region that had been mined for gold for many years and was called Elmina, which means "the mine" in Portuguese. Although originally built for trade in gold and ivory and other resources, Elmina was the first of many trading posts built by Europeans along Africa's western coast that would also come to export slaves.

The purpose of Elmina Castle was to a secure harbor for Portuguese vessels. The outposts were heavily armed against assault from the sea. Interestingly, the forts were not so heavily armed against attack from inland. An assault from a European foe (including pirates) was more likely than one from Africans.

Slaves were typically captured inland, then brought to the outpost on an arduous journey that often lasted many days -- half of all captives did not make it to the coast. Once there, the slaves would wait until a ship arrived. By the 18th century, 30,000 slaves en route to the Americas passed through Elmina yearly. The well-armed fort provided a secure harbor for Portuguese (and later Dutch and English) ships. Africans were either captured in warring raids or kidnapped and taken to the port by African slave traders. There, they were exchanged for iron, guns, gunpowder, mirrors, knives, cloth, and beads brought by boat from Europe.

By the start of the 16th century, almost 200,000 Africans had been transported to Europe and islands in the Atlantic.

A New Market for Slaves

But after the voyages of Columbus, slave traders found another market for slaves: New World plantations. By the mid-1500s in Portuguese Brazil and the Spanish Caribbean islands, colonists had turned to the quick and highly profitable cultivation of sugar - a crop that required constant attention and exhausting labor. They tried to recruit native Americans, but many died from diseases carried by Europeans, such as smallpox and tuberculosis. Moreover, the natives who survived wanted no part of the work, often fleeing to the countryside they knew so well. European colonists saw African slaves as the answer to their pressing labor shortage. Europeans seldom went into the interior to take part in slave raids. Instead, they relied on African rulers and traders to seize captives in the interior and bring them to coastal trading posts. There, the captives were exchanged for textiles, metalwork, rum, tobacco, weapons and gunpowder. The slave trade intensified as the demand for slaves increased in the Americas and the demand for luxury goods increased in Africa.

Slave Raids

European traders waited at forts for slaves; African traders transported slaves from the interior of Africa. Africans found themselves sold and traded more than once, often in slave markets. Anyone -- from the poor to royalty -- could be abducted during inter-African raids to secure slaves for trade. The slave trade devastated African life. Culture and traditions were torn asunder as families - especially young men - were abducted. After guns were introduced, slave raids and wars escalated.

After kidnapping potential slaves, merchants forced them to march to the European coastal forts, sometimes as far as 1,000 miles. Shackled and underfed, only half the people survived these death marches. Those too sick or weary to keep up were often killed or left to die. Those who reached the coastal forts were put into underground dungeons where they would stay -- sometimes for as long as a year -- until they were boarded on ships.

The Middle Passage

Just as horrifying as these death marches was the Middle Passage, as it was called -- the transport of slaves across the Atlantic.

For enslaved Africans, the Middle Passage was a horror. Once purchased, Africans were packed below the decks of slave ships. Hundreds of men, women, and children were crammed into a single vessel. Slave ships became "floating coffins - up to half the Africans on board died from disease or brutal mistreatment.

On the first leg of their trip, slave traders delivered goods from European ports to West African ones. On the "middle" leg, ship captains such as John Newton (who later became a foe of slavery), loaded their then-empty holds with slaves and transported them to the Americas and the Caribbean. A typical Atlantic crossing took 60-90 days but some lasted up to four months. Upon arrival, captains sold the slaves and purchased raw materials to be brought back to Europe on the last leg of the trip. Roughly 54,000 voyages were made by Europeans to buy and sell slaves.

Africans were often treated like cattle during the crossing. On the slave ships, people were stuffed between decks in spaces too low for standing. The heat was often unbearable, and the air nearly unbreathable. Women were often mistreated. Men were often chained in pairs, shackled wrist to wrist or ankle to ankle. People were crowded together, usually forced to lie on their backs with their heads between the legs of others. This meant they often had to lie in each others waste. In such cramped quarters, diseases such as smallpox and yellow fever spread like wildfire. The diseased were sometimes thrown overboard to prevent wholesale epidemics. Because a small crew had to control so many, cruel measures such as iron muzzles and whippings were used to control slaves. The horror and inhumanity of this passage cannot be underestimated.

Yet captains most feared slave mutinies, 250 of which scholars estimate took place. As a result, those slaves who were disruptive or likely to cause a mutiny were thrown overboard or shot to death. Nevertheless, although some enslaved Africans did resist, they had little means either to protect themselves or to escape.

Such hopeless misery led many slaves to commit suicide by jumping overboard or by refusing to eat. Because of the stench and disease, many slave ships had to be abandoned after about five years. Eventually ships were built especially for human cargo, with shackling irons, nets, and ropes as standard equipment.

Over the centuries, between one and two million persons died in the crossing. This meant that the living were often chained to the dead until ship surgeons had the corpses thrown overboard.

The Impact of the Slave Trade

The effects of the trade on African civilization and culture were devastating. African societies lost kinship networks and agricultural laborers and production capacity.

The loss of people meant the loss of indigenous artisans and craftsmen along with their knowledge of textile production, weaving and dying, metallurgy and metalwork, carving, basket making, potting skills, architecture, and agricultural techniques upon which their societies depended. Africa’s loss was the New World’s gain.

These were the same expertise and skills that Africans brought to the New World along with their physical labor and ability to acclimate to harsh environments that made them indispensable in the development of the new colonies and nations of the Western Hemisphere.

Historians are still debating the number of Africans who were affected by the Atlantic slave trade.

By the mid-1800's, when the overseas slave trade was finally stopped, an estimated 11 million enslaved Africans had reached the Americas.

Another two (2) million probably died under the brutal conditions of the voyage between Africa and the Americas.