Short Essay One for HST 498

Zarmina Ismail

HST – 498

Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Short Essay One

            Most Americans assumption of slavery is that it started here in the United States. Americans are responsible for binging innocent Africans over here and making them work to their core. What many people are not aware of however is that slavery goes back hundreds of years. Africans were used as slaves in Europe as far back as the 1400’s and were treated just as poorly as they were by Americans. Italians, Germans, French and the British took advantage of these people and the idea crossed over the Atlantic Ocean and into the U.S also. Slaves were used to work in the fields, and also to perform domestic chores. The increased number of slaves in Europe resulted in a large variety of abuses, mistreatments, and intense violence. Before Africans were brought to Europe, Europeans based their images of the Africans on what they would read from the published books of travelers. They had an interest in Africa and kept in contact with them. The images of Africans changed among the Mediterranean and Atlantic Europeans throughout the medieval period because their positive relations turned into taking advantage of the Africans and turning them into market and domestic slaves.

            The Europeans always imagined Africa as a hot, rainy and forested continent with exotic fauna and many black people. By the seventeenth century, Western Europeans were able to see Africans in both a European environment as well as in their own African homelands. The Italians, French and English got their images of Africans from books published by travelers such as Peter Martyr, Leo Africanus, Richard Hakluyt and Samuel Purchas. Portuguese travelers brought back stories of African politics, traditions and customs mainly of the Kongo and Ethiopian nations. In the beginning of the fourteenth century, Europeans and Western Africans kept in contact. People are not sure whether they had cultural conflicts or if they were just societies in contact with each other. Europeans wanted to spread their Christian beliefs throughout Africa and influence them more than the Muslims. Soon after exploring the West Coast of Africa, Portuguese sailors started to enslave Africans and have them work on sugar plantations. Spaniards discovered sugar plantations in parts of Cuba and soon followed in the Portuguese footsteps and imported slaves back from Africa to work in the sugar plantations.

            During the medieval time, Italy was the economic center of Europe. (Lecture 1.3). When the black plague broke out in Europe it wiped out half of the population there and Italy had a labor shortage. Landlords in Italy started looking for slaves on the Italian Peninsula and wanted slaves that would work for them like the Serbs did. (Lecture 1.3). When Italians heard of the African slaves they soon started to import as well. Some slaves were ordered to work on farms while other slaves were domestic and had to do household chores. Sometimes the domestic slaves were seen as “exotic” by their masters and were used for sexual pleasure as well.

            In the 1600’s, the English, French and the Dutch had established colonies in the West Indies and started an African slave trade. By this time, most Europeans were only enslaving Africans. Their images of Africans were that they were cheaper, and better at labor than other slaves. Sugar was developed in Africa and became the main export to Europe. The rising European demand for sugar was creating a fierce competition for slaves and for new sugar colonies. From the 1500's to the mid-1800's, the Europeans were shipping out about 12 million black slaves from Africa to not only Europe but the entire Western Hemisphere. Nearly 2 million of these slaves died on the voyages. The African slave trade increased throughout the years from 1400’s to the 1600’s.

By the 1600’s, Africans were the only slaves that Europeans were using which was a change from Indians and Western Asians that they were using before. The Europeans had an image of Africans which was always to keep relations with them and to bring them to Europe and use them as slaves. What they read in the books brought by sailors was of an “exotic” land and people, but once they knew they could use them for their own good those images started changing.  Africans were slaves in Europe all throughout the medieval years.