Category: Trade

Essay about Trans Saharan Trade Route

Slavery is defined as the system by which people are owned by other people as slaves. A slave is a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them. The act of a slave is the submission to a dominant influence. The history of slavery in Ghana includes both indigenous slavery and non-indigenous slavery. The word indigenous is defined as naturally existing in a place or country rather than arriving from another place. Indigenous slavery refers to the system of human ownership amongst those of the same place or origin. Indigenous slavery has existed throughout Ghana’s history dating back to the Iron age [Perbi]. Non-Indigenous Slavery also shares a long deep-rooted history beginning with the Trans Saharan Caravan Trade in 800 AD. Both forms of slavery played major integral roles throughout Ghana’s history up until the 20th century although many theorists argue their effects linger today.

The History of Slavery in Ghana is complex for it includes a plethora of factors to consider. For brevity, this paper will cover three. The first factor to consider is their abundance of natural resources. The commodification of these natural resources such as kola nuts and gold enabled interstate trade facilitating the Trans-Saharan Caravan Trade. The roles of slaves in this trade are indispensable. The second factor to consider is the international market beginning at the tail end of the 15th century when Europeans first made direct contact. European influence in Ghana and the western coast of Africa by the mid-17th century brought a new dynamic to trade and slavery in Ghana. The third and final factor to look at is the British abolition movement in the late 19th century and its effects. This includes the outbreak of the Anglo-Asante wars and the shift to an underground slave export market as the institution of slavery in Ghana was being questioned by the global community.

Ghana’s institution of slavery has transformed throughout the centuries as trade has evolved primarily due to globalization. The most extreme transformation occurred during the 16th-18th century with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. This period marked the beginning of European occupancy. This period will be focused on with particular attention as its impact on present-day social political and economic global order is significant. By looking at the evolution of slavery both indigenous and non-indigenous throughout Ghana’s history in these three sections; Gold trade, international market, and the abolition movement, a basic understanding can be made: The institution of slavery in Ghana is historically linked to the social political and economic life both domestically and globally.

The Ghanaian Empire dates back to 500 A.D. Endowed with rich gold reservoirs it attracted trade turning it into a major trade state. Trade networks were established internally before the first contact with Arabs at some point after 7A. D (Arabs established their presence in North Africa 7AD through acquisition). There are written accounts describing West African highly advanced trading circuits and economies but these are only found in Arabic journals written by Arab travelers and traders. The 8th century marked a peak in trade in what would be known as the Trans-Saharan Caravan trade. Arab merchants from the north would trade salt for gold with Ghana. Commercial trade naturally, brought cultural exchange introducing Islam to the Soninke Empire of Ghana. Slaves played a big role in this trade. Male and female slaves participated in the long-distance trade across the Sahara by accompanying merchants and traders to meet and trade gold for salt. These slaves acted as porters and carriers of goods. Slaves would carry on their backs up to 50 pounds of goods walking 100 to even 200-mile journeys. Reports of slaves being traded themselves have been shown but the exact numbers of slaves are still unfound. Records only go so far as to mention the trade of “some slaves” without any indication of an approximate number.

The Trans Saharan Caravan Trade included the trade of kola nuts which are found in abundance in the Asante region of Ghana’s northern parts. These kola nuts gained popularity among merchants for three principal reasons. They have been proven to reduce thirst, help sustain the body against hunger pains, and avoid fatigue. These natural stimulants were of high value for traders covering long journeys across the Sahara with a limited supply of food and water. Slaves were ordered to perform the tasks of picking collecting and preparing these kola nuts for transport.” {]

Collecting kola nuts as well as other foods such as shea butter was part of the agricultural tasks slaves would take on. Slaves made up the majority of the labor hands in agriculture. They grew crops, reared livestock, and went fishing. Agriculture followed by Industry was the main local use of slaves according to Dr. Perbi’s research on the history of indigenous slavery in Ghana. Her work is cited by many historian scholars as it encompasses an extensive amount of sources in regard to this underdeveloped study. Based on her findings the role of slaves domestically could be divided into six sections as follows. ‘First, slaves constituted a reservoir of labor for agriculture, trade, and industry; second, slaves were used in the administrative sectors of the state; third, some slaves served in the military; four, slaves performed domestic chores in the palaces of chiefs, at shrines and in individual households; five a special category of slaves was available for sacrifice in accordance with traditional beliefs and practices; six, personal slaves satisfied the private desires of their owners.’ She notes that “by looking at the local uses of slaves it will become evident that they are woven into the political economic and social fabric of society.” Interestingly enough indigenous slaves were essential to the Ghanaian society. They were considered part of the family. Their social role as a part of the family unit varied. Slaves could marry. They often adopted family names and lived with their owners. Slave origin was not commonly disclosed in some parts and as a result, over generations descendants have been able to remove themselves from the status of “slave” and blend in with freemen. This was one way in which slaves were able to gain freedom. The second was to buy their freedom. Slaves were able to buy their freedom or nominate pawns to finish paying off their debt. This for example would involve a man pawning his son for servitude in his place to pay off a debt.

The late 15th century marked the beginning of a strong European presence off Ghana’s coast. Gold was the main incentive for exploration in the region. Portugal was the first to approach Elmina’s harbor, and eventually, other European countries followed suit. Portuguese ships reached the gold coast in 1471 establishing direct contact with west African traders, therefore, creating new routes of trade. Until that point, all gold trade went through the trans-Saharan caravan channels. It is within this period that slavery both indigenous and non-indigenous grew exponentially in size resulting in the Trans- Atlantic Slave trade. The European presence in Ghana between the 15 and 18th centuries brought significant changes to its institution of slavery.

Portuguese came into the Elmina port in 1471. The Elmina port was a simple fishing harbor at the time. The Portuguese came in search of ivory, pepper, and most of all gold. They constructed the Elmina fort in 1482 to secure their hold on the gold trade. In doing so they established the first western trading post in west Africa. In an attempt to monopolize trade with Ghana, they brought cloth and slaves to trade. The cloth was one of the main items of trade in Ghana which presented a ‘ peculiar problem’ to the Portuguese. There was a preference for North African-manufactured cloth over the Portuguese. In order to recover from this potential threat to trade the Portuguese bought cloth in North Africa,” even commissioned men on the Barbary coast to make fabrics, especially for this trade” to ensure continued control over the commerce” [S Harrop “The economy of the West African Coast in the 16th Century” The economic Bulletin of Ghana (1964) p24 Volume 8]. Along with cloth, the Portuguese brought slaves participating in the internal slave trade which predated their arrival. They brought slaves from neighboring villages to trade and work in the gold mines. These enslaved people were from present-day Benin, Togo, Nigeria, and Niger.” From the mid-1470s to about 1540 the Portuguese imported over 12,000 slaves to Elmina.”[ Adu-Boahen, Kwabena.]

The Portuguese direct contact with traders on the gold coast encouraged more business exchanges and dealings to occur. It is “estimated that the Portuguese shipments of gold from the Gold Coast in the early 16th century amounted to from ½ to 1 ton a year and equaled about 1/10th of the world’s gold supply” [Ivor Wilks Journal of African History volume 3]. The trans-Saharan caravan trade began to lose steam by the 17th century. Trade in gold no longer needed to be passed through the north African border to reach Europeans. Now Europeans were extracting this gold from the source by sailing to the gold coast and dominating the trade themselves. This expansion in the trade of gold leads to higher demands on slave labor, particularly in the mines. Gold was the number one commodity for Ghana and in order to meet these high demands, gold mining production increased. Slaves were vital to meeting gold demands as they dominated its production. Male slaves made up the majority of those mining for gold and female slaves would pan for gold.” According to oral accounts documented by Professor Perbi, only slaves were allowed in the mines with the exception of a few free men. These mines were to remain secret from Europeans.

Essay on Trade Networks between Africa and Eurasia

Discrimination is the act of unrightfully treating, someone, due to your own personal beliefs and biases. This term is used to call attention to the disparity between individuals from various groups when one group is intentionally maltreated. Slavery is a perfect representation of this act and it is an unfortunate burden that billions of people had to suffer. In this essay, we will explore the key differences between Roman slavery and the slave system that took place in the Atlantic World as well, the beliefs that supported these systems, as well as the role and influence Christianity had on slavery and its victims.

Slavery has been around for thousands of years. It has played a major role in defining multiple societies. It served as a product of trade to better economic growth and served as a shield in battle. Even though ancient colonies all viewed slavery as being an important part of their society, they did not always go about it the same way.

In Western Europe, Before the trans-Atlantic Trade, during the period of the Roman Empire, slavery was really not as present as we would expect. Which was completely opposite from the other regions of the Atlantic world. Fellow Europeans would enslave their own people. European slaves were present, even though in a fairly small amount, in almost every state.

The amount of slavery in Western Europe gravely declined, after the fall of the Roman Empire.

By 1200, chattel slavery had all but disappeared from northwestern Europe(“Slavery Before the Trans-Atlantic Trade” 2) The political, geographical, and cultural changes that occurred in the subcontinent are what caused the great decline. Also, after the fall, the elites began looking for actual jobs and trying to acquire land and their own goods instead of focusing on owning and controlling people through slavery. The system that began to replace Alavert was the system of serfs. Serfs were old slaves that had to work for the lord of the manors. Unlike regular slaves, they could not be sold or bought. They were awarded for their good work safety and were allowed to farm on the lands for their subsistence. Even though they were not actually free were not as neglected as the original slaves. A few centuries after that, in the 14th and 15th centuries, the population changes and economic shifts from the Black Death serfdom declined in Western Europe. (“slavery Before”2)

During that same period of time, around 1500, the rise of Christianity started having an impact on whom and what could define a slave. Before that period, Europeans enslaved one another and there wasn’t any particular concept or definition to categorize who could be a slave. But after the spread of Christianity, the creation of boundaries and rules began defining who fit in that category. European Christians believed that slavery for the perfect punishment for criminals. They did not believe in the enslavement of the innocent, however, they were not necessarily against the enslavement of non-Christian Europeans.

From around the fifth to the eleventh century, there was a large amount of Viking attacks in the northwestern side of Europe. These attacks were primarily made to raid and search for slaves on the coasts. The Norman Conquest of England in 1066 helped protect some areas from these salves raids, but tensions and conflicts continued between Christian and non-Christian Europeans. Church laws were created and were meant to protect Christians but allowed non-Christians and Muslims to be enslaved eventually, even with those laws protecting Christians; they were still regularly threatened by enslavement.

In that same period, Europeans started to point out the differences between themselves, Indians, Americans, and Africans. The criteria defining enslavement started facing a large shift from the non-Christian Europeans to just the non-European population. Then the dividing line separating Europeans from others became the frontier separating the Europeans from the non-“white” population. That separation is what enabled and started the enslavement of “black” Africans and the African-American population.

As time passed by, during the European renaissance, multiple philosophical and theological texts were written explaining and justifying the reasoning behind the Christian’s view on slavery. To add, around the 16th and 17th centuries, philosophers, such as Aristotle, provided theories and biblical justification supposedly stating the link between black skin and slavery, justifying and explaining why black people are “natural slaves” and should be confined to a lifetime of slavery.

As the economy started growing, European businessmen needed laborers to cultivate their properties and mines. Westerners then attacked multiple places in Africa and enslaved their population. They also enslave African-Americans and had less massive trade networks in both places. They began to exploit black people and enslaved them. They justified their behavior by stating their impureness and their lack of faith in God. The black people who were Christians also severely suffered also and that’s how the concept of white superiority began. Europeans began to tell myths and stories about the superiority of the white race over the black race to avoid their own enslaving and justify their behavior. As time passed, the ideas of the inferiority of the black race grew to influence European society on a large scale.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, Europeans turned the Atlantic Ocean into a massive slave economy, essentially of Africans. The trans –Atlantic slave trade was the largest long-distance forced movement of people in recorded history (‘Slavery before “12”.) More than twelve million black African people (men, women, and children) were enslaved by euro-American slaveholders. Millions of passengers died due to the inhumane conditions on the slave ships. The ships were designed to maximize the number of passengers and completely ignored comfort and safety. Slaves could be chained and packed closely against one another and had to remain chained up for up to multiple months regardless of the horrendous living conditions, lack of food, or even the harsh weather. The enslaved women were raped and beaten and so were the female children Mortality rates were off the charts, the slaves were treated like animals, and the hatred they suffered was unimaginable. The trans-Atlantic trade was the most inhuman encounter to the human race.

Nowadays, even with the era of slavery being long over, we still suffer from the consequences of slavery. The history of these inhuman actions still lingers in our presence. In today’s society, we are still faced with racism which was kind of the unconscious reason for slavery. The “White superiority” ideology that was created to give power to one race over another is still being demonstrated in today’s society. The fight for black freedom through powerful means is still largely present and the lines drawn between these two races are still being felt today. Even though slavery is not necessarily still a thing, we witness racism and discrimination in other shapes or forms. Today, black people are still victims of hate crimes, segregation, and discrimination. This is why, till today, modern-day society is still affected by the history of slavery.

Trade as the First Direct and Sustained Link between the Americas and Asia: Essay

The Pacific route has existed since Andres de Urdaneta’s discovery of Tornaviaje in 1565, connecting Manila to Acapulco on a regular basis until 1815. In exchange for silver from the mines of Zacatecas and Potosi, Asian goods such as silk, porcelain, ivory, and spices were brought to Acapulco. Many of these merchandise was then transported to Veracruz through Mexico City, where it was loaded onto the West Indies Fleet.

After a stop in Havana, the ships sailed to Seville bringing valuable commodities from New Spain, Peru, and Asia. For more than two decades, this flood of Asian products has led to interesting cultural trends in Spain, such as the inclusion of the Manila shawl in the flamenco dress, found intrinsic to the Andalusian style today.

Between 1565 and 1815, these legendary ships operated under government auspices as state-owned, armed Spanish crown vessels, instruments of official and private communication, transport, and commercial enterprise in the distant eastern sector of the Spanish empire, the Manila galleons served one of the most enduring and longest shipping routes or two and a half centuries. More notably, the galleons were merchants, laden with an impressive array of Chinese silks, cotton textiles and clothes, porcelain, gold jewelry, rare perfumes, and other celebrity riches bought from Manila Chinese traders and bound for markets throughout the Spanish colonies in America and Europe. The first direct and sustained link between the Americas and Asia was the trade in silver.

They also brought products from local production in the Philippines, including beeswax, assorted woven cotton textiles (both fine goods and heavy cloths), and gold mined from island alluvial deposits. The destination of the galleons, Acapulco, Mexico, was a small trade port on New Spain’s viceroyalty’s southwest coast that became a great trade fair upon their arrival.

The Chinese market for silver in the seventeenth and seventeenth centuries was known to foreign merchants. A series of events from about two centuries earlier sparked this wide demand. The Ming Dynasty, like the Yuan, created and tried to revive a paper currency to act as the medium of exchange by banning precious metals in an effort to create a standard medium of exchange. The ‘China Ships’ cargoes were traded in the form of silver bullion, bars, and coin, the famed ‘silver dollars’ or bits of eight destined to circulate throughout the Far East’s international trade.

In the neoliberal economic era of the 1600s, states supported their traders with monopoly advantages and calculated their economic importance by the scale of favorable trade balances and the number of valuable metals in royal vaults. Galleon trade poured silver eastward, which concerned the Spanish government, and made the Empire vulnerable to the situation of Spanish traders in Seville and Cadiz, who protested that Asian goods flowing through Acapulco undermined their dominance of the American market.

Consequently, the popularity of the trading of ‘silk for money’ culminated in the imposition of limitations that restricted highly lucrative trade to an arbitrarily set total, known as the permit or permission, including limits on transport, a ban on goods sent from Manila, and a limitation on the volume of silver returned received from the selling of freight on offer.

In early 1605 and well into the nineteenth century, textiles were among the most important categories of commodities in international trade, compared with spices in price per ton of freight. Textiles accounted for as much as 60% to 80% of the total value of typical goods shipments brought in by wholesale merchants during the colonial era.

The Philippines have been a cultural crossroads for a long time. Old maritime routes of centuries brought up the Spice Islands’ goods from the south, and the Chinese mainland’s luxurious factories particularly silks and porcelain due to its large harbor.

In 1571, for the control of the Philippines and Asian commerce, Spain founded Manila City. Half a century ago, Magellan crossed the Pacific Ocean. The Galeon de Manila trading route was soon developed after the establishment of the city of Manila. This functioned until the early 19th century as a long-distance and large-scale sea trade path linking the Asian world with the American and European continents.

The Spanish Crown also needed a regular communication line across the Pacific to link Mexico City and Manila with the colonization and settlement of the Philippines. The Philippines became an independent general captain attached to New Spain’s Mexico-based vice-royalty. Manila was the center of this general captaincy, covering Guam, the other Mariana Islands, Palau, the Caroline Islands, and some of the Moluccas for a while. A regular maritime route was also indispensable as trade became the major incentive for immigration to the Philippines. A response to this logistical need was the Manila-Acapulco Galleon, inaugurated by Urdaneta in 1565.

The arrival of Spanish technology, textiles, and agricultural products in the Philippines has resulted in significant changes in its population’s way of life. It also contributed to the introduction in Tagalog of many Spanish words that have since been considered indigenous. Spanish persists in thousands of words in Tagalog (and other Philippine languages) originating from Spanish through the introduction of specially manufactured goods, agricultural products, and textiles by galleon trade. Examples include “kutsylio” (knife), “martylio” (hammer), “araro” (plow), “algodon” (cotton), “oliba” (olive), and “asukal” (sugar).

This also applies to fruits, vegetables, and animals brought from Spain on board the fleet of the West Indies and the galleons of Manila. Examples include the “cabalyo” (horse) from Spanish Caballo, the “Baka” (cow) from vaca, and the “mola” (mule) from Mula.

Regular shipment of goods from Seville to Manila (and back) and the fact that it fell under the Casa de Contratación’s single, central jurisdiction proves the existence of this three-continent global trade route.

Crossing three continents and two seas, the entire Manila-Acapulco-Veracruz-Seville trade route spanned 15,000 miles in a straight line. The galleon from Manila sailed to Acapulco and back from the Pacific. On the Pacific, Seville was linked with the Caribbean by the Flotas and Galeones through a network of four Caribbean ports: Veracruz, Portobelo, Cartagena de Indias, and Havana.

The ships headed to Veracruz on Mexico’s Atlantic coast, and the Galeones proceeded to Portobelo (Panama) with most of the fleet breaking off and stopping at Cartagena de Indias, an important fortified port in present-day Colombia, where Peru’s money was packed onto the galleons.

On the return trip to Spain, both ships will meet in Havana and sail together across the Caribbean, calling to Seville in the Canary Islands and eventually up the Guadalquivir River. The departure and destination of these fleets were changed from Seville to Cadiz, which is on the Atlantic coast, in the early 18th century, making it easier to access.

This can certainly be considered a lasting relationship by the standards of those days. The length from Manila to Acapulco is about nine thousand miles, but to complete the road, we would add another three hundred miles overland for the Acapulco-Veracruz trip and another five thousand five hundred miles between Veracruz and Seville.

The West Indies-Manila Galleons made the worldwide exchange of goods, peoples, and culture possible from the 16th to the beginning of the 19th century. The route represents the first instance of imperialism by connecting the three main continents for the first time in history.

In addition to being the longest ‘road’ in its day, this route is surprisingly the first global trade route in history. Many traditional roads, such as the ancient European-Indian routes, the Silk Road (up to the 13th century), and the modern Portuguese and Dutch spice paths, were all less long.

The Spanish’s achievement in the Philippines was largely due to Manila’s position on the South China Sea’s eastern coast. The extensive archipelago of the Philippines is situated north of Borneo, with its three major islands and island groups of Mindanao in the south, the Visayas in the east, and Luzon in the north, which is only a 2-day Chinese mainland run.

The Galeon de Manila usually sailed in each direction once a year. The trip from Acapulco to Manila took approximately three months, including a short stop in Guam. In the opposite direction, it took four to five months, sometimes even six, to pick up the eastern Kuroshio winds close to Japan due to the long detour. A royal decree originally ordered two galleons to sail from Manila to Acapulco together. However, the convoy was reduced to one after 1650, as this represented a smaller investment for the merchants of Manila, who could fit the entire cargo into a single, larger galleon. The custom was adopted in 1702 by a constitutional decree.

The galleon made the political and trade relationship with New Spain possible, an extension of which was the Philippines and other Pacific territories. The ships brought Mexico to Manila civil servants, soldiers, and priests, including newly appointed governors, archbishops, and sometimes royal inspectors or visitors.

Perhaps critically, the galleon played a key role in trade development. In exchange for valuable Asian goods, large quantities of silver were shipped from Acapulco to Manila. The merchandise was then sent to Acapulco where the Royal Treasury paid import taxes and exchanged in exchange for silver to Mexican traders.

A year later from the sale of these products, the galleon would return to Manila stacked with silver 8-Real coins or bars. The silver was circulated to the merchants in Manila, who usually used it to buy new goods to be delivered to Acapulco the next round.

Nonetheless, commerce was the competitive field of the colonial economy in the Philippines where all gains had to be made or not, and everybody who had the slightest opportunity to engage in it did so on whatever pretense they could manage.

The Spanish influence on the culture of Mexico and the Philippines was much stronger than vice versa because Spain was the colonizing power and brought its own culture to the territories it settled. Spaniards brought to the islands their Catholic religion, architecture, crafts and literature. By the late 17th century, missionary work led to widespread Christianity.

The galleon of Manila also carried the Spanish language to the Philippines. While teaching the language to native Filipinos was not initially a priority, important educational institutions that used Spanish as the medium of instruction were established from the beginning by religious orders.

Although to a lesser degree, culture in Asia and the Philippines also influenced Mexico and Spain, particularly in forms of art, including fashion. A classical example is an adoption in the Spanish flamenco outfit of the silk mantón de Manila with East Asian decorative motifs. The first Chinese-style mentions were sent from Manila to Seville and later manufactured in Seville itself.

In the long run, the galleon trade remained the favorite of Spaniards in the Philippines for at least another hundred years. It even witnessed something of a bubble in the 1690s, making a migration path to the eighteenth century’s longest economic good fortune throughout the Spanish Empire.

What Was One Negative Effect of Triangular Trade

Although sugar is sweet, slavery is not. The demand for sugar led to the demand for slave labor. According to Britain’s Trade Documentary, the slaves from the West African coast were used for profit. Then, transported to North and South American colonies (“Gold, Silver, and Slaves: Britain’s Trade Documentary”). They were transported so they can be used for labor on plantations and sold for large amounts of money. As they were transported, they were kept very close to each other, and diseases had a huge impact on the slaves because of the way the slaves were treated. The Triangular Trade was not a triangle nor a trade, it was more of a spherical process that traveled around the world. The Trade increased demand for land and slave labor, leading to greed and bad behavior; meaning the three ways to sustain the triangular trade are to keep up with the demand, increase global trade, and excuse bad behavior for slavery.

To be able to keep up with the demands, the supply of goods would need to stay stable. Without the supply staying stable, their profit would decrease. America supplied natural resources but needed slave labor to harvest them; Africa would enslave people and provide the slave labor but they wanted manufactured goods from Europe. Europe could sell manufactured goods but needed raw materials from America. According to the mercantile theory, “colonies were to supply their mother nation with raw materials and buy their manufactured goods” (Ladenburg). This demonstrates how America supplying natural resources was vital due to them supplying their own resources was, in fact, following the mercantile theory of supplying their mother nation with raw materials.

The Triangular Trade, also known as the global trade, increased the size of the market and demand for valuable goods and resources such as “sugar, tobacco, rice, rum, and other plantation produce” (Findlay 3). This demonstrates how the Trade increased the size of markets and the demand for valuable goods because they traded high-quality items which are great for trading. This demonstrates how the Trade increased the size of markets and the demand for valuable goods, and they traded high-quality items which are great for trading.

The countries fell into bad behavior from keeping up with the demand for land and slave labor. According to “Gold, Silver, and Slaves” Africa enslaved 4 million at the time of emancipation; meaning America needed more land to harvest, leading to more theft of land from Native Americans. ( Gold, Silver, and Slaves video). Europe displayed a few of the deadly sins- “pride greed and envy as wealth with sugar.. [and] other goods” obtained in the Triangular Trade (Aronson 63). This demonstrates how the countries fell into bad behavior from keeping up with the demand for land and slave labor; which led to them trying to fit more slaves onto one boat at a time, leading to illnesses, injuries, and even death.

The Triangular Trade had many impacts on our history, that impacted our lives today, too. The Triangular Trade increased demands for, and slave labor, which leads to greed and bad behavior. Which mainly led to people needing to keep up with the demand, increases in global trade, and the country’s bad behavior.