Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps, Figures, and Tables
- 1 Major slave-trading zones of western Africa
- 2 Major slave-trading ports of Senegambia and Sierra Leone
- 3 Major slaving ports of the Gold Coast and the Bights of Benin and Biafra
- 4 Major slaving ports of southwestern and southeastern Africa
- Introduction
- 1 Slavery in Western Development
- 2 American Labor Demand
- 3 Africa at the Time of the Atlantic Slave Trade
- 4 The European Organization of the Slave Trade
- 5 The African Organization of the Slave Trade
- 6 The Middle Passage
- 7 Social and Cultural Impact of the Slave Trade on America
- 8 The End of the Slave Trade
- Appendix
- Bibliographic Essay
- Index
7 - Social and Cultural Impact of the Slave Trade on America
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps, Figures, and Tables
- 1 Major slave-trading zones of western Africa
- 2 Major slave-trading ports of Senegambia and Sierra Leone
- 3 Major slaving ports of the Gold Coast and the Bights of Benin and Biafra
- 4 Major slaving ports of southwestern and southeastern Africa
- Introduction
- 1 Slavery in Western Development
- 2 American Labor Demand
- 3 Africa at the Time of the Atlantic Slave Trade
- 4 The European Organization of the Slave Trade
- 5 The African Organization of the Slave Trade
- 6 The Middle Passage
- 7 Social and Cultural Impact of the Slave Trade on America
- 8 The End of the Slave Trade
- Appendix
- Bibliographic Essay
- Index
Summary
Who were the Africans who were forced to migrate to America and what was their impact on the formation of American society? Who determined their demographic profile and what influence did the age and sex of these migrants have on the growth of the respective Afro-American populations? What cultural baggage did they bring with them and how did it affect the societies they helped to establish in the New World? These are some of the questions that need to be answered if the impact of the arriving Africans on American society is to be fully understood.
Given that the Europeans wanted a laboring population to work in their most advanced industries and were willing to pay well for these workers, it was evident that the aged and the infirm were not selected. Not only would they not have survived the transportation experience, but they would have proved useless for the major manual laboring tasks demanded by the American planters and slave owners. Thus, only the healthiest persons were sent into the Atlantic slave trade. These tended to be mostly males – just under two-thirds of the total migration stream whose age and sex is known – and three-quarters were adults.
But these overall age and sex ratios tended to mask sharp changes over time, with both the ratio of males and of children rising through the centuries.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Atlantic Slave Trade , pp. 162 - 187Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010