The Age of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1500-1900 (saylor.org)

This course will introduce you to the history of the Atlantic slave trade from 1500 to 1900. You will learn about the slave trade, its causes, and its effects on Africa, Europe, and the Americas. The course will be structured chronologically and geographically; each unit with focus on a particular aspect of the Atlantic slave trade. Each unit will include representative primary-source documents that illustrate important overarching political, economic, and social themes, such as slavery and the slave trade within African societies, the growth of plantation societies in the New World, the advent of European slave dealing in western Africa, the simultaneous growth of European empires and the Atlantic slave trade, the nature of slave trading and the Middle Passage, and the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade in the nineteenth century. By the end of the course, you will understand how the Atlantic slave trade began as a fledgling enterprise of the English, Portuguese, and Spanish in the 1500s and why, by the mid-18th century, the trade dominated Atlantic societies and economies.

Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:

• analyze the various meanings of slave and slavery during the age of the Atlantic slave trade;
• identify and describe the triangular trade, and define the Atlantic World;
• identify and describe the logic for enslavement of Africans by Europeans;
• identify and describe the African ethnic groups enslaved by Europeans and those captives’ New World destinations;
• identify and describe the early slaving voyages of the Portuguese and Spanish, and describe how the Dutch and English later inserted themselves into the trade;
• identify and describe the expansion of the plantation complex in the New World in the 1600s and its impact on the Atlantic slave trade;
• identify and analyze the rise of European empires and the parallel expansion of the Atlantic slave trade;
• identify and analyze slavery within African societies, as well as identify and describe the trans-Saharan slave trade and the Red Sea/Indian Ocean slave trade;
• identify and describe the nature of the African slave market and principal slaving ports in western Africa;
• analyze and describe New World slave societies and their impact on the Atlantic slave trade;
• identify and describe the Middle Passage of the Atlantic slave trade;
• identify and describe the causes for the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade in the 19th century; and
• analyze and interpret primary source documents that elucidate all aspects of the Atlantic slave trade.