Causes of the Slave Trade
What term describes people captured by a rival African kingdom during warfare, before large-scale European involvement?
Prisoners of war (war captives)
Name one way the slave trade damaged African agriculture.
Loss of farmers/workers led to poorer harvests and more frequent famine
What is the name given to the sea crossing that carried enslaved Africans to the Americas?
The Middle Passage
What do we call it when enslaved people fought back against their enslavement?
Resistance/rebellion
Name the main long-distance trade network that already carried enslaved people before the Atlantic trade began.
The trans-Saharan trade
Write out the cycle that linked guns, raiding and captives together?
The gun-trade cycle: more guns → more raiding → more captives → traded for more guns
Name the diagram that shows how enslaved people were packed onto the ship Brookes
The Brookes diagram (slave ship diagram)
Name the case study rebellion that began in Jamaica in December 1831
The Christmas Rebellion (the Baptist War)
What economic development in the Americas caused European demand for enslaved labour to grow so rapidly?
The rise of plantation agriculture (e.g. sugar, tobacco), which needed a large, cheap workforce
Roughly what percentage of the population of West and west-central Africa was lost to the slave trade between 1701 and 1850?
Close to 10%
Name one disease that spread rapidly in the cramped conditions below deck.
Dysentery/"the flux" (accept smallpox)
Who was the enslaved Baptist preacher who organised the Christmas Rebellion?
Sam Sharpe
In roughly what year did the Portuguese first transport enslaved Africans directly to the Americas?
According to trade estimates, how many people were captured in total, and how many died before even boarding the ships?
About 18 million captured; around 6 million died before boarding
Which primary source on the Middle Passage that we studied was written by a formerly enslaved person, rather than someone who ran or served the trade?
Olaudah Equiano's autobiography/narrative
Roughly how many enslaved Jamaicans joined the rebellion, and how many days did it take to suppress it?
Around 60,000 joined; suppressed after 11 days
In one sentence, explain how an already-existing trade in enslaved people became the transatlantic slave trade.
European traders massively expanded an existing, smaller-scale practice of enslaving war captives to meet growing demand for plantation labour in the Americas
Besides population loss, name one lasting social/ideological impact of the slave trade
The invention and spread of racist ideology used to justify an already-profitable trade
Explain why historians see Equiano's account as both especially valuable and somewhat contested.
It's one of the only first-person accounts from an enslaved person's perspective, but a historian's find suggesting a different birthplace has raised some doubt - though many still see it as broadly corroborated
Explain the rebellion's outcome and its historical significance.
the rebellion contributed to the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, which ended slavery across most (not all) of the British Empire