Thirty-Fourth Week Seventh Grade History Essay

          During the last week of regular history lessons, I learned about several topics. These included the Atlantic Slave Trade, William Wilberforce and how he helped to abolish slave trade in England, the Navigation Acts and how they angered the colonists, and the fifteen minute ambush known as the Battle of Jumonville Glen, which caused the French and Indian War. Even though each of these events played extremely important roles in history, I decided to write about the Atlantic Slave Trade for this essay.

          The Atlantic Slave Trade was a heartbreaking time during the 15-1800s. It basically was when Europeans would come to Africa, capture or buy Africans, and then ship them to Europe and the Americas to sell them as slaves. The Atlantic Slave Trade was split into two periods: the First Atlantic System and the Second Atlantic System.

          The First Atlantic System lasted from 1502 to 1580. It started with the Portuguese getting slaves and selling them to Portugal and the Portuguese colonies in the Americas. Sometimes, however, they would sell them to other colonies and traders, which led to the Second Atlantic System.

          The Second Atlantic System did not only include Portugal buying and selling slaves, but almost the rest of Europe. Some of these countries were the Netherlands, Spain, France, England and all of their colonies. Of course, there was a king every now and then who did not allow slavery in his kingdom, but this was very uncommon. Even some of the Africans were buying and selling slaves from other tribes! Each tribe believed that they only had to take care of their own tribe. They were totally fine with any other person that was not in their tribe becoming a slave. However, one difference in the slave trade in Africa and in America was that slaves in Africa were not inheritable, while they were treated as property in the New World. The Second Atlantic System lasted from 1580 to around the mid 1800s.

          In the 1700s, the largest and well known shipper of slaves was England. England made something called the Triangular Trade Route. This was a very effective trading technique which they used not only for slaves, but with other goods as well. It ran with England buying or capturing slaves, shipping them across the ocean, and trading them for crops and other goods, making other stops along the way to trade. Thankfully, after much hard work, slavery was officially abolished in England in 1833 when a man named Lord Grenville introduced an anti-slave bill, which passed 283 to 16.

          The Atlantic Slave Trade was a horrible time for Africans, who were taken away from their homes to work, most of the time, until they died. This was a very cruel time and thank goodness it ended, no matter how long it took or how much hard work was put into it. There are sayings such as “learn from your mistakes” and “let the past be the past” and “don’t let history repeat itself” that will hopefully help us learn what is right and to never have innocent people be in such misery again.