THE SAGA OF SLAVE TRADE IN AFRICA

We have read and heard many versions of the account of the obnoxious slave trade at different times which is in consonant with the narrative from the direct descendants of the merchant of slave now available to tourists and researchers when visiting the arcades of the slave traders in Badagry.

Imagine in your heart such feeling that will run down your spine seeing the relics that were used to capture, bind and subdue captives of the trade. Emotional huh!

The market is still there till today, the prison rooms are still there also, the weapons, the items used in exchange and other relics are interesting to see. The area, this time is prepared for tourists and researchers who would not have had the moral fiber to visit this corridor if the trade were to still be on and not abolished in 1886.

At the various tourist sites in Badagry, you will be privileged to see, touch and feel the roughness, hardness and the sting of the deadly chains to capture the victims of slavery. These chains are in various sizes, designs and were meant for use to render body parts of slaves dormant.

When you listen to the narratives of the orator, this takes you to another realm that punches the spirit. No doubt that the slave trade era was a period without compassion for human existence, no mercy and no pity. This was a period when cowry was not a means of exchange to the foreign merchants from America, Brazil, Portuguese and Europe. The only acceptable means of exchange are funny items like mirror, matches, umbrella for tens of adult slaves per item while the children serve as gifts to the foreign merchants.

Those people that were smuggled as slaves were strong, agile, energetic and healthy black people who withstood the unfavourable climate changes on the sea and at various countries where they were finally used as machines for production for goods and services they in-turn exported to Africa for money.

The white’s oppression of the black nations in those horrible centuries had been strategic and orchestrated to reduce the continent Africa to a mere market where raw materials of both human and natural resources could be extracted and the market where finished goods are sold. The efforts of our colonial masters were to unleash poverty, anarchy, corruption and racism among the people of Africa from which they can reign and merchandise ad-infinitum.

This realization is necessary to change the political bigotry, chauvinism and scuffle presently delivered alongside our national, state and local government administration to better the continent and come out of ‘God-knows-when-it-will-end’ slavery in Africa.

YOU ARE WELCOME TO BADAGRY – THE SLAVE TRADE CORRIDOR. OUR GUIDES WILL HELP YOU AROUND. PLEASE MAIL US FOR ENQUIRIES AND BOOKING FOR OUR TOUR GUIDE SERVICES TO THE SLAVE TRADE.

THE GREAT TRIANGLE

The ‘Great Triangle’ trade refers to the three stages of movement of the ships transporting slaves in the course of each voyage.

The first stage was from Europe to the Guinea coast with the ships carrying European products which were meant for exchange for slaves.

The second stage referred to as the ‘Middle Passage’ was from West Africa to West Indies or the Americas where Negro (black) slaves were exchanged for sugar and tobacco.

The final being the third stage was from the New World to Europe with the ships carrying cargoes of raw sugar and tobacco which were sold to manufacturers in Europe.

Between 1450 and 1850 (400 years) an estimate of about ten million Negro (black) slaves were exported to North America and the West Indies.

When the trade reached its peak, about seventy thousand slaves were transported across the Atlantic to America.

THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE

The Portuguese got their first Cargo which contained ten Negro (black) slaves from Rio do Oro to Portugal in 1441 and these marked the beginning of the Atlantic Slave Trade. This was also the first trade between Europe and West Africa. The slaves were used as domestic slaves at this stage because the numbers of the imported slaves were few.

West Indies and America were discovered in 1492 by Spain which altered the number of slave trade and sooner was the discovery of New World. Tobacco and cotton plantations were opened by the Spaniards and later in other European nations.

Gold and silver mines were established and sugar was also discovered. The population of the Americans (the red Indians as they were known) was not sufficient to carry out the manpower needed in these establishments and mines. It was then suggested that the West African people could be enslaved to provide labour without compensations or remunerations yet with force and oppression. Between the fifteen and sixteen centuries the Portuguese held the monopoly of supplying of slaves to the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the New World.

In 1510, the ever first considerable numbers of Negro (Black) slaves were exported from Lisbon to West Indies.

In 1539, more than ten thousand slaves were exported from Lisbon slave market to America annually and this was the beginning of large scale Atlantic slave trade.

In the seventeen century, slave trade had become a very big industry and it kept a rapid growth in European nations (France, Holland, England and later in Sweden , Denmark and Brandenburg). Moreover, European colonization of America and the Indies accelerated trade in this century.

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Other slave links:
Modern Day Slaves Int'l Day for the Abolition of Slave Trade Int'l Day of Remembrance of Slavery Victims and the Transatlantic Slave Trade International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE AND SLAVERY IN AMERICA Modern day slave trading Modern-day slave trade rages unabated Human Trafficking: the Modern-Day Slave Trade