African-American History Through the Arts: The Slave Trade

This site I found goes into depth about the slave trade and was it possibly Africa's fault? The article was written by Jennifer Scott and I found it through Google. The site explains how slavery started and how it became widespread. Slavery was a huge issue and created many difficulties for Africans.
The site states how Portugal stated to trade slaves with West Africa and that's how slavery all got started. The slave trade did not go as smoothly as wanted. Slaves revolted and tried to get away from all the hardships and distress. However, slavery grew and led to the "Triangle Trade" between Africa, Europe, and the Americas. The Middle Passage was a procedure of getting Africans for the "Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade" as workers in the Atlantic world. A slave trade already existed in Africa, but the Middle Passage was much different. In Africa these slaves were still viewed as humans, where as in Europe they were viewed strictly as property, with no feeling or opinions, they were dehumanized. Europeans captured innocent Africans for there own purposes. The site had very good questions to think about, "Did the Africans take part in their own downfall or was it strictly the Europeans that conquered their freedom?" and "Why did the Europeans need these laborers?"

I'm sure there are many different views and opinions to those questions. But something I think everyone can agree on is that these slaves had their freedom, poise, and happiness taken away.

In the picture it looks like African slaves are being chained up together and being forced into a lower level. As we can observe they were treated very harshly.

Picture courtesy of Google.