The Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on the New World
Whatever the effect of slavery on Africa, there can be no doubt that black slaves played a crucial part in the economic development of the New World, above all by making up for shortages of labour. The arrival of Europeans in the Americas had brought diseases that decimated local populations, which reduced the potential for securing labour from that source; and often too few Europeans chose to migrate to the Americas to meet the demand for labour. This was particularly true in Brazil and the Caribbean, where people of African origin became by far the largest section of the population; it was also the case in parts of North America, although here white people outnumbered black people.

Black slaves were especially important as a labour supply for the “plantation” agriculture that developed in the New World, first in Brazil, and later in the Caribbean and the southern parts of North America. The plantation system had begun in medieval times on Mediterranean islands such as Crete and Cyprus - it was an unusually sophisticated form of agricultural operation for its day, producing sugar for the international market at a time when most of European agriculture concentrated on the basics of local subsistence. But from its inception, it used slaves; and when plantations were set up in the Americas, black slaves became the backbone of the workforce.

The long-term economic exploitation of millions of black slaves was to have a profound effect on the New World’s history. Most fundamentally, it produced deep social divides between the rich white and poor black communities, the consequences of which still haunt American societies now, many years after emancipation. The divide was reinforced by the determination to segregate black and white communities and discourage inter-marriage, and by the reluctance to liberate black people from slavery from one generation to the next. This contrasted with the experiences of African slaves who were sent to the Middle East, where both inter-marriage and slave liberation were more common.

And yet, one very positive factor could also be witnessed in these dire circumstances: the creativity with which, gradually, the black communities of the Americas developed new identities, drawing on a combination of African tradition, encounters with European culture, and experiences in the New World. For all the miseries of the slave years, this would prove to be a great enrichment of cultural life, and would contribute to the global culture of modern times.

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Content last updated: 03/03/2005

About our expert

Dr Will Hardy has taught as an Associate Lecturer for the Open University in the London region for the past nine years. Before this, he gained a double-first for his degree in History at Cambridge, and a doctorate in History at Oxford.

Will has a long-running research interest in the contemporary perception of industrial change in Britain between the 1780s and the 1840s, and has just finished writing his first book, The Origins of the Idea of the Industrial Revolution.

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