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Over the course of more than three and a
half centuries, the forcible transportation in bondage of at least twelve
million men, women, and children from their African homelands to the Americas
changed forever the face and character of the modern world. The slave trade was
brutal and horrific, and the enslavement of Africans was cruel, exploitative,
and dehumanizing. Together, they represent one of the longest and most
sustained assaults on the very life, integrity, and dignity of human beings in
history.
In the Americas, besides the considerable riches their free labor
created for others, the importation and subsequent enslavement of the Africans
would be the major factor in the resettlement of the continents following the
disastrous decline in their indigenous population. Between 1492 and 1776, an
estimated 6.5 million people migrated to and settled in the Western Hemisphere.
More than five out of six were Africans. Although victimized and exploited,
they created a new, largely African,
Creole society and their forced migration resulted in the
emergence of the so-called
Black Atlantic.
The transatlantic slave trade laid the foundation for modern capitalism,
generating immense wealth for business enterprises in America and Europe. The
trade contributed to the industrialization of northwestern Europe and created a
single Atlantic world that included western Europe, western Africa, the
Caribbean islands, and the mainlands of North and South America.
On the other hand, the overwhelming impact on Africa of its involvement
in the creation of this modern world was negative. The continent experienced
the loss of a significant part of its able-bodied population, which played a
part in the social and political weakening of its societies that left them
open, in the nineteenth century, to colonial domination and exploitation.
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