Page 18 - All About History - Issue 33-15

Trade

5 shocking facts about…
THE TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE

TRADE

THE EVIL AND HORRIFYING
VIOLATION OF HUMAN

RIGHTS THE SLAVE TRADE

TRIANGLE, 1540-1888

01 ONE IN FIVE DIDN’T

MAKE IT ASHORE

The conditions on the
slave boats were so
atrocious that many never
made it off. Crammed
together in the ship’s hold,
slaves were exposed to
Old World diseases that
spread in the squalid

conditions. Each slave
only had about 1.2 metres
of space on the six to
eight-week voyage.

80% of slaves Slaves had their Escaped slaves Some tribe
02 went to countries 03 toes cut off to 04 often had harder 05 leaders sent away
outside of the USA prevent them escaping lives than imprisoned their people for profit
Many modern accounts portray the A cruel example of pseudoscience, ones The trade was based primarily on
slave trade as being primarily based in every slave who tried to escape If a slave managed to escape, dogs the western coast of Africa, from
North America and especially the USA. was believed to have the mental would be used to track and apprehend Senegal to Angola, but almost all of the
However, only 450,000 of the 10.7 disorder ‘drapetomania’. ‘Dysaesthesia them. Once caught, escapees would be continent was affected. In total, up to
million slaves who arrived between aethiopica’ was another invented punished with hundreds of lashes from a 17 million Africans were forcibly refused
1525 and 1866 were taken to work condition put forward as the reason whip and treated even more poorly than from their homeland and sent overseas
in the USA. South America and the for black slaves’ laziness. To stop slaves before. Those who succeeded in their as slaves. Some African rulers were
Caribbean were much more common from fleeing, often their big toes were attempts faced a long search for food happy to send their own people away
destinations for slaves. cut off. The worst of scientific racism. and shelter. for profit.
© Alamy
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