Chapter 15 Part 2: The Slave Trade In Context

When it comes to slavery the first race/group that comes to everyone's mind is the African Americans.  But what caught me off guard was that African Americans were not the 1st slaves, which is what I always thought.  It was the Slavic people who were the first slaves.  Another interesting thing was that the word Slave came form "Slav' referring to the Slavic people.  It amazed me that during the 15th century, the practice of slavery was just like owning a pet, it was widely accepted.  Trade between the Europeans and Africans all took place in the Mediterranean World. Europeans provided products like sugar, honey, and fruits while Africa provided a variety of slaves.  There were charts on pg 454 that caught my attention, which rightfully should.  The first chart explained the rise and decline of slavery, where slavery started off slowly until the 1600's where it increased dramatically.  During the years of 1751-1775 was when slavery was at it's peak where over 60 thousand slaves where imported to the US.  In 1870 slavery was abolished.  The second chart talks about the location of slavery where the America's had the lowest.  British North America and US only had 348,000 slaves combined, but Brazil and the Caribbean combined had over 5,000,000 slaves between 1450-1750.  It is amazing how slavery was widely accepted in those times.