February
2 Imperialism and the Atlantic Slave Trade
key terms:
chartered company, age of partnership, Atlantic history, the British
slave trade
Robinson Crusoe discussion questions
Introduction
1600-1750
mercantilism
chartered companies
I. Europeans in Asia ("age of partnership")
the Dutch
Cape of Good Hope
(1654)
the English
Emporer Aurangzeb
(1658-1707)
Anglo-French
rivalry
II. The Atlantic system
A. Atlantic History
B. overview
1. Iberian Atlantic
empires
2. Dutch trading
colonies
Iroquios
St. Eustatius, Curocao, Aruba, St. Martin
3. France's
fur-trading empire
Quebec
4. England's landed
empire
Virginia,
Masschusetts Bay, Chesapeake Bay, the Carolinas
1700 250,000 in North America
33,000 in the Caribbean
(Bermuda, Bahamas, St. Kitts, Barbados, Nevis, Montserrat, Antigua,
Jamaica)
5. the New World
plantation complex
III. The Atlantic slave trade
A. precedents
John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making
of the Atlantic World
B. overview
1440-1867 12,000,000
David Eltis, et al, The Trans Atlantic Slave Trade,
1527-1867: A Database on CD Rom
Robert Harms, The
Diligent: A Voyage through the Worlds of the Slave Trade
C. the
British
1660s-1807 3,400,000
Company of Royal
Adventurers (1663)
Royal African Company
(1672)
Daniel Defoe
(1660-1731)
Alexander Selkirk
D.
captivity and the middle passage
IV. Birth of consumer society
for further reading:
James Walvin, "A Taste of Empire, 1600-1800," History Today 47, 1
(Jan 1997): 11-17 [available on Infotrac]
Sydney
Mintz, Sweetness and Power
Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Tastes
of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants and Intoxicants
European
trade patterns c. 1740
A French slaveship
Diagram of a British slave ship
