Consequently, the legacies of centuries of racialized enslavement continue to have a lingering impact on the continent of Africa, the African diaspora, and Canadians of African descent, to this day. The British transatlantic slave trade was responsible for about 25 per cent of the people removed from Africa through captivity and the treacherous “middle passage.” It is estimated that more than 12 million enslaved Africans were brought to the Americas through the transatlantic slave trade.Įnslavement was physical, economic, and psychological. These empires participated in the exploitative practices of plantation slavery, chattel slavery, and domestic slavery for the economic well-being of Europe and the Americas. Denmark and Sweden also had colonial possessions and slaves, while the Americans and Brazilians, who did not have colonial possessions, also had significant populations of enslaved Africans. The use of African slaves (Eastern Europeans were used as slaves historically–the word slave comes from the word Slav) coincided with the rise of European empire building, with many European powers, notably Britain, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Portugal, participating in the slave trade in their empires up to the 1800s. To rephrase the words of the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Africans were born free, yet everywhere they were enslaved.” This injustice essentially removed African slaves from the human community.
Here are the facts Slavery’s long destructive legacyĪfrican people were captured and enslaved by other Africans, sold to Europeans, and transported to North America, Europe, and the Caribbean through the exploitative and brutal economic practice of slavery.
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