Homework on
Readings from Problems in World History:
The Atlantic Slave Trade
Due March 5th
ANSWER ALL QUESTIONS IN YOUR OWN WORDS. RESPONSES THAT DO NOT DO SO WILL RECEIVE NO CREDIT

Some questions can be answered with a few words (question 6 for example); others will require as many as four to five sentences.

Questions on pp. 14 – 23

1) Identify, on the attached map, the area that Davis on p.15.defines as one of the greatest, continuous sources of slaves in human history. You may need an atlas or an encyclopedia to answer the question if you do not immediately know the location of the places the author mentions.

2) The Europeans and Africans who bought Slavic peoples assumed that this enslaved population had certain characteristics. These characteristics were almost identical to those applied to which group in a later period?

3) By the eight or ninth centuries, how did Muslim Arabs and Iranians view Africans?

4) What event encouraged Christian slave holders to switch from purchasing Greek and Caucasians slaves to purchasing enslaved Africans from the interior of the continent?

5) In your own words, describe the role of sugar plantations on the island of Madeira in the history of slavery in the New World.

6) Until the 1680s, what form of labor did plantation owners in Virginia prefer: indentured Europeans or enslaved Africans?

Questions on pp. 32 – 38

7) What distinctions did Park (the author) find between purchased slaves and domestic slaves in African slavery?

8) According to Park, how were purchased slaves looked upon by their owners?

9) How, according to Park, did Africans acquire most of their slaves?

Questions on pp. 38 – 44

10) The source material for Hair’s analysis is particularly unusual and valuable. Why?

11) How, according to Hair, did Africans acquire most of their slaves?

Questions on pp. 45 - 51

12) What sort of enslaved Africans remained as slaves within Africa?

13) What are four of the PRIMARY reasons that the passage within Africa from the point of capture to the point of sale on the coast was so deadly for enslaved Africans?

14) What is the estimated percentage of enslaved Africans that died while being transported by their African captors from the interior to the coast?

Questions on pp. 56 – 63

(note: be careful when reading the paragraph that begins "hence" on p. 56. The author is summarizing the views of those who believe in a "horse-slave-cycle"; he is NOT expressing his own opinion.)

15) Were most of the slaves captured by Africans acquired in "Political" or "Economic" wars?

16) What role did political fragmentation play in African wars during the period under discussion?

17) Why does the author think that it is very unlikely that the weapons Africans received from Europeans as part of the slave trade played a decisive role in African wars?

18) How much power did Europeans have over African decision makers in this time period, according to the author?