Hello, and welcome to today's lesson on the structure of the transatlantic slave trade.

This lesson is part of a broader unit looking at how transatlantic slavery impacted West African societies.

In the course of this unit, we'll be covering lots of things, including what life was like in the kingdoms of the Sahel, the power and the culture that they had, but also the problems they faced.

We'll be looking at the arrival of Europeans, what the structure of the transatlantic slave trade was like, how it expanded, British involvement, but finally, how all of these things then impacted West African societies.

However, for today's lesson, we're just going to be looking at the structure of the transatlantic slave trade.

For this lesson, you're going to need a pen and paper.

If you don't have one, absolutely fine.

Just pause the video now, get everything you need, have it ready, and then come back and press play when you're all good to go.

Great.

Now, we're ready to go.

It's probably worth starting off by looking at our outcome for the lesson, so what we want to have done by the time we get to the end and what we want to be able to do.

As you can see, our lesson outcome is on the slide.

Our lesson outcome for today is that you can describe the transatlantic slave trade and explain how it develops.

But in order to do that, we're going to need to have a look at some keywords first.

For this lesson, we've got five keywords, colonies, indigenous, manufactured, plantations, and Middle Passage.

Now, it's not just that we know what our keywords are, but it's always helpful to have a look at some definitions before we see them in the context of the lesson.

Colonies are countries or areas under the control of another country and are occupied by settlers from that country.

Indigenous people, they're the original inhabitants of that specific area, not the settlers who came from the country that then colonised that area.

Manufactured items are items produced by a machine.

Plantations are areas of land on which certain crops are grown, usually using some kind of forced labour.

And finally, the forced voyage of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas became known as the Middle Passage.

Now we've got our key words, let's get started in the first part of our lesson.

For today, that will be the new colonies in the Americas.

So before we start looking at the structure of the transatlantic slave trade, we're first going to have a look at the colonies that were emerging in the Americas in the 1500s.

Now, if we have a look at our slide, we'll see a map that shows where the Spanish and Portuguese had begun trading and colonising in the 16th century.

Remember, colonies is one of our key words.

So we know based off that sentence that the Spanish and Portuguese had begun travelling to new places, settling there, and occupying land where there was probably already indigenous people.

We'll get into that a bit later.

But first, it's important to know why they were doing this and what they gained from it, because that will help us understand what comes next.

So like I said, by the late 1500s, they'd already begun establishing colonies.

The reason that it wasn't just one or two, but it slowly became many colonies across the Caribbean and especially Central America is because these colonies made them incredibly wealthy.

The reason for this is because on these colonies, they established large plantations.

On these plantations, they grew tobacco, sugar, and other really valuable crops.

These crops could then be taken back to Spain and Portugal and sold, making these merchants and these colonial settlers lots and lots of money.

But what has that got to do with the transatlantic slave trade and the structure of it? For that, we're gonna need to have a look at our next slide.

On this slide here, you can see enslaved people from West Africa working colonies in the Americas.

How do you think this happened? Because I've said that people from Spain and Portugal travelled to the Americas and set up colonies where there would've been indigenous people.

But this picture shows enslaved Africans.

How do we think this happened? I want you to pause the video now.

Have a think and come back and press play when you think you have an idea of how on earth we got to this picture.

Great, I'd love to be able to hear your answers, however, I can't.

So I'm just gonna hope that you said something along the lines of maybe the indigenous people were eventually replaced with these enslaved people from West Africa.

If you did, you would be correct because as you can see on the slide here, we've got a picture of a Portuguese slave ship.

That means that we know the Portuguese were taking enslaved people across the ocean.

In this case, it was across the Atlantic Ocean.

And the reason for this was because indigenous communities were devastated by the colonists.

That's because the conditions on these plantations that they were forced to work in were incredibly harsh.

When these European settlers arrived in these new colonies and set up these plantations on which they would grow things like tobacco and sugar that made them very wealthy, it wasn't usually Europeans that were working on these plantations, it was the indigenous people.

And because the conditions were so harsh, many of them died very quickly.

For those that were able to survive the conditions on the plantations, many of them died from the diseases that were brought by the Europeans to the Americas.

And for those that did not die as a result of the harsh conditions or the diseases brought, some were able to escape away from the coast where the Europeans had settled.

But as the result, these communities were devastated.

Some were completely destroyed.

And for these European traders, that did not bring an end to their desire to make money from these plantations and from their new colonies.

So they found the solution on the West African coast.

And as you can see here, they decided that they would take these enslaved African people over to the Americas and sell them as property to work on the plantations in the colonies.

And although this may have been more expensive at first than using the local indigenous people, as enslaved people were enslaved for their entire lives in the Americas and would not be paid at all, this meant that these merchants and traders and plantation owners over time would keep all the profit made from the tobacco and the sugar and the other crops and therefore become incredibly wealthy.

Excellent work so far.

Before we get into looking at how this links to trade in Europe, we're going to stop for a moment and check our understanding so far.

The first thing I'd like you to do is to tell me which one of the following statements is true.

Is it A? Spain and Portugal had grown rich from selling indigenous people from the Americas.

B, Spain and Portugal had grown rich from selling manufactured goods from the Americas, or C, Spain and Portugal had grown rich from selling plantation crops from the Americas? Pause the video.

Have a think about what I said was being sold from the Americas, and then come back and press play when you think you have an answer.

Excellent work.

The answer is C.

We know that Spain and Portugal had grown rich from selling plantation crops in the Americas.

It was things like tobacco and sugar that were then being taken back to Spain and Portugal and sold for huge amounts of profit making these new settlers incredibly rich.

Let's have a look at another question.

True or false? Indigenous people in the Americas did not work on plantations.

Pause the video.

When you make a decision, come back and press play.

Brilliant work.

We know the answer is false.

But now we have to think about why.

Is the answer false because colonisers made indigenous people work on plantations, devastating their communities, or because indigenous people worked on their own plantations which they then sold to colonisers? Pause the video, have a think, and then come back and press play when you think you know why.

Excellent.

The answer is A.

colonisers made indigenous people work on plantations devastating these communities.

B wouldn't be correct because although indigenous people would've worked on these plantations prior to the arrival of Spanish and Portuguese colonisers, they would not have sold them to the colonisers.

Part of that process was the taking of land to settle on it.

It was the Spanish and Portuguese colonisers who made the indigenous people work in plantations.

And remember, those conditions were so horrific that large communities of indigenous people were often destroyed, and where those communities weren't destroyed, the population decreased rapidly.

Excellent work.

Let's have a look at putting some of this into practise.

I would like you to sort these statements into chronological order with one as the earliest event.

Give yourself about five minutes to complete this task.

And when you've put these four statements in the correct chronological order, come back, press play, and we'll have a look at what your answer should look like.

Brilliant work.

Hopefully your answer looks very similar to the one on the slide.

First, we have Spain and Portugal beginning to set up colonies in the Americas.

Then indigenous people were used to work on plantations.

We know that as a result, indigenous people's communities were destroyed.

It's important to note that not all communities were destroyed, but there was a significant decrease and a devastating impact on indigenous societies in the Americas as a result of Spanish and Portuguese colonies.

And then finally, enslaved people from West Africa were taken to work on plantations in Spanish and Portuguese colonies.

That's really great work.

Now we can move on to the second part of the lesson.

In this part of the lesson, we're going to be looking at the trade in Europe.

If we have a look at the slide, you should be able to quickly see why the trade in Europe is really important to understanding the structure of the transatlantic slave trade.

Because the purple section and the green section, we've kind of already looked at.

Because we know that Spain and Portugal went to the Americas and began set up plantations where they'd grow things like tobacco, sugar, tea, and other valuable goods to trade back in Spain and Portugal and also other areas in Europe.

That purple section where it says raw materials is something we already know about.

We know that different European explorers, merchants, and colonial settlers were looking for plantations and colonies to settle in, in order to produce these goods to make them incredibly wealthy.

And they were looking for new ways to do it, to increase their wealth, no matter the cost.

We know that after the destruction of many indigenous communities, their solution was to use enslaved Africans from West Africa to work on these plantations.

They work on these plantations for the entirety of their lives.

So that explains the purple and the green sections.

But you already have heard of the transatlantic slave trade being referred to as the triangular trade.

We can see it here on the slide.

It says a map of the triangular trade, but we've only mentioned two points.

And the trade in Europe is the third point because these goods were taken from the colonies back to different places in Europe and sold for lots of profit.

And this bit is really important because these goods were so valuable in Europe and slowly but surely, people began to demand more and more of them.

And that meant that these merchants would look for a way to continue the trade from West Africa to the Americas, and thus setting up the transatlantic slave trade or the triangular trade.

The bit that we don't know yet is what we can see in red.

The manufactured goods from Europe to West Africa.

And that actually goes back to the beginning of our story, because before Spain and Portugal had started to set up colonies, they'd first travelled to West Africa to trade goods with different kingdoms in West Africa.

That's how they got involved in trading enslaved people as prisoners of war from one kingdom to another.

They take things like textiles, so cloth or clothing and different forms of weapons like guns and different artillery, so things like bullets used in the guns and trade them with different kingdoms in West Africa.

This became part of the transatlantic slave trade when like I said earlier, they started to use enslaved people from West Africa and sell them onto colonies, specifically plantations in the Americas.

So this became the three point trade.

Manufactured goods were taken from Europe and sold in West Africa and eventually exchanged for enslaved people.

At first, it would've been gold that they were looking for, but like I said, they were looking for ways to make money in any colonies at any cost.

These enslaved people are then be taken across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas where they'd be sold onto plantations.

On these plantations, they then grow very valuable crops like tobacco, sugar and tea in horrific conditions.

However, the priority of those Spanish and Portuguese traders was making money, like I said, at any cost, even if that was the cost of human life.

They would then take these goods from the Americas to Europe where they'd be sold in markets in exchange for the guns and textiles and cloth that would then be taken back to West Africa continuing the trade.

So as we can see from these three points, that's why it's either known as the transatlantic slave trade, so transatlantic going across the Atlantic Ocean, that journey of the enslaved Africans across the Atlantic ocean or the triangular trade because it has three different points.

Before I tell you a little bit more about this, we're going to stop for a moment and check our understanding so far.

I'd like you to tell me whether this statement is true or false.

Cotton, sugar and tea was grown in colonies in Europe to be sold in the Americas.

So pause the video, when you think you know whether this statement is true or false, come back and press play.

Excellent.

You know this statement is false.

But why is the statement false? Have a think.

Is it because A, Europe grew cotton, which exchanged for sugar and tea in the Americas or because cotton, sugar and tea was grown in colonies in the Americas to be sold in Europe? Again, pause the video.

When you think you have an idea, come back and press play.

Great.

It's B.

We know that it is not true that cotton, sugar and tea was grown in colonies in Europe because they were in fact grown in the Americas to then be sold in Europe.

As we've already learned, that then continued the trade as these goods were traded for manufactured products that were taken to West Africa in exchange for enslaved people and so the cycle continued.

Now there's just one more thing that I need to tell you about the transatlantic slave trade in terms of its structure before we move on to the final part of our lesson looking in more detail about the Middle Passage.

And that bit of information is hidden in this picture.

This picture's really quite different to the map I just showed you, but it is showing us the same thing.

This map is showing us the complex trade routes involved in the triangular trade.

And the reason this map is so much more complex is because in reality, the transatlantic slave trade was far more complicated than just a simple triangle.

But the reason that as historians, we simplify it to the triangular trade is just because it makes it easier for us to understand.

And in principle, the same things were happening.

But sometimes, it was just that these manufactured goods from Europe might have been taken straight to the Americas because they also wanted manufactured products like guns and textiles there.

It meant that sometimes these goods grown on plantations in the Americas might have been taken back to West Africa to be sold to different places in West Africa.

But ultimately the principle is the same.

That triangular trade is a really good, clear, simple explanation of what was happening from the 15 and 1600s.

This simplified structure helps us to understand much better what was happening at the time.

So we're going to stop now.

Check our understanding of this last part of this second section, put it into practise, and then we're going to have a look at the Middle Passage.

Which two of these are accurate statements about the transatlantic slave trade? A, it involved trade between West Africa, the Americas, and Europe.

B, it involved the forced transportation of human beings from West Africa to the Americas.

Or C, it involved trade that benefited West African kingdoms the most.

Pause the video, pick the two correct statements.

Come back and press play.

Excellent.

We know that the first correct statement is A.

It did involve trade between West Africa, the Americans and Europe, but also B, it involved the forced transportation of human beings from West Africa to the Americas.

Now let's put this into practise.

I would like you to identify the three areas in Sam's description of this transatlantic slave trade.

So first, have a look at the statement.

Manufactured products were taken from Europe to the Americas.

In the Americas, these manufactured goods were then traded for enslaved people.

These enslaved people were then taken to be sold to work on plantations in West Africa.

The goods grown on plantations were then taken to be sold in Europe in exchange for manufactured products continuing the trade.

So like I said, there's three errors and I need you to identify them.

Pause the video, give yourself about five minutes to complete this task and come back when you're done.

Great work.

Hopefully you've identified these three errors.

Manufactured products were taken from Europe to the Americas.

That's not typically right.

In the Americas, these manufactured goods were then traded for enslaved people.

Still not quite right.

And enslaved people were taken to be sold to work on plantations in West Africa.

Again, I'm not too sure about that.

So that means for the second part of this task, I'd like you to correct these three errors in Sam's description.

Have a think about the simplified transatlantic slave trade that we talked about, that simplified triangle trade.

There were some exceptions, but think about what typically happened as part of this trade.

Give yourself about 10 minutes to rewrite this section and then come back and press play when you're done.

Excellent work.

Let's have a look at what your corrected statement looks like.

Manufactured products were taken from Europe to West Africa.

In West Africa, these manufactured goods were then traded for enslaved people.

These enslaved people were then taken to be sold to work on plantations in the Americas.

And the goods grown on plantations were then taken to be sold in Europe in exchange for manufactured products continuing the trade.

Hopefully you made those corrections.

Really well done.

Even if you didn't, you can take a moment now to make sure you've got those corrections.

Great.

Now we've all got that.

We can move on to the third and final part of our lesson.

In this third and final part of the lesson, we are going to be looking at the trading of enslaved people.

Now, if we have a look at this illustration on the slide, we'll see prisoners of war.

Now, prisoners of war were people who were usually considered to be of low social standing.

So they were in the lower classes in society.

They were usually taken in the midst of conflict between two different kingdoms and the kingdom who usually became victorious in that conflict or won the conflict may take those prisoners during the battle.

They may have to then live in that kingdom for a set period of time as servants or enslaved people before being freed to then continue life as a free person in that kingdom.

And it was these prisoners of war that European traders had usually taken to enslave in the Americas.

On some occasions, European traders had kidnapped people along the coast to take.

However, at first it was mostly prisoners of war.

But this number was quite limited and was not anywhere near the millions that would be taken across the Atlantic Ocean over the next three to 400 years.

And part of the reason for this was because these rulers were reluctant to sell their people onto Americas because they knew that meant them travelling across what became known as the Middle Passage.

Rumours of the Middle Passage were horrific.

And as time went on, it became clear that these were not rumours.

Now, before I tell you more about what the conditions really were like on the Middle Passage, we're going to stop and just check our understanding so far.

True or false? At first, the trading of enslaved people from West Africa to the Americas was limited.

Pause the video, have a think.

When you've got the answer, come back and press play.

Excellent work.

We know the answer is true.

But as you already know, when you tell me a statement is true or false, you need to tell me why.

So is this statement true because local rulers were reluctant to sell people onto Americas as they'd as they'd have to travel through the Middle Passage? Or is it true because there are not enough European merchants to buy enslaved people to sell in the Americas? Again, pause the video.

When you think you know why this statement is true, come back and press play.

Brilliant work.

We know it's true because local rulers were reluctant to sell people onto the Americas as they would have to travel through the Middle Passage.

But what was it really like on the Middle Passage? I'll tell you now.

This plan of a slave ship shows how African people were crammed into the hold of the ship.

That's the bit below the deck.

Before I've even given you any more details, we can see that these conditions are inhumane.

Your first thought is probably, would you even be able to survive in these conditions? And the answer for nearly two million African people over the course of the trans-Atlantic slave trade was no.

It is estimated that around two million African people died in the Middle Passage as a result of these inhumane, horrible conditions.

But in addition to this, it wasn't a short journey.

This journey could take up to 12 weeks.

The enslaved people who were kept in these conditions were often not given much food.

They were often not allowed much time above deck to get air.

They had to go to the toilet where they were chained and this often meant that diseases spread incredibly rapidly.

So like I said, it is estimated that two million African people died on this journey.

This picture is a really strong but also difficult illustration for people to look at.

Historians often struggle to try and articulate just how horrible the conditions were.

It wasn't just that they were kept in these tight and cramped conditions, they were chained to the section that they were put in.

The slave holders who had been trading them from West Africa and were taking them to the Americas would often not go below deck.

And that meant that if somebody died below deck, the slave holders may leave that body there for days before they noticed or before they were able to then take it above deck, at which point the body would be thrown overboard.

So diseases spread rapidly because people would pass away below the deck of the ship.

They'd be left there.

There was essentially no sanitation as toilets were not provided.

And as a result, the Middle Passage became a complete horror for many people.

And for the few that were able to escape, the rumours of the Middle Passage then reached back to West Africa.

For many people, they actually believed it was just too horrific to be true.

There were about 500 documented slave rebellions on slave ships, although most were unsuccessful.

For the few that were, these stories did return to the coast.

But like I said, for some rulers, these horrors meant they were reluctant to sell their people to the Europeans because they refused to put their people through this even if they'd been prisoners of war.

And for others, they believed that these stories were just too horrible for them to be true.

Now we've looked at what the structure of the transatlantic slave trade was like, particularly the Middle Passage and what it really meant to take enslaved people from West Africa to the Americas.

We're going to stop and check our understanding here and then put what we've learned this lesson into practise.

Firstly, I'd like you to tell me how many recorded rebellions there were on slave ships.

Remember, I did say that unfortunately most of them were unsuccessful, but there are more rebellions than people imagine.

Was it 50, 500 or 5,000? Pause the video, but when you've got an answer, come back and press play.

Well done.

If you've got B, that's the correct answer.

We know that there were 500 recorded rebellions on slave ships.

That's not to say that there weren't more, but historical records only tell us about 500 of them.

I would like you to fill in the blanks to describe the conditions on the Middle Passage.

The words are listed under the paragraph.

I'd like you to give yourself five to 10 minutes to complete this paragraph.

When you fill in all the blanks, come back and press play, and we'll have a look at what your paragraphs should look like.

Brilliant work.

Let's have a look at the completed paragraph.

The journey from West Africa to the Americas was known as the Middle Passage.

For up to 12 weeks, enslaved people were kept in unimaginably bad conditions.

They were kept below deck, chained closely together, and had very few opportunities to come up for air.

As a result of the horrific conditions, diseases spread quickly.

It could take days for traders to remove the bodies of those who had died below deck.

Around two million African people died on this enforced journey to the Americas.

If you've got all of those correct, really well done.

You've done absolutely brilliant work this lesson.

We're now going to have a look at a summary of what we've covered today.

Although Europeans first enslaved indigenous people to work on plantations, they went on to use enslaved people from West Africa.

Trade between West Africa and the Americas then expanded to Europe as merchants traded the goods produced on plantations for manufactured European goods and this became known as the triangular trade.

And finally, the journey these enslaved people took to the Americas was known as the Middle Passage.

An estimated 2 million African people died on this horrific journey.

Again, really well done for all the work you've completed this lesson.

You've done a great job.

Well done.