Long before the Europeans explored the African continents, the Africans had a centralized form of governance, an education system and a trading system. These systems were either within an empire or without a kingdom. This paper objective is to find out how the empires contributed to the development of the western Africa and the African-American history (Curtin, 154). We shall also look into the slave trade and compare between that of the Africans and that of trans-Atlantic slave trade.
The kingdom of Ghana was the first kingdom to be formed in the West African coast; the rulers developed the kingdom through trade interactions. This culture of trading was later passed on to the other emerging empires after the falling of the Ghana Empire. These empires were Mali and Songhai respectively (Curtin, 203). These empires had rich cultures especially in their farming, the music and the language traces of which can be found in the America today. These cultural patterns were being practiced by the slaves in the America. Most Europeans did not know how to cultivate rice especially in the South Carolina. They relied on the African slaves to turn the bare lands into sprawling rice farms Sidney & Richard, 60) .
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"African American History Discussion Week One".
The African slaves used their knowledge of rice farming and water conservation; this made South Carolina the most affluent region in United States for a period of time. Their music also contributed to the American history and they are today called blues, jazz and the present day hip-hop.
Although the Africans had been practicing the slave trade way before the Europeans came to their continent; there are great differences that can be seen between the African slaves and the European slaver (Curtin, 46). The African slaves were captured for just a period of time and they were later set free unlike those sold to Europe who served as slaves all their lives. The African slaves also had rights; usually they were integrated within their master’s house and they could inherit substantial amounts of property or even own slaves themselves. This was sadly not the case with the European slaves.
The middle passage was the period where the captured people were transported from the African coast to the European land where they would be sold to the to-be owners. During the middle passage most of the captured slaves would die during the journey, the others who survived were fed on bad food and were not taken care of even when they were sick. Several cases of be-heading and being thrown in the ocean by the ship crews were not rare (Sidney & Richard, 48). The European captors had a lot of misconceptions about the slaves; for instance since they were black they regarded them as nothing more but slaves .They thought they were people who had no culture or a name thus treated them as mere tools to get their work done.
- Curtin, P. D., The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census- University of Wisconsin Press, 1969.
- Sidney W. M. and Richard P., Birth of African American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective- Beacon Press, 1992
