11th June 2020 nfeditor

GRADE 5 : HISTORY AND CURRENT AFFAIRS : WEEK 2

TERM/WEEK: THIRD TERM/WEEK 2

DATE: 4th June 2020.

CLASS: Grade 5.

SUBJECT: History and Current Affairs.

Topic: The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade

References: Google Search – The internet.

Brief Explanation: The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the  transportation of captured African people, from the villages, towns and jungles of Africa, and taken right across the Atlantic ocean, mainly to the Americas to be sold as slaves by slave traders. This was really sad for those who were captured ant taken away from their loved ones. This evil trade existed between the 16th and 18th centuries. Most of the slave were gotten from central and west Africa. The Portuguese were he first to be engaged in the Atlantic slave trade. In 1526, they completed the first transatlantic slave voyage to Brazil and other Europeans soon followed. The slaves were bought to work on plantations of coffee, tobacco, cocoa, sugarcane, and Caribbean economies were particularly dependent on labour from Africa. The trade ended in about the year 1811.

NOTES FOR THE PUPILS

A slave is a person who is owned by another person and has to work for the owner without freedom and without payment.

Slave trade is the buying and selling of slaves (humans). Portugal, Britain, France, Spain, Holland, Brazil, Cuba etc. were involved in the transatlantic slave trade.

How people became slaves in the past –

People became slaves in the past through the following ways:

  1. A person could be made a slave if he or she did something very wrong (like stealing and Killing).
  2. Some people were captured in slave raids.
  3. Many children and young people were kidnapped and sold as slaves.
  4. Some people were given as gifts to powerful chiefs, kings or other villagers, to become slaves.
  5. Some parents and rulers sold the people they did not like as slaves.
  6. Someone could be made a slave if he or she owed a debt that could be paid.
  7. Soldiers who were defeated in battles or wars were captured as slaves.

Abolition of slave trade in Africa

Portugal and Britain were the two most successful slave trading countries. Britain formed the slavery abolition act 1833 which freed all slaves. They also stopped slave trade in Nigeria. The first country in Europe to abolish slave trade was Norway while Argentina was the first in South America.

People who helped to abolish slave trade (Abolitionist campaigners)

  1. William Wilberforce
  2. Thomas Clarkson
  3. William Cowper
  4. Elizabeth Hayrick
  5. Fredric Douglass
  6. John Brown
  7. George Fox
  8. William Pen

African Abolitionist were:

  1. Harriet Tuban
  2. Sojourner Truth
  3. David Walker
  4. Dred Scott
  5. Henry Box
  6. Samuel Green
  7. Eliza Arn
  8. John Parker
  9. Ajayi Crowther