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The Middle Passage

Driving Question: What were the causes and effects of the Atlantic slaving system?

The Middle Passage was the portion of the triangular trade linking Africa to the Americas. African and European slavers kidnapped Africans, usually from the interior of the continent, and sold their captives into slavery. The journey across the Atlantic Ocean was horrific for those who were sold and profitable for the buyers and sellers. Of the 12.5 million Africans sold into slavery, only about 10 million survived the Middle Passage. For those who did survive, another type of horror awaited as the survivors were sold into slavery to spend their lives working on plantations. In this lesson, you’ll learn about the effects of this trade from those with firsthand experience of the journey across the Atlantic.

  1. Understand and critique the motives and justifications for the transatlantic slave trade.
  2. Evaluate the impact of the Atlantic slaving system on communities in Africa and the Americas.
  3. Utilize quick-sourcing skills to analyze primary source documents to assess first-person accounts of those involved in the transatlantic slave trade.
  4. Use a graphic biography as a microhistory to support, extend, or challenge the overarching narratives from this time period.
STEP 2
STEP 3

Impact of the Slave Trade: Through a Ghanaian Lens

The Atlantic slave trade removed 12.5 million people from Africa and resulted in the death of millions more. Three Ghanaian scholars give us a sense of its impact on the coast, the interior, and the far north of this region.

Key Ideas

As this video progresses, key ideas will be introduced to invoke discussion.
STEP 5