Unit 1 Learning Notes: The Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Making of the African Diaspora

Transatlantic Slave Trade

Large-scale, organized trafficking of African people across the Atlantic—primarily to the Americas—into forced labor under racialized chattel slavery.

Racialized Chattel Slavery

A slavery system where enslaved people were treated as legally ownable property and slavery was tied to racial categories (especially identifying “Blackness” with enslavement).

Chattel

Legally ownable property; in this context, a system where people could be bought, sold, inherited, or used as collateral.

African Diaspora

The dispersal of African peoples and their descendants across the world (especially through the slave trade) and the communities, identities, and cultures formed as a result.

Cultural Retention

The preservation and continuation of cultural practices (language, religion, art, foodways, kinship, values) despite displacement and oppression.

Adaptation (in diaspora)

The process of modifying cultural practices to fit new environments and constraints under slavery and colonial rule.

Syncretism

Blending of traditions—often used for religion—such as African spiritual practices integrating with Christianity under slavery.

Creolization

The creation of new cultural forms from multiple influences in the Atlantic world, shaped by ongoing contact and change over time.

Triangular Trade

A common model of Atlantic commerce: European goods to Africa, enslaved Africans to the Americas, and plantation commodities to Europe (useful but oversimplified).

Middle Passage

The ocean crossing that transported enslaved Africans from the African coast to the Americas; marked by extreme violence, confinement, and high mortality risk.

Plantation Agriculture

Large-scale, labor-intensive cash-crop production (e.g., sugar, tobacco, later cotton) that drove demand for a controllable workforce.

Sugar as a “Driver Crop”

The idea that sugar production in Caribbean plantation zones demanded enormous labor and generated major profits, helping expand slavery and the slave trade.

Indentured Servitude

A labor system in which workers served for a set term and could later claim freedom; did not provide lifetime, inheritable labor control.

Hereditary Slavery

Slavery status passed from parent to child, making enslavement permanent across generations in many Atlantic societies.

Racial Ideology

Beliefs and ideas that constructed and justified racial categories and inequality, supporting the association of African descent with enslavement.

Chartered Company

A state-backed trading firm (in some empires) that could be granted monopoly rights and supported imperial commerce, including slave trading.

State Power (in the slave trade)

Government support that enabled expansion of trafficking through naval protection, fortifications, contract enforcement, and pro-slavery legal frameworks.

Credit and Insurance (Atlantic economy)

Financial tools that reduced investor risk and made long-distance slave trading and plantation production easier to fund.

Commodification

Reducing people to “cargo” or market categories (age, sex, “health”), treating human life as an economic object for sale and profit.

Seasoning (pre-embarkation)

The period before or around embarkation when captives often endured raids, forced marches, confinement, and trauma—showing violence began before the voyage.

Mortality (Middle Passage)

Death during the voyage due to disease, dehydration, starvation, abuse, or suicide; rates varied by ship, time, and conditions.

Resistance at Sea

Actions by captives during the Middle Passage—uprisings, refusal to eat, jumping overboard, and mutual care/communication—to oppose captivity and survive.

Fictive Kin

Socially created family-like ties formed to replace or supplement disrupted biological kinship under slavery and forced separation.

Maroons

Communities formed by people who escaped slavery and established independent settlements in the Americas, often supporting autonomy and cultural survival.

Everyday Resistance

Daily acts that protected dignity and community—slowing work, maintaining forbidden practices, teaching stories, healing traditions, and spiritual rituals.