Before exploration of the New World and the Atlantic, the Europeans traded via the Silk Road that connected Europe and the Mediterranean with the Asian world. The Silk Road provided a trading route of spices, …show more content…
It is also necessary to note that this period from the early 15th century and continuing into the early 17th century called the Age of Exploration was not the first means of exploration. In fact, before Christopher Columbus voyage, the Portuguese and Spanish ships explored the West African coast. The Portuguese were the early explorers in the oceanic revolution who managed to discover new territories with the help of Prince Henry the Navigator. The Portuguese also sent Pedro Álvares Cabral in the fifteen hundreds who discovered Brazil and cultivated sugar from the Natives living there . Henry on the other hand, started a school of navigation, recruited the best mapmakers, and explores in Europe. In the early fourteen hundreds to late fourteen hundreds Henry’s navigators explored most of West Africa including Guinea, the Madeira Islands, Azores, Senegal, and many more . With his help, the Portuguese were able to trade cloth, iron bars, metal wares, firearms, jewelry, and liquor in exchange for slaves. African slaves provided labor for plantation colonies that produced sugar, tobacco, rice, cotton, and coffee. These Africans participated in the Atlantic slave trade because it offered them goods at a lower cost and in greater varieties than they could produce. Some reasons one became a slave in Africa was war, debt, or criminal behavior. Other times the Europeans stripped Africans from …show more content…
The slave trade played an important role in the history of the Atlantic world almost from the beginning. English workers were brought over as indentured servants in hope to gain land, but most either died or their contracts were not granted. In 1619, the first black indentured servants came to the English colonies. The English cultivated colonies along the Atlantic Coast of North America with the intension to spread Christianity. Jamestown was English’s first parliament establishment in the New World. The French came to the new world in search of the Northwest Passage and created plantations in St. Domingue. They also were the most amicable toward natives, and married natives to establish trade. The Dutch created colonies in American like New Amsterdam, later called New York. They also took fisheries from the French, and established joint companies for commercial enterprise. However, their biggest source of commercial enterprise was in East