Imperial Migrations Coerced, Forced, and “Free”

The transatlantic slave trade was the mode by which Europeans acquired captive Africans and sold them as slaves in the Americas. “Trade” may be a misnomer. As historian Walter Rodney observed, the “warfare, trickery, banditry and kidnapping” that produced “social violence” was part and parcel of the...

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Published inThe European Seaborne Empires pp. 131 - 144
Main Author Paquette, Gabriel
Format Book Chapter
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Yale University Press 2019
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Summary:The transatlantic slave trade was the mode by which Europeans acquired captive Africans and sold them as slaves in the Americas. “Trade” may be a misnomer. As historian Walter Rodney observed, the “warfare, trickery, banditry and kidnapping” that produced “social violence” was part and parcel of the execrable traffic in human beings. Slavery was not the only form of migration involving coercion in Europe’s overseas empires, for indentured servitude and convict transportation were ubiquitous as well. These forms of forced and quasi-forced migration brought laborers whose presence shaped the economic and social structures of the seaborne empires. Four out of
ISBN:9780300205152
0300205155
DOI:10.12987/9780300245271-010