Blog Week 6: Prompt 1

    Working on this project gave me a great amount of new information on the Atlantic Slave Trade. When learning about slavery and the Atlantic Slave Trade in the past, the two were never fully separated from one another. In many classes, slavery was the main focus and the slave trade was only briefly touched upon. Many of these classes were focused on American history, and never ventured further. So, my understanding before this project lacked much of what I learned about the slave trade. 

    I learned that the slave trade started primarily from economic interest brought on by improving technology in Europe. To trade, the Europeans used Iron Bars. Once this currency was introduced to the market, it disrupted African trading systems by replacing traditional currencies. The change in currency brought desperate slave-raids upon many West African regions in order to trade slaves for iron bars. No other currency was accepted for the slave trade. The only positive it brought was perhaps new trading routes within West Africa.

    Along with a new understanding of the slave trade, I finally got to see a perspective on slavery somewhere other than America. In Britain, abolitionists were already forming in the 1780s. By 1807, the slave trade was abolished. Slavery itself was abolished in 1833, decades before America. 

    As lead researcher, I had a good idea of the topics that we were going to look at. This allowed me to take away a lot from the project that I would have found more challenging to do if I was in another role.