My Soul: Enslaved

Throughout time people have been taken into that tragic and barbaric practice known as slavery, but the period through the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries has become the most infamous. Between 1500 and 1866, as the European countries and Gt Britain started to colonise other parts of the world, nearly 12.5 million Africans were captured, enslaved, and transported from Africa to the Americas. Slave ships would set out from a British or European port, trade their goods on the west coast of Africa in return for a full cargo of slaves, then sail across the Atlantic to ports in the New World where the slaves were sold, prior to the ships returning home with more commodities. On these voyages, and at work too, whether on a plantation or in a home, they suffered horrendous brutality and living conditions, and were generally regarded as less than human. Just as many were captured and taken on foot through the deserts to various Arab countries. But these people were not a set of statistics; they were people who laughed and cried and sang and danced the same as us, but were torn from their families for the benefit of commerce, and ownership, by the more powerful. See more