/ BLST 1160a / HIST 1784a, The Making of the Black Atlantic, 1400-1900 Staff

Description

This course explores the formation of the Black Atlantic from the early modern period through 1900. It begins with the development of racial slavery, a new type of human slavery, during the sixteenth century. The racialized slavery that emerged in the Americas was new to World History, developed by European colonists to exploit the natural resources of the Americas. The transatlantic slave trade in captive Africans transported more than twelve million people to the Americas. They shaped the growth and formation of every American society, from culture to economy and politics. We will focus upon North American and the Caribbean, where European colonists developed colonies that produced for export to the European market and were completely dependent upon the enslaved labor of Africans. The production and commerce of tobacco, sugar, rum, coffee and cotton with slave labor formed capital that empowered the growth of European empires, and ultimately the United States. The brutality of that forced labor led to resistance, and to organized rebellions that still reverberate in our societies, and in the global Order. This course treats this history from the late medieval period to the cusp of the twentieth century. HU RP 0 Course cr HTBA