Chapter 14: pg: 687-699 Chapter 14 Documents

Chapter 14:

After African Americans were captured and taken from Africa as slaves, they brought their culture into the new world. Things such as their culture, religious beliefs, food, and traditions. This furthermore expanded and helped different ideas spread throughout the world. As far as the slave trade itself, it was mostly popular among American plantations. This was because of all the work that was needed to be done. Men were most commonly doing labor out on the cotton fields and farms, while the women did some of that labor, but mostly were in charge of the household. Things such as cooking, cleaning, and tending to the children. In a lot of cases the women were also used as objects for their masters, a lot of rape happen during this time period. Additionally and unfortunately, once in America slavery was also inherited. Meaning, if you were born and your parents were slaves, you automatically became a slave as well.

I also did not know where the word "slave" came from and I found this very informing. There were slaves taken in order to work on Mediterranean plantations. These slaves came from the Black Sea and were "Slavic-speaking." Because these slaves were so prominent and all over, the name "SLAV" became the generic term for slave.

Chapter 14 Documents:

There were 4 documents in this section. The one that I like was document 14.2. The perspective was from an English merchant and we were reading his journal. He described how exactly the slave trade worked from different perspectives. He witness the exchanges happen himself, therefore he was able to give first hand insight. The merchant gave us information such as how much the slaves were and what they would exchange the life of the slaves for in regards to goods and other services. This part especially stood out to me because it basically put a price on the human life. When people would trade these slaves for jewelry, animals, and food it really made me think about how poorly people thought of the slaves. I know my life is worth way more than any food, and jewelry, and any animal and it is honestly really crappy that these peoples lives were not thought of this way.