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European History: 1600s-1800s

The Slave Trade

The Slave Trade
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 5 to 8
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   8.22

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    money-making, reloaded, suicide, cargo, various, ports, lifetime, slavery, wealthy, especially, fleets, opposition, tobacco, arrival, wherever, tribal
     content words:    New World, North America, South America, Central America, Caribbean Islands, These African, United States, South American, West Indies, William Wilberforce

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The Slave Trade
By Sharon Fabian 		  
1     Years after slavery had ended in most of Europe, it returned in a different form. Not slavery itself, but the slave trade. The slave trade was a money-making business that traded in human lives.
 
2     It began soon after England, Spain, and other European countries established colonies in the New World. In many of these colonies, businessmen began plantations where they planned to grow crops such as sugar cane, coffee, cotton, and tobacco. These plantations required many workers.
 
3     Plantations in North America, South America, Central America, and the Caribbean Islands all needed workers. At first, the owners tried to find native residents to work on the plantations. When this didn't fill all of their labor needs, they began to look elsewhere.
 
4     Soon, they began to look to Africa. Africa seemed far away from Europe and the Americas. African people were not well known to Europeans or Americans, and somehow it didn't seem as bad taking Africans for slaves. These African workers could do the work on the plantations, and everyone involved tried not to think about the harm that was being done to the workers themselves and their families.
 
5     Soon, a prosperous trade in slaves developed. European countries with their fleets of merchant ships were at the center of it all. It was a three-way trade; merchant ships sailed from Europe, to Africa, to the Americas, and back to Europe.

Paragraphs 6 to 14:
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