How was the slave trade abolished?
L’Ouverture led a successful uprising of black slaves THE SLAVE trade between the west coast of Africa and the Americas over a period of 300 to 400 years was probably one of the most barbaric periods of exploitation in history. The capture and sale of Africans made the traders and their sponsors wealthy; the buyers used the labour of their slaves to make themselves rich. The accumulation of this wealth played a major part in the development of capitalism in Europe. But the suffering inflicted on the slaves was immense and the legacy of this trade is still with us today. This brutal forced migration was very different from the forms of slavery that existed in Europe and Africa in the middle ages or even in ancient civilisations. There is evidence that the slave markets that existed in different parts of Europe and Africa at that time were primarily used as a method of punishment, particularly of debtors, or for prisoners of war. In the Caribbean, European slaves were first deported to w
