Early history of European trade with Africa.
Treatment of slaves (corporal punishment).
The Atlantic Slave Trade was the largest migration over the ocean, and promoted the transportation of goods and people among different continents. The selling of African people started before any interference from Europe. Between the 10th and 14th centuries, African captives around Sudan made up what was called the Trans-Saharan slave trade; many were women who were bought to work on the plantations. Other captives were sent to the coast of the Mediterranean where they were marketed in Morocco. .
Around the mid-1400s, Portuguese captains became educated on how to sail the waters along the coast of Africa. European goods were exchanged for slaves in Africa; slaves were sold in the Americas for plantation produce, such as sugar that was taken back to Europe. As the demand rose for slaves, more European goods were needed for trade. By the 1680s, merchants from Denmark, Sweden, and German States participated in the slave trade. Small trading stations, also referred to as "factories", were set up along the coast of Africa, and trade occurred directly with those who supplied slaves. Because of this direct method of trading, Europeans were able to avoid the Tans-Saharan slave trade. In the late 1400s, with the rapid development of the sugar plantations, the slave trade to Europe decreased. In the islands of Madeira and Sao Tome, located off the coast of West Africa and in the Gulf of Guinea, became leading territories of the production of sugar internationally used, thus dominating in this era of trade.
Early European trade with West Africa involved the trading of gold and not slaves. Before the late 19th century, Europeans did not have the means to overcome African states, and Africans controlled gold fields in what is now Ghana. This region was referred to as the Gold Coast. There were agreements constructed between African and European traders, which resulted in the building of many trading forts along the coast of Ghana.
