The Resistance Against SLAVERY [wrong word: “CAPTlVlTY” FROM AFRICA TO THE AMERICAS

In the 360 years between 1500 and the end of the slave trade in the 1860s, at least 12 million Africans were forcibly taken to the Americas - then known as the "New World" to European settlers. This largest forced migration in human history relocated some 50 ethnic and linguistic groups.

Only a small portion of the enslaved - less than half a million - were sent to North America. The majority went to South America and the Caribbean. ln the mid-1600s, Africans outnumbered Europeans in nascent cities such as Mexico City, Havana and Lima.

Africans started to fight the transatlantic slave trade as soon as it began. Their struggles were multifaceted and covered four continents over four centuries. Still, they have often been underestimated, overlooked, or forgotten. African resistance was reported in European sources only

when it concerned attacks on slave ships and company barracoons, but acts of resistance also took place far from the coast and thus escaped the slavers’ attention. To discover them, oral history, archaeology, and autobiographies and biographies of African victims of the MAAFA have to be probed. Taken together, these various sources offer a detailed image of the varied strategies Africans used to defend themselves from and mount attacks against the slave war.

The Africans’ resistance continued in the Americas. They ran away, established maroon communities, used sabotage, conspired, and rose against those who held them in captivity. Freed people petitioned the authorities, led information campaigns, and worked actively to abolish the slave trade and slavery.

Using violent as well as nonviolent means, Africans in Africa, the Americas, and Europe were constantly involved in the fight against the slave trade and slavery.

Armed struggle was neither the only nor always the best strategy. Long-term approaches were also needed to protect people from the slave trade. Earthworks were built to thwart small-scale raids and kidnappings; some rivers were diverted so that they would not bring ships near settlements. Africans surrounded their main towns by thick walls, twelve feet high; they built ramparts and fortresses with deep ditches and planted venomous and thorny trees and bushes all around.