Deck 2: Middle Passage

Question 1

Which of the following is true about the path a slave-once captured-took to the market in Africa?

A) Generally, the captured slaves thought they would be treated fairly and submitted to the long stages of travel.
B) The trips to the coast were generally brief, as most Africans traded as slaves lived near that area.
C) African tribes kept trading stations along routes, for access to food and water. They wanted as few as possible to die along the way.
D) The slaves were tied together with ropes, or had "yokes" around their necks during the journey.

Answer 1

The slaves were tied together with ropes, or had "yokes" around their necks during the journey.

Question 2

How did an African become a slave?

A) European armies raided the interior of Africa for people.
B) Thinking they would have a better life in the Americas, many sold themselves voluntarily.
C) Their town or village was conquered by another African army.
D) They were members of a very poor tribe, who frequently sold children to make money.

Answer 2

Their town or village was conquered by another African army.

Question 3

Which accomplishment was not a first for (or sponsored by) the Portuguese?

A) rounding the Cape of Good Hope
B) sailing around Africa to reach India and the East
C) the discovery of the New World
D) reaching Africa's west coast

Answer 3

the discovery of the New World

Question 4

Examine Map 2-3. How did the slave trade affect worldwide trading systems?

A) A triangular trade system developed, involving British manufactured goods, slaves, sugar and rum.
B) The Americas became the wealthiest area of the world in the 1700s, disrupting European power.
C) Spain and Portugal continued to dominate the trade into the 1700s, forcing the British and French to pay exorbitant taxes for a small role in the trade.
D) The slave trade played a limited role in worldwide trade, as it only involved slaves moving from Africa to the Americas.

Question 5

What happened to many Africans once they became slaves in Muslim society?

A) They were always beaten and treated very harshly, and rarely survived more than a few months.
B) Many were freed or merged into Arab society.
C) Most were resold by the Arabs in Morocco to form a huge part of the European slave trade.
D) Both male and female African slaves were used as field labor.

Question 6

Europeans found native populations in the areas of North and South America. Why did they need labor from Africa?

A) The Native Americans quickly began to die in huge numbers from diseases imported by the Europeans.
B) Native Americans refused to be captured or work as slaves in fields or mines.
C) Europeans rapidly established cordial relationships with many native peoples, hoping to gain their cooperation voluntarily.
D) There were not enough Native Americans to satisfy the needs of Europeans.

Question 7

The Spanish and Portuguese dominated the early slave trade with the Africans. Which nation ousted them from this status in the early seventeenth century?

A) Holland
B) England
C) France
D) Germany

Question 8

Who was the first known Portuguese merchant to begin to formally trade for slaves with the Africans?

A) Antam Goncalvez
B) Oba Dahomey
C) Ruy do Siqueira
D) Bartolomeu Dias.

Question 9

Slavery in the Americas developed along different lines than had slavery in Africa. Which of the following was not one of those differences?

A) Slavery in the Americas was based on race.
B) Most of the slaves in the Americas were male.
C) Most of the slaves in the Americas were used as agricultural laborers, rather than fighters or domestic servants.
D) In West Africa, female slaves were only used to make cloth, while they generally did hard agricultural work in the Americas.

Question 10

Where did most of the slaves from Africa go?

A) to the English colonies in North America
B) to Mexico, to assist in mining for gold
C) to Brazil, to work on the sugar plantations
D) to the Caribbean to work on sugar and other plantations

Question 11

Which of the following is not a reason why Africans enslaved other Africans, and sold them to Europeans?

A) Africans at the time did not have a sense of themselves as "Africans," and had not really developed a concept of racial solidarity.
B) Warfare and interethnic rivalries among African tribes contributed; selling members of defeated tribes proved a way to get rid of opponents.
C) African tribes were forced under threat of annihilation or war to sell others to the Europeans.
D) African tribes actually did not enslave other African tribes.

Question 12

Until the early sixteenth century, for what were the early slaves captured by the Portuguese used?

A) domestic servants
B) labor in the sugar cane fields of North America
C) soldiers in some of the Europeans' many wars of the time period
D) teachers of African culture and language for wealthy, young Portuguese children

Question 13

How did the early Europeans usually obtain their supply of slaves?

A) They raided along the coast of Africa, forcibly capturing large families.
B) Arabs brought slaves up to the coastal cities in Europe, and they were purchased there.
C) Europeans captured large land areas through warfare, and subjugated entire groups of people into slavery.
D) They obtained their slaves through trade with native African tribes.

Question 14

How many slaves were the British able to transport to the Americas when the demand for slaves was the highest?

A) Due to the inadequate technology available, the British really could only transport a few thousand a year.
B) The British customarily moved hundreds of thousands of slaves per year, with the development of new and wider types of ships.
C) Generally, between 10,000 and 20,000 people per year.
D) In the 1790s, the British moved approximately 50,000 slaves from Africa to the Americas.

Question 15

Why did the British want to take over the slave trade in the late 17th century?

A) Their ongoing war with France demanded a supply of soldiers.
B) They needed labor for tobacco cultivation in Virginia and Maryland.
C) They wanted the taxes paid to the slave trade leader by other European nations.
D) They had begun to establish sugar plantations in Brazil and needed labor.

Question 16

What steps did the Europeans take to reduce the risk of rebellion at the slave factories in Africa?

A) Slaves were kept drugged and shackled with heavy chains.
B) Families and ethnic groups were separated.
C) Men and women were separated into separate trading towns.
D) Europeans didn't really have to take many steps, as the completely overwhelmed Africans often submitted to the process.

Question 17

Which European country took the lead in exploration and colonization in the early 1400s?

A) Portugal
B) France
C) England
D) Switzerland

Question 18

Which statement about the nature of the Islamic slave trade prior to European entry is true?

A) The Islamic slave trade did not exist in Africa prior to European entry.
B) The Islamic slave trade was not based primarily on race.
C) The Islamic slave trade mainly captured adult males for agricultural labor.
D) Slavery and the slave trade under Islamic society was at least as harsh as the European version in the Americas.

Question 19

Until the early 1500s, the European demand for slaves was relatively low. What changed that?

A) a huge plague in Europe, which wiped out the large surplus of laborers
B) the growth of racism among the British
C) the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus and the need for labor on the agricultural plantations of the Europeans
D) the development of a new form of cannon, which the Europeans used to threaten more African leaders into selling slaves

Question 20

Enslaved people in the Americas became ____________, or personal property. When they became slaves they often lost many of their legal and customary rights.

Question 21

What do we learn from the story of John Newton, a British slave ship captain?

A) Some devoutly Christian people never saw a contradiction between their jobs trading in human cargo and their religious beliefs.
B) Christians could be cruel, harsh slavers.
C) Ships' captains filled their ships with slaves quickly, usually in one stop at an African trading center.
D) Both that Christians could be cruel, harsh slavers, and that some never saw a contradiction between trading in human cargo and their religious beliefs.

Question 22

Which of the following best describes "seasoning" for the newly arrived slaves?

A) the process of becoming accustomed to and learning new skills for their lives in the Americas
B) the punishment process for rebellion by new slaves; new owners learned to be very harsh to teach new slaves a lesson quickly
C) being fattened up and prepared for sale
D) an identification process, involving the branding of newly arrived slaves, like cattle

Question 23

What was the international reaction to England's abolition of the slave trade?

A) America abolished the slave trade only after the Civil War in 1965.
B) Spain and Brazil agreed with the British and stopped importing slaves completely at the same time.
C) The African kingdom of Guinea established a national day of celebration when the slave trade was abolished.
D) When many African nations began warring after the abolition, some European colonies had an excuse to establish colonies there.

Question 24

Slave rebellions were a not uncommon experience on slave ships. Which of the following was not a common way for slaves to rebel or resist their imprisonment?

A) by refusing to eat
B) by drowning themselves
C) organizing and carrying out bloody, violent rebellions
D) by stealing life boats and rowing back to shore prior to the ship leaving for the Americas.

Question 25

Which of the following was a difference between the lives and beliefs of the ships' crew and its human cargo?

A) Crew and the slaves shared the same diet.
B) The crews were far healthier, and immune from the epidemics of disease that swept the slave ships.
C) The crews of ships rarely feared violence against their lives.
D) African medicine was far more holistic than European medicine, and stressed the interconnectedness of mind, spirit and body.

Question 26

What do we learn from the story written by Olaudah Equiano, a former slave?

A) Some slaves were treated with kindness and empathy of their initial captors.
B) The middle passage was an incredibly difficult experience for Africans, torn from their home and families and forced into horrifying conditions.
C) Because of their advantage in numbers, some slaves succeeded in rebelling against their captors, seizing control of the slave ship and returning to Africa.
D) Slaves usually failed to resist to the process of slavery.

Question 27

Sometimes slaves were sold at auctions; at other times, however, they were sold in the ________, where buyers rushed into a pen to rope or grab the slaves they wanted.

Question 28

Which of the following is NOT true of Creoles or older Africans?

A) They were considered less valuable than other Africans for many reasons.
B) They generally were more familiar with the European languages.
C) They had become accustomed to the diseases and new climate of the area.
D) Since whites were in the minority of the population, they could help train new arrivals.

Question 29

How did African women's experiences differ from African men's on board slave ships?

A) Crews treated African women to better food, hoping to gain their trust and keep them from rebelling.
B) African women experienced sexual violence by the ships' crews. This high level of violence, and its psychological effects, may have led to their lessened sex drives once the women arrived in the Caribbean and Latin America.
C) African women generally were treated with more respect, since they could reproduce and therefore gain a higher price on the market.
D) African women were beaten frequently, as European men found their lack of "manners" disgusting.

Question 30

Which of the following does not characterize doctors of slave ships at the time?

A) Many collected African remedies to help with illnesses at sea.
B) Since slavers wanted to keep as many slaves alive as possible, ships' doctors had an unusually sophisticated knowledge of medicine at the time.
C) They were often given incentives for the number of slaves they kept alive on the voyage.
D) They began to understand connections between health, hygiene and diet after about 1750.

Question 31

Which was not a reason why the British abolished the Atlantic slave trade in 1807?

A) England's economy had become less dependent on plantation agriculture than before.
B) The English had begun to see the slave trade as being against their religious beliefs.
C) Many stories had been spread about the horrors of the middle passage and slavery.
D) The British had begun to believe that racism was scientifically incorrect, and should not be a part of their belief systems.

Question 32

What do we learn of slavery from the story of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo of Bondu?

A) Almost all Africans were illiterate members of very poor tribes.
B) English slavers deliberately sought out certain Africans to assist them in enslaving more tribal groups.
C) Some Africans were successful in organizing armed resistance to the British slave efforts.
D) The experiences of captured slaves varied considerably according to the available resources, class level and education of the slave.

Question 33

How did a planter decide if a slave had been "seasoned"?

A) The slave began to plant African foods in the New World.
B) The slave began to speak Spanish, French or English perfectly.
C) The slave seemed psychologically stable, and did not participate in armed rebellion or suicide attempts.
D)The slave settled down, got married, and had children.

Question 34

Many slaves were sold once they reached the West Indies. What was typical of the sale process?

A) Slavers allowed the slaves some time to rest and recuperate before sale.
B) Slavers adhered to a scrupulous code of ethics and refused to sell a sick or injured slave.
C) The sale process was very quick once the slaves reached the West Indies.
D) New owners were given detailed, written histories of their slaves, including medical information.

Question 35

What disease took the lives of most slaves while on board the slave ships?

A) typhoid
B) measles
C) smallpox
D) influenza