Transatlantic Slave Trade

In the Pre-Colonial Africa post, I talked about how climate shaped the kinds of crops Africans planted and domesticated. This blog post is going to concern how the Transatlantic Slave trade effected what Africans ate and were allowed to eat as they were forced out of the climate they grew up in. The Transatlantic Slave Trade started during the late 15th century and didn't end to the late 19th century (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d.). The transatlantic slave trade was made possible by large slave ships and these ships could have up to 700 enslaved Africans.

Common foods that were fed to the enslaved on these ships were starches such as rice, black-eyed peas, yams, and okra. Notice that these foods originated in Africa, so they were fed what they were used to. "Without question, yams were the most common African staple fed to enslaved Africans on board ships bound for the Americas" (Holloway, 2020). Holloway goes on to cite slave ship logs that mention how yams were brought onto ships in massive numbers while plantains and palm oil were less quantitative.

Now, you may be wondering, what about when they arrived at the Americas? Well, the enslaved Africans managed to cultivate and grow their own crops, some more than others. The displacement from their homeland forced them to adapt to the new land conditions. A specific example of them adapting happened in the West Indies in Charlestown, Nevis. The Liverpool Museum analyzes the way the enslaved not only made their own food but how they sold and exchanged food with other slaves (Diet and Food Production for Enslaved Africans, n.d.).

This was possible by utilizing the soil outside of their homes and/or plots that were given to them by the slave masters. This was also prevalent in the modern-day North American land, not just South America (Mekouar, 2019). Due to their ability to adapt to the similar soil composition of the Americas, the enslaved were able to plant crops they were familiar with like yams, plantains, and sweet potatoes (Diet and Food Production for Enslaved Africans, n.d.).

So, on both slave slips that brought them over to the new world and in the new world, the African peoples were still able to hold onto their culture of food either by choice or by force.