The trafficking of Africans by Europeans began in the 1500s. From the time Africans were enslaved in their motherland, to the time of their arrival in the New World, they sought ways to rebel, to fight back and escape.
‘That calculations had been made, with all possible exactness, to determine which was … the more saving method of managing slaves: whether, to appoint them moderate work, plenty of provision, and such treatment as might enable them to protract their lives to old age? Or, by rigorously straining their strength to the utmost, with little relaxation, hard fare, and hard usage, to wear them out before they became useless and unable to do service, and then, to buy new ones, to fill up their places?