African historiography has been considerably renewed during the past three to four decades and despite the extreme diversity of internal sentiments pertaining to colonization, we still too often tend to generalize on just specific experience which is slave trade.
Colonization, an act of political and economic domination involving the control of a country and its people , it is also the action of settling among and establishing control over the indigenous people of the area . Colonization not colonisation (biology) is a multifaceted term which could be economical, social, political and other associated term. Colonization of black nations stems from the need of the white man to meet its internal economic imbalance, satisfy increasing demand for colonial goods such as tobacco , rum and sugar , and ensure constant labour which is mostly unwillingly ensured by slaves .
Slave trades out of Africa represent one of the most significant forced migration experiences in history as it provided political power , social standing and wealth for the Church , European nation _states , New World colonies and individuals. For over five centuries running from 1400 to 1900 , the slave trade encompassed four distinct waves which are : the trans_Saharan , Indian ocean , Red sea, and trans_ Atlantic slave trades. The last one was by far the most significant in terms of volume and and duration for over 12 million Africans were embarked mostly along the coasts of west Africa and forced to undertake the middle passage across the Atlantic ocean where 25 percentage of the human cargo oblivious to the life ahead would have been lost to starvation, jumping overboard, diseases and suffocation before getting to land .
Although forced labour was not uncommon as Africans and Europeans had been trading goods and people across the Mediterranean for centuries but then enslavement had not been based on race but the trans_Atlantic slave trade which began as early as the 15th century introduced a system of slavery that was commercialized, racialized and inherited. Enslaved persons were not seen as people at all but as commodities to be bought, sold and exploited with the slave having no say whatsoever and denied right to even basic human rights down to their sexual partners as their master can do whatever he seem fit to them . These inhumane acts went on till emancipation after centuries of slavery .
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