Leah Savage

Period 2
Transatlantic Slavery and Modern Human Trafficking Comparative Essay
Slavery is thought to be something of the past, but is still hugely prevalent
globally, with the inhumane trafficking of people resembling that of the transatlantic
slave trade. In the transatlantic slave trade, African slaves were going to mainly European
planters, while today slaves from everywhere, but primarily Asia and Africa, go all over
the world for many different types of employers. Thus from 1450 to 2015, there's been a
global issue with the trafficking of humans. Slaves are often purchased for cheap labor,
and it's now easier than ever to connect slaves and future employers through the Internet.
Money is always a motivator for traffickers who decide to make their wages through
illegal means. The transatlantic slave trade and modern human trafficking are different in
the makeup of slaves and their purposes as workers, as well as the premises by which
they become captives, but the monetary motives and intense physical and mental damage
from slavery remains consistent.
Differences between modern human trafficking and the transatlantic slave trade
exist heavily in the makeup and uses of the trafficked persons. In the transatlantic slave
trade, Africans were imported mostly to sugar plantations, in which sugar cane were
grown and processed into sugar crystals, molasses, and rum. The main motive for their
exportation was physical labor. While the technology for growing and harvesting the cane
was mostly simple, the machinery was complicated, including rollers and copper kettles.
Planters wanted strong slaves, who could work with machinery as well as do the harsh
physical work required in the fields, where the sugar cane had to be cut and harvested.
Young men around the age of 25 were the workers who had the best output, and thus
were the most imported and desirable on plantations. Today, rather than simply physical

labor on plantations, common types of trafficking include sex trafficking, child sex
trafficking, domestic servitude, forced labor, forced child labor, unlawful recruitment and
use of child soldiers. 4.5 million victims a year make up the 22% of human trafficking
that is sex trafficking and 14.2 million make up the 68% human trafficking that includes
forced labor exploitation in economic activities like agriculture, construction, domestic
work or manufacturing (21 million people are now victims of forced labour, ILO says).
This huge prevalence of sex trafficking and work not only focused on harsh physical
labor motivates traffickers appealing to their buyers to make over 50% of their victims
women. While the need for intense physical labor once made men the most desirable
workers, sex trafficking, domestic labor, and child labor make women and children more
attractive in modern human trafficking than they were in the transatlantic slave trade.
Trafficking victims often fall into a trap of trafficking under false premises,
whereas Africans were captured without necessarily taking any type of risks. The types of
trickery that traffickers use mostly include debt manipulation, in which they have to
work many years for little or no wages to repay money they borrow, contract fraud or
switching, when a labor recruiter changes the terms and conditions of employment after a
worker has invested in the recruitment process, and document confiscation and abuse of
the legal process, or traffickers exploiting the vulnerability of migrants who take risks to
find work. The invention of the Internet makes it incredibly easy to reach out to needy
people looking for work and create false premises for attractive jobs. Unsuspecting young
girls may also be swindled into sex work by traffickers online posing to be who they're
not. Victims of debt manipulation, many Mexican workers live and work on farms where
they can only buy food and other necessities at high prices from the company, receiving

payment at the end of the season, and often owing money after the harvest. Rather than
manipulating the legal system or making false claims about a job, traffickers in the
transatlantic trade system mostly either kidnapped or bought slaves from African kings
and merchants of the Gold and Slave coasts. Slaves owned by nobility had often been
captured as prisoners of war in conflicts between African kingdoms. African kings
wanted to make money for their own kingdom and and make it even more powerful and
expansive by taking away from the population and army of other kingdoms. In the Bight
of Biafra, there was little war, so traffickers kidnapped their victims, doing business at
inland markets and fairs. In the Portuguese-held territory of Angola, many exported
slaves were prisoners of war from the wars of territorial expansion fought by the Lunda
kingdoms. While transatlantic slave traders got slaves through their status as prisoners of
war or by kidnapping, modern human traffickers often pursue victims through
exploitation of debt or false offers of employment or help in migration.
The motivations for the transatlantic slave trade and modern human trafficking are
similar, mainly surrounding money. The shift to African slaves rather than European
indentured servants came for many reasons: a decrease in willing Europeans, the fact that
a contract of indenture was usually shorter than the life span of a working slave, and a
rise in sugar prices so that more planters could invest in slaves. Sugar production and its
necessary machinery was expensive, and planters tried to make money by running large
plantations. Individual planters or companies tried to make the most money that they
possibly could by buying a multitude of slaves to replace those weak, sick, or dying,
rather than care for their slaves. 90% of today's human trafficking is in the private
economy, by individuals or enterprises. Sex work is often thought of as shameful in the

United States, and traffickers may look at it as easy money to import foreign workers to
be prostitutes and serve the consistent demand for paid sex. Families, companies, and
other organizations looking for domestic laborers for cheap wages may pay traffickers
large sums. Money is surely the biggest motivation in both of these trades for traffickers
looking for an easy livelihood.
Psychological and physical damage comes to victims of both time periods of
trafficking. Punished harshly for failure to meet production quotas, they had little time for
rest, relaxation, education, or family life. They had short life expectancies because of
disease, bad working conditions, and dangerous machinery, and were treated as
replaceable. They often ran away and staged violent rebellions, like one led by a slave
named Tacky in Jamaica in 1760, demonstrating their unhappiness and confinement.
Planters tried to prevent rebellion by hindering practice of cultural traditions, religions,
and native languages. Slaves were beaten and worn down by physical labor, and suffered
the psychological damages of being treated as subhuman. In modern trafficking,
survivors out of confinement may have a huge amount of anxiety, especially worrying
about threats from affiliates of traffickers to their family and friends. They may need but
help finding safe housing and school or job training, but can't necessarily find it, making
it hard to earn a living. Children in sex trafficking have lasting trauma, may come out
with sexual disease, drug addiction, unwanted pregnancy, malnutrition, marginalization,
and death. Workers in forced labor in the dangerous conditions of Ghana's artisanal gold
mines face poisonous dust inhalation and exposure to chemicals. The families of slaves
from both time periods may be shocked and devastated by the disappearance of or
damage to their loved ones.

Transatlantic slavery and modern human trafficking are both brutal and barbaric
examples of exploitation in global history. Transatlantic slavery focused on the
exportation of Africans across the Atlantic to suit the needs of European sugar cane
growers while modern human trafficking is truly global, exporting captives from every
continent to be sold for sex, cheap labor, domestic work, and much more. Money
motivates these traffickers who supplied the means of kidnapping or purchasing African
slaves from kings, and who today trick many into being victims through false premises of
jobs, forcing them to pay debts from their family members, or abuse of the legal process
of migrant workers. While young men dominated the transatlantic slave trade and were
the best and most effective workers on plantations, today women make up the majority of
human trafficking, working for families or companies after contract fraud or being pulled
into sex trafficking. No matter the makeup of victims, many suffer from fear, anxiety,
depression, and the deterioration of their bodies during or after captivity, leading modern
victims to have trouble starting a life after being slaves.