Stealing One Man's Life to Take Another 

The article I choose for my history blog was about the Transatlantic Slave trade. It was one of the units we did in History class this year, which I really liked. I found this article in The Metropolitan
Museum of Art. This article was by Alexander Ives Bortolot.  Link to article, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/slav/hd_slav.htm.

The article talked about many different things, one of which was what slaves were traded for back then.  One of the things that the slave traders traded slaves for was firearms. The trading of firearms in exchange for slaves, I found rather disturbing because during this time period people were willing to sell a person only in exchange for a gun. This increased fighting because people who weren't familiar with guns are now getting them and they are fighting other people for land that might not have guns. I also don't think they should have traded slaves for guns because it affected people in a negative way. People were now possessing guns and might be hurting and killing others.

Another thing the article talked about was the lasting effect it had on Africa. Some areas of Africa were covered with remains of war and fighting. This caused population decline.  One consequence of this population decline was the fact that women had to do jobs that were primarily for men. The article then said when women took the place doing a man's job during this time, it changed the structure of the society because the men were so short in numbers.  Imagine that you were a young girl or a woman who had to take over her husband's job and you really didn't know anything about it. This is what some women had to over come during the slave trade.

I thought this article fit in with what we learned in class because this was one of the units we covered.  I also learned some new things from this article.  For example, slave traders traded firearms for slaves and also the slave trade affected not only the people who were slaves but the people who were back home. This was true especially for the woman who had to take over the men's jobs. Overall, I liked this article because it showed me that slaves weren't the only actual people being affected by the slave trade.