T1 Chapter 1 International trade in the XVIIIth century

Chapter 1 : International trade in the XVIIIth century Chapter 2 : The Age of Enlightenment Chapter 3 : The French Revolution and the Empire

Theme One - The XVIIIth Century. Expansion, Enlightenment and Revolutions

Key Issue: How Europe dominates the world in the XVIIIth Century?

4ème SiB Jean Perrin - J. Christiansen

Chapter One

International trade in the XVIII century

4ème SiB Jean Perrin - J. Christiansen

Introduction

In the XVIIIth century, Europe experienced strong economic growth. It was largely based on triangular trade that was established in the Atlantic Ocean. The strong European demand for tropical products leads to the development of the plantation economy.

Timeline chapter

4ème SiB Jean Perrin - J. Christiansen

Triangular trade - transatlantic slave trade

Key Term

Triangular trade: Europeans traded manufactured goods for captured Africans, who were shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to become slaves in the Americas. The Europeans, in turn, were supplied with raw materials.

4ème SiB Jean Perrin - J. Christiansen

Colonial Empires in 1740

4ème SiB Jean Perrin - J. Christiansen

1. The European expansion and the rise of the merchant class (la bourgeoisie)

la Rochelle

Activity 1

Emblem of the town

Doc 2. Map fo the townin 1772

1. La rue des Merciers is the street of merchants and craftsman. Private mansions and hotels were built by traders. 2. La rue Bletterie reveals how ancient are the trade relations with Canada (les "bleds" = wheat)

Task: Using the painting from Vernet, describe the port activites of La Rochelle In order to describe the image, start with the foreground (activities), centre (the ships) and background (the buildings)

Doc. 1 View of La Rochelle port in 1772Joseph Vernet, 1762, (musée de la Marine, Paris).

4ème SiB Jean Perrin - J. Christiansen

1. The European expansion and the rise of the merchant class (bourgeoisie)

The atlantic trade changed the life of Europeans: - The merchant class (la bourgeoisie) of the maritime atlantic coast grew richer. The consumption of coffee, sugar or cotton fabrics spread and exoticism marked them. - It also led to the transformation of many ports of Britain, France, Portugal and Spain of the Atlantic coast.

4ème SiB Jean Perrin - J. Christiansen

2. Transatlantic Slave trade

7 to 11 million Africans were deported to the Arab-Muslim world between the 7th and 19th centuries. More than 12 million are by European slavers between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries (Transatlantic slave-trade)

Key Term

Middle passage: the voyage of enslaved people across the Atlantic from Africa to the Americas; the middle leg of a three-part trade in slaves and goods between Europe, Africa, and the America

Key Term

Key Term

Abolition: Abolish/abolition means stop something happening by making it illegal. For slavery the government passed an act abolishing slavery in 1807

Slavery: A slave is a person who is owned by another person. Slaves are forced to work and are not paid.

2. Transatlantic Slave trade

Activity 2 The life of a slave in the XVIIIth century: Olaudah Equiano

La Marie-Séraphique, slave ship with 370 captives, draw, 1770.

Capture of slaves drawing fromThe Life and Explorations de David Livingstone (BnF, Paris)

Announcement of a sale of slaves in Charleston, 1769 (Geneva Ethnography Museum)

J.-H. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Captives in the hold of a slave ship, 1769 (BnF, Paris).

2. Transatlantic Slave trade

Activity 2 The life of a slave in the XVIIIth century: Olaudah Equiano

Iron Machines for slaves, Injured Humanity, 1805.

Being pro-slavery ?

Plantation system: the example of the Antilles

1. House of the masters 2. The « cases à nègres » ; are the slaves's houses 3. Pastures 4. Sugar cotton fields 5. The water mill, sugar factory and oven, where sugar loaves dry

3. Plantation economy in the New World

European settlers and colonists own the plantations that feed the European market. Captives were enslaved and forced to work in dreadful conditions, on hugely profitable plantations. Britain, and other counties, grew wealthy on this trade in people and the goods they were forced to produce. Slaves resist by fleeing or revolting. Some Europeans advocate the abolition of slave trade and slavery. Although the main European powers committed themselves to abolishing the slave trade in 1815, it continued until the 1860s.

Slaves working in the French colonies have the status of “movable property” defined by the Black Code (Le Code Noir).