Atlantic Slave Trade and The Industrial Revolution

Atlantic slave trade was exactly what it sounds like, slave trade across the Atlantic ocean. Slaves were taken from their homes in west and central Africa and brought to America as slaves. They were forced to do hard, manual labor and were treated not as human beings, but rather as animals or livestock of sorts. People were able to buy, sell, trade, and treat them as they liked. Many of them were sold to plantation owners to work on fields of things like cotton, coffee, and sugar. They were essential to the economy at the time because they worked for free and therefore gave the plantation owners lower costs to maintain their fields and give them a large profit margin. The industrial revolution was a period in time when many places were making huge advances in technology, especially technology that made physical labor easier and more efficient. A revolution like this brings progress to all SPECS categories. Scientifically, it is obvious, new technology means scientific advancement. Socially and culturally it brings new ways of thinking and brings the lower classes closer to the higher ones in terms of getting a chance for education. If they have machines that can do their jobs faster and with less effort, then they can spend more time trying to learn or picking up hobbies. Economically it helps because people could then create more goods in the same amount of time, giving them a surplus and letting them sell it.