Chapter 3

1. For every European who came to the New World, how many Africans came?

For every European there was four or five African Americans

2. How did the slave trade contribute to the development of capitalism?
Industralism in France England and the U.S. flourished because of the cane sugar industry. Cane sugar was able to be grown and refined. The triangular trads were the initial foundations of their economy which involved mariners, slaves, molasses, and rum.

3. If slavery existed primarily in the southern colonies and states, how did the northern colonies and states profit from it?
There was a symbolic relationship that developed between the Southern and northern cotton planters. Profits made were re-invested elsewhere. Textile industries were developed cheap and durable fabrics.

4. At the end of the colonial period, how many Americans were immigrants from Africa or their descendants? How many Americans today are their descendants?
Every fifth American was either an African immigrant or a descendant of one. The ancestors of more than ten percent of American people.

5. What are the limits on our understanding of the African immigrant experience in America?
The African immigrant experience has limits on understanding it because not all materials exsist. Letters, diaries, reminiscences do not exisit. All documents that do exsist are written by slave traders, masters, and other white observers.

6. What is the Myth of the Negro Past? What is the reality?
The myth of the Negro Past is that black Africa was a cultural desert that had contributed nothing to the rest of the world, resulting in the slaves who came here being "promative savages without even the vestiges of viable culture" (p.56). Anything the Africans may have had in the old world was totally lost except for some savage survials of music and dance/

7. What evidence is there for African cultural transfers in the New World? What's Gullah?
Herskovits's work based on ethnographic field research on both sides of the Atlantic clearly established the existence of African cultures in the New World. Religion, some family institutions, lingusistic elements, folk tales, mutal and societies, and music dance forms.

9. Why were there differences in the treatment of slaves throughout the Americas?
American steelmakers purposely recruited polyetheic labor forces in order to inhibit cooperation among members of the work force. Ibo"s from Nigeria may have been more prone to not being selected.