ty of the slaves themselves that were taken to America. The slave trade was established as a response to the chronic shortage of labour in the new world. Settlers were acquiring land with ease yet had too little labourers to sustain agricultural growth for example for Rice production in North Carolina and Tobacco in Virginia and Maryland after the industries boom in the 1620's. The act of indentured servitude whereby whites would sell themselves to plantation owners as unfree labour for a number of years was also failing to satisfy the need for labour. Slavery offered the answer to this, providing vast numbers of labourers forced into perpetual bondage. There were huge sums of money involved in the slave trade and it developed dramatically in the 16th and 17th centuries with an estimated 74, 000 slaves being transported a year from Africa to the American colonies between 1776-1800 . Europeans justified the use of slavery by providing opportunities for Africans to become Christian and by the 17th century slavery had the full support of the Christian church. It was the vast geographical area of West Africa from which the slaves were taken from and the jumbled process of the 'middle passage' that meant there was huge cultural diversity within the first generation slaves taken from Africa. For example in Virginia, one of most populous slave states of the period, it is known that first generation slaves were taken from Bight of Biafra, the Gold Coast and Angola with slaves being made captive within as much to a 1000 mile range of these ports, even as far inland as Nigeria. This meant a variety of ethnic groups were represented, among them Igobo, Tiv, Kongo, Fante, Asante, Ibibio, Fon and others. Family ties were also usually It must be recognised that a true African-American culture was not truly born until around the mid 18th century and the time of emergence of second generation slaves as in slavery a new process of valu...