Saddleback College Transatlantic Slavery Questions Discussion – How does Equiano’s account shape your understanding of the experience of the Middle Passage

Saddleback College Transatlantic Slavery Questions Discussion – How does Equiano’s account shape your understanding of the experience of the Middle Passage? What is he describing? What moments stand out to you?

– How does Smallwood’s chapter shape our understanding of the transatlantic slave trade? How were Africans turned into commodities for the slave trade?

– How do you understand the experience of enslavement in the colonies based on lecture, the Virginia Statutes, and the account by William Byrd?

Pick and answer 2 please, 100 words minimum. Transatlantic Slavery: Turning People into
Commodities in the Colonial Atlantic World
HIST 16
LESSON 4
Note on Terminology
 In this course we will be using black, African, or African
American to refer to people of African descent.
 When speaking of people held in slavery: enslaved is
preferred over slave because the term enslaved brings
more attention to an ongoing process of forced labor.
However, it is still okay to use the word slave.
 Any other terminology may only be used if directly
quoting an assigned source. You must directly quote a
source because other terms were used in specific
historical contexts and are now derogatory.
West Africa
 The ancestral homeland of
most black Americans is
West Africa; it was the
center of the transatlantic
trade in human beings.
 West Africa was (and still
is) physically, ethnically,
and culturally diverse
 West Africans began
cultivating crops and
domesticating animals
between 1000 BCE and
200 CE.
 By 500 BCE some West
Africans were producing
iron tools and weapons
Ancient Ghana, 4th century CE- 1076
 West African peoples
traded extensively and
homed multiple empires.
 The first known kingdom
in Western Sudan was
Ghana. Ghana’s kings were
known in Europe and
Southwest Asia as the
richest of monarchs.
 Trade produced Ghana’s
wealth. They exported:
pepper, slaves (who were
usually war captives), and
gold. They also traded in:
silk, cotton, glass beads,
horses, mirrors, dates, and
salt.
Mali, 1230-1468
 Mali was socially,
economically, and politically
similar to Ghana.
 But it was larger, and
centered further south
allowing access to greater
rainfall and more gold mines.
 Mali was wealthier than
Ghana, and quite
cosmopolitan as home to 8
million people.
 Mali attracted merchants
from all over the
Mediterranean world and
became a center of Islamic
learning
The Arrival of Europeans
 Europeans from Portugal began arriving in West Africa in the
1430s hoping to establish trading centers to trade for gold.
 West Africa’s cultural and ethnic diversity makes it hard to
make generalizations about the social and cultural
backgrounds of the first African peoples brought forcefully
across the Atlantic.
 But by the early 16th century, most West Africans were
farmers, and lived in extended families and clans, which could
be patrilineal or matrilineal. You could also find nuclear and
polygynous families.
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Matrilineal: descent traced through the female line
Patrilineal: descent traced through the male line
 West African religions included Islam and polytheistic and
animistic religions that recognized many divinities and spirits.
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Polytheistic: belief in many gods
Animistic: belief that inanimate objects have spiritual attributes.
Historiography
 Historiography: The study of the writing of history.
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In other words the history of writing history
This is an important concept because history is an ever-evolving
field.
 Some reasons for changing historical interpretation:
 New sources discovered that challenge the interpretation of
older sources
 Changes in the way we understand social phenomena: people,
policies, class, gender, racial, ethnic distinctions
 The historiography of American slavery has changed
dramatically over the course of the 20th century
Historiography of American Slavery
 At first history books as early as the 1930s and 1940s
discussed the institution of slavery as a “benevolent
system” in the same way you would talk about a stringent
father, who loves you and if there was any mention of
abuse it was because he loves you—and you his childlike
slave probably disserved it.
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Some publishing companies still cling to this interpretation
 Now in the 1970s and 1980s historians from a field
studying “social history” or history of common people
began to focus not only on slavery as an institution but
also began focusing on the Middle Passage, which was
the journey of enslaved people from Africa to the
Americas.
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Before social history historical writing focused greatly on wars and
rulers but knew little about the daily life of people
The Atlantic as a Space
 The Atlantic world in the context of the
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slave trade was both a vast body of
water, and everything the ocean came
into contact with: the colonies in North
America, the Caribbean, Europe, and
Africa.
The Atlantic as a space is home to
multiple histories, which often conflict
with and complicate one another.
The boundaries of what constitutes this
space continuously shift as change
occurs. The Atlantic World is an idea
that is a modern fabrication because it
is both a place and idea.
The Atlantic is a space where based
upon your gender, class, and race you
could see it as a dramatically different
world. It is literally and figuratively a
fluid place.
The Atlantic homed both freedom and
terror
The Black Atlantic
 There was an attempt to move to a transnational approach when
thinking of slavery in 1980s with what historians call “The Black
Atlantic”
 This concept is about African Diaspora and how the crucible of
slavery also equates to birthplace of modern development, ideas
and institutions.
 In other words, African Slavery created modernity
 This transnational approach of the Black Atlantic is an important
frame. Historians began writing about how enslaved people would
essentially lose their nationality and individuality on the Atlantic.
 So historians in the 1980s extrapolated the raw experiences of Africans
who were ripped from their homes and transported across the Atlantic.
And in a variety of ways social history is the most important kind of
historical study that has developed because it allowed scholars to expand
on the history of people.
“A Negro Hanged Alive By the Ribs to a Gallows,”
By: John Gabriel Stedman (1796)
 This engraving was done by a
famous British poet and artist
named William Blake Stedman
depicting an execution of a man in
Suriname in 1776, later published
in 1796.
 The reason why I want to show you
this image is that I believe that it
depicts everything you need to
know about the Atlantic World. It
sums up both the terror rendered
against enslaved people in the
Atlantic world and the resistance
that they had against that terror.
 Do you see it in his eyes? Do you
see the defiance?
 This history is not over. We live
with the remnants of American
slavery whether we want to admit
it or not. This history haunts us.
The Haunting and Ghosts of the Transatlantic
Slave Trade
 Well this lecture is about the haunting of the Atlantic
Slave Trade. It’s about the trade of human beings, which
we now know with exceptional precession involved
between twelve to fifteen million people from Africa
being loaded onto these sinister vessels, and some ten to
twelve million people who were delivered alive on the
American side.
 The couple of million people who are missing from that
second figure are those who died on the slave ships and
were tossed into the oceans, only to be eaten by sharks
that followed the ships across the Atlantic.
The Magnitude of the Middle Passage
 http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american
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_slavery/2015/06/animated_interactive_of_the_history_of_
the_atlantic_slave_trade.html
The Atlantic slave trade lasted more than 3 centuries and
transported millions of Africans 3,000 miles across the
Atlantic to the Americas.
This constituted the largest forced migration in history.
By the 18th century this voyage across the Atlantic was called
“The Middle Passage.”
Slavery and slave trading had existed in nearly all cultures for
thousands of years. But the experience of Atlantic slavery,
which would become American slavery, was distinctly
different than anything that had existed before.
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Race had never before been a major factor in slave trading
The Portuguese and Slave Trading
 When the Portuguese arrived on the Guinea Coast the
wanted to trade for gold, ivory, pepper, and slaves.
 The Portuguese received official permission to trade for
slaves in 1472 from the King of Benin. But the rulers of
Benin, Dahomey, and other African kingdoms restricted
Europeans to a few points on the African coast.
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The African kingdoms raided the African interior, spurred on by
interethnic rivalries, to supply Europeans with slaves.
At first the Atlantic trade was small, but Columbus’ voyages
drastically changed the Atlantic slave trade. Gold and silver mines, as
well as sugar plantations in the Americas produced huge labor
demands.
Labor Demands in the Americas
 Sugar plantations spread from Portuguese-ruled Brazil
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through the Caribbean islands.
Later coffee cultivation began in Brazil.
Along with tobacco, rice, and indigo in British NorthAmerica
A harsher form of slavery appeared in the Americas;
slavery in the Americas was based on race, as only
Africans and American Indians were enslaved.
Enslaved people became the personal property of their
masters in the Americas and lost legal rights.
The Spanish joined the trade in 1510, and by 1550 the
Dutch, French, and English were involved.
The Role of the British
 When tobacco became a cash crop in Virginia and Maryland in the 1620s, and as
sugar boomed in places like Saint Domingue (Haiti), the British and French fought
the Dutch for control of the Atlantic slave trade.
 After a series of wars the British drove the Dutch out of the trade and emerged as
the dominant European power in the Atlantic trade by 1674.
 In the 18th century, the British were the major players, the biggest players in the
Atlantic slave trade. They transported 3,000 ship captains, 30,000 officers, a few
hundred thousand sailors, and 3-3.5 million enslaved Africans.
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After 1713 the British transported 20,000 slaves per year from Africa to the Americas, and by
the 1790s they transported 50,000 per year.
 What we know about each group is precisely inversed to their numbers. We know
the most about the captains, a little less about the officer, a lot less about the
sailors, and we know the least, vastly less about the slaves. Let me give you an
example. There’s an excellent book by Robin Law about a major slaving ports in
West Africa—Ouidah in Benin.
 About a million souls passed through Ouidah. You know how many personal
accounts exist from slaves who passed through Ouidah there are? 2.
 And this is true for each slave port. So this of course is the great challenge for
studying the subject. How do we recover the history of people who did not leave
documents of their own?
The March to the Coast
 As warfare spread to the African interior African armies
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enslaved inhabitants of conquered towns and villages.
Captives forcibly marched for hundreds of miles to the African
coast where European slave traders awaited them.
Once captives reached the coast they were kept in factories:
headquarters for European companies that traded for slaves
on the West African coast.
Families and ethnic groups were separated from each other to
prevent rebellion.
Captives were stripped naked so that traders could inspect
them for disease and physical defects. Those deemed fit for
sale were branded with hot irons to show the symbol of the
trading company.
People could be kept in factories for weeks and months.
Engraving of the March to the Coast
Boarding the Ship
 Sailors rowed captives in canoes to large slave ships
waiting offshore.
 The Middle Passage could last between 2 and 3
months. However, some ships took as long as 6
months to complete the voyage.
 1/3 of captives died in the process of marching to the
coast and boarding the slave ship.
The Slave Ship
 I want to discuss the slave ship as a place where
important historical processes took place.
 It was a place where social and cultural processes
occurred
 The ship was a prison; it was a war ship; it was a
factory; it was a site that transformed people into
commodities, and where the labor was manufactured
that literally fueled the world economy in the 17th,
18th, and 19th centuries.
 The slave ship also served as a site where categories
of race were produced.
The Slave Ship known as The Brookes (1788)
 A ships tonnage determined
how many slaves it could
carry: 2 slaves per ton of ship.
 But captains usually ignored
the formula.
 Most captains overpacked
their ships hoping that large
numbers would offset the cost
of deaths during the journey.
 Cargo space was generally 5
feet high so human cargo was
packed so that people only
had about 20-25 inches of
headroom; males were
chained together to prevent
rebellion.
 For a video recreation of sailing
in a slave ship click here
The Terror of the Ship’s Hold
 Enslaved people could defecate in tubs placed on the cargo floor, if
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they could reach it. (Usually only 3-4 tubs were provided to be
shared by all human cargo).
However, given the spatial restrictions it was nearly impossible to
reach the tubs. Many defecated where they lay.
During storms the crew often neglected to empty the tubs used for
excrement, tend to the sick, provide food, or remove the dead.
Enslaved women were often victims of sexual assault on board slave
ships because sailors knew that African women brought in less
money than African men at auction.
Mortality rates were incredibly high because of the over-crowding
and unsanitary conditions, which led to epidemics.
1/3 of enslaved peoples died during the Middle Passage, or during
“seasoning” in the Caribbean.
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Seasoning: The process by which newly arrived Africans were broken in to
slavery in the Americas
The Slave Ship, JMW Turner (1840)
Arrival in the Americas
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Landing in the Americas ended the
Middle Passage.
Ship captains required enslaved people
to oil their bodies to conceal rashes,
bruises, and any other signs of cruelty,
confinement, and disease.
Ship Surgeons used hemp to block the
bodily discharge caused by dysentery.
Auctions took place on the ship deck or
sale yards onshore.
At auction enslaved people were subject
to close physical inspection of their
bodies including their teeth and
genitalia.
People who did not think of themselves
as Africans but as Ebo, or Fontu, or
Mandingo, at the end of this voyage
would all become “Negro” slaves
W.E.B. DuBois
“The most magnificent drama in the
last thousand years of human
history [was] the transportation of
ten million human beings out of the
dark beauty of their mother
continent into the new found
Eldorado of the West. They
descended into Hell.”
The Story of the Slave Ship Polly
 What we know of this story comes from a primary source
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recently found by historian Marcus Rediker: “John
Cranston’s Testimony to the Grand Jury, June 15, 1791”
It begins in Newport Rhode Island saying, “Information
against James D’Wolf, master of the Bark Polly
concerning a Negro woman said to have been thrown
overboard the said vessel while living.”
John Cranston was a sailor on Polly.
James D’Wolf was a member of early America’s most
prestigious slave trading family. He was the most
powerful slave-trading merchant in the entirety of
America during the latter half of the 1700s.
The document takes the form of an interview between
the foreman of the Grand Jury and Cranston.
Polly Continued
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The opening statement says they sailed from the
coast of Ghana, on the coast of West Africa. Then
they sailed across the Atlantic to Havana Cuba.
Question: “Did anything uncommon take place
onboard the vessel during her passage to the
West Indies?”
Answer: “Yes, there was something that
happened, more than uncommon.”
Question: “What happened?”
Answer: “A slave was taken sick which we took to
be the small pox. The captain ordered her to be
put in the maintop, for fear she should give it to
the others.” The night after at four o’clock,
captain Wolf call us all aft and says he (D’Wolf
talking)“If we keep the slave here she will give it
to the rest, and I shall lose the biggest part of my
slaves.” Then he asked if we were willing to
heave her overboard. We made answer “No, we
were not willing to do any such thing.” Up on
that he run up the stroud saying, “She must go
overboard and she shall go overboard.” And he
ordered one person, a boy, to go up with him. He
lashed her up there, into a chair, and tied a mask
around her eyes and mouth, and there was a
tackle hooked around the chair and she was
lowered down on the larbored side of the ship.
And then we went to the forward part of the
vessel.”
(The Captain is pictured on the right).
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Example of a Maintop
The Rest of the Questioning
Q: Was the slave male or female?
A: Yes, she was a woman slave.
Q: Was she young or old?
A: About middle aged.
Q: Had she had any vitals when she was on the maintop?
A: Yes
Q: Was she alive when she was let down?
A: Yes.
Q: Did you hear her speak or make noises? Or did you see her struggle.
A: A mask was tied around her eyes and mouth so that she could not make
any noise so that the other slaves might not hear, least they should rise.
 Final Question: Do you recollect to hear anything the captain said when the
scene was ended
 A: The captain said that he was sorry he lost so good a chair.
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The Significance of Polly
 This was a secret execution. D’Wolf was sure that if the slaves knew
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what was happening they would rise up and do anything they could
to protect the life of this woman.
And D’Wolf sailed without a ship surgeon to tend for the sick
The Grand Jury indicted Captain James D’Wolf for murder.
This was unprecedented. But Captain D’Wolf, knowing this was
coming, took off from Newport during the jury deliberation and
waited for things to die down. He then bribed a couple of sailors on
the vessel in a West Indian to give testimony that the murder did
indeed happened but that it was necessary.
Low and behold because the D’Wolf family was the most powerful
family in the area, charges were never brought against the Captain
D’Wolf. Believe it or not Bristol Rhode Island, population 1400, the
sheriff could never find James D’Wolf. And of course this is a
powerful family behind the scenes.
Significance Continued
 John Cranston disappeared into the waterfront. Not much is
known about him.
 The enslaved woman’s name is forever lost. She died
struggling in that chair that Captain D’Wolf love so much, and
the slaves were delivered and carried on the tradition of fierce
resistance in Havana Cuba in 1791.
 Captain D’Wolf went on to become the richest man in Rhode
Island, the richest man in New England, and most likely in the
New Nation. He built a family estate known as Mount Hope.
 D’Wolf became a United States Senator. So I want you to
think about that- the hand that gagged that enslaved woman’s
face was the hand that went on to craft legislation in the US
Senate.
Seasoning
 Seasoning immediately followed the sale of Africans newly arrived from the
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Middle Passage and marked a period that could take up to 2 years.
Seasoning involved breaking enslaved peoples into plantation routines.
On Caribbean Islands planters divided enslaved people into three
categories:
Creoles: Enslaved people born in the Americas
Old Africans: Those who had lived in the Americas for some time
New Africans: Those who had just arrived after the Middle Passage
Seasoning made New Africans more like Creoles. Creole slaves were 3 times
the price of unseasoned newly arrived Africans.
In the West Indies this process also prepared enslaved people for resale to
North American planters who preferred “seasoned” slaves over “unbroken”
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