Smallwood's Middle Passage

Chapter 4, Transatlantic Moment, of Reversing Sail by Michael Gomez was extremely intriguing. As the saying goes numbers never lie. The statistical aspect provided by Gomez of the transatlantic movement was effective in altering my perception of the transatlantic movement as a whole. As the text states the scholarly consensus is that approximately 11.9 million Africans were exported from Africa. Only 9.6 to 10.8 millions arrived alive to America, meaning 10 to 20 percent was loss during the Middle Passage. These numbers show how extensive and outrageous the transatlantic movement was. These numbers represent people with established lives, who were kidnapped and put into forced labor. As Gomez stated serval times and how I now view, the transatlantic

“The Horrors of a Slave Ship,” describes in detail, the tragic experiences of Olaudah Equiano as a captive slave. Equiano suffered many sleepless nights; he was flogged and kidnapped multiple times. In the article, the author is trying to give the reader the feeling by giving details of the brutally floggings and desperation as many slaves suffocated to death as they were placed in an overcrowded deck. Overall, the author tries to give readers their point across of the difficulties in being a captive slave.

Walter Johnson examines the fluid nature of the domestic slave trade and its role in shaping a culture of slavery. Central to this culture was the fundamental reality that the slave person was a commodity to be bought and sold as the market demanded. Describe the effects of the practice of slave trading on the actors involved. How did the domestic slave trade help create the identities of slave, the slaveholder and the slave trader? How did the activities of the slave pen help “make” race (both white and black) in the antebellum period?

One implication as a result of the biggest known migration of human beings in history is that there is little documentation of individuals from the African Slave Trade. As such a familiar occurrence in history, there is little to be known about the individual experiences of captives during this horrific time. Randy Sparks, author of The Two Princes of Calabar, ends the silence as he provides the reader with a glimpse into an eighteenth century odyssey, and first hand account to the trading communities along the coast of West Africa. This trade not only transported people, but the exchange of ideas is also present across and around the Atlantic. The novel tells the story of two young men from Nigeria who are from an elite slave trading family. These men were captured by Europeans and sold into slavery until they were ultimately released back to their homeland. The Two Princes of Calabar offers insight into the complexities that existed in the transracial Atlantic world of the eighteenth century through the themes of privilege, gender bias, and the mistreatment of the enslaved.

The human manufacturing process defined by Mustakeem encompasses the warehousing, transport, and delivery of African bodies. Mustakeem establishes a grim and soul snatching tone as the process is deconstructed throughout the first chapter of “Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage”. Trekking the Middle Passage was not simple feat for the actors of the sick movement of people, and it was disgustingly worse for women, children, and the elder Africans. This process was one piece of the evolution of the New World economy emphasized by Mustakeem. “It is not enough to say that Africans were captured, transformed into commodities, shipped out of Africa, sold to interested buyers, and turned into slaves once moved into plantations,” page 7.

After about nine chapters detailing his slave life, he says, “You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.” (Douglass, 75) He then goes on to describe the turning point for him that sparked his quest for freedom. By structuring his narrative this way, he reveals both sides- how slavery broke him “in body, soul, and spirit” (Douglass, 73) and how it eventually “rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom” within him (Douglass, 80). In doing so, he gives the reader an insight into how he became himself, and reinforces the evils of slavery in the way it shapes a man’s life. Douglass’ use of diction and structure effectively persuades the reader of the barbarity and inhumanity that comes as a result of slavery.

One of the most interesting arguments that modern apologists makes for the practice of race-based slavery in the Americas is the fact that slavery existed in Africa during that time period and that Africans were complicit in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. What is fascinating about Olaudah Equiano's discussion of the Middle Passage is that, as a man who had been enslaved in Africa prior to being shipped as a slave to the Americas, he was in a unique position to describe slavery in Africa with his introduction to European-influenced slavery in North America. His perception was that the immense brutality of the Middle Passage foreshadowed the dehumanization of slaves in the Americas, which was more inhumane than the treatment he had received as a slave while in Africa. Furthermore, he did not suggest that this brutality was linked to the race of the traders, though that seemed to have been his initial impression, but to the nature of the Trans-Atlantic trade. Therefore, Equiano's writings suggest that shipping Africans across the ocean for slavery was part of the dehumanizing process that helped fuel the practice of slavery in America.

“The Slave Ship: A Human History” written by Marcus Rediker describes the horrifying experiences of Africans, and captains, and ship crewmen on their journey through the Middle Passage, the water way in the Atlantic Ocean between Africa and the Americas. The use of slaves to cultivate crops in the Caribbean and America offered a great economy for the European countries by providing “free” labor and provided immense wealth for the Europeans. Rediker describes the slave migration by saying, “There exists no account of the mechanism for history’s greatest forced migration, which was in many ways the key to an entire phase of globalization” (10). African enslavement to the Americas is the most prominent reason for a complete shift in the

This ship, that was built by a famous ship carpenter named William Foster, was the last documented ship to import African slaves to the United States. The “social life” of the ship Clotilda began in 1855 in Mobile, a southern city described by the author as the “slave-trading emporium of Alabama”, where her rigging was announced by a local newspaper. Dreams of Africa in Alabama is an analysis of the slave ship as a community and society bound by water with an emphasis on the lives of the slaves, and it also studies the Clotilda as a cultural commodity. She did not only consider the story of the ship, but also the lives of the slaves during and after the ship made it to America. This book uses documents and photographs from the ship and the people aboard it that have never been published before in order to recreate the lives of the slaves. Diouf gathered the personal and detailed testimonies of the slavers, and those of the deported Africans to provide hard proof for her story. She writes and teaches about the Middle Passage and reality of life in the southern United States as a slave through the period of the Civil War and emancipation. Diouf not only shows how the African captives survived slavery, the civil war, and reconstruction in Alabama, but also how they fought to preserve African

The novel, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora written by Stephanie E. Smallwood, brings up the factual historic experience of Africans who were brought across the Atlantic to become commodities. In the text, it provides stories and detailed history of the slaves that went through this traumatic experience of being crowded and forced onto a ship with no idea where they are being taken. This historical novel is set apart from many historical books, because of the style Smallwood uses. Smallwood used primary resources that will let us have a very intimate view such as letters, journals, and narratives; she also uses record accounts for accuracy in numbers.

Migration to the Americas were recalled through the narratives and essays of voyagers and slaves themselves. Thomas Philip, a European explorer, and Job, a wrongfully captured slave, discussed their particular but somehow similar perspectives and experiences on their migration to the Americas. In addition to their stories, Allison Games provided insight on the understanding of slavery and how they attempted to preserve their culture in the Americas while forced into slavery. Through the essays of Philip, Job and Games, the reader can understand that African migration was a wearisome experience, in which the slaves endured little control of their lives, lived in diseased environments, followed gender and age structures for labor, and adapted to new cultures and languages in order to survive not only on their trip to the Americas- but for their future there.

The slave journey, after the breaking of the kinship, begins with the forced collection and shipment of the enslaved human towards the new world. On this voyage a transformation of the self takes place, a loss of hope; desperation. A slave’s mind would wonder and think if it was better to just jump off and let the sharks take their lives rather than give their life to the white man. The ‘Tall Ship’, the name of a vessel with a large mast, was the primary ship that carried hundreds of the slaves across the torturous and sickening journey (Ruddy 26 Jan. 2017). This ship not only brought goods like spices, but it also transported the slave to their new life, a life without their family or themselves. Aboard these ships is where the transformation

At the turn of the 18th century, divergent ideologies of patriarchal control formed within the confines of multipurpose commercial ships on the Atlantic and Pacific peripheries of Latin America and the Caribbean. In particular, Herman Melville and Greg Grandin narrate and analyze the case of the Spanish slave ship the San Dominick to illustrate the philosophical and political limits of liberty and the racial and gendered contingencies of freedom as national and ideological alliances in the region shifted to reflect unrest in North America and Europe at the time. As an American ship captain, protagonist Amasa Delano felt the need to maintain the systematic condescension of black slaves nurtured in the slaveholding society of colonial New England.

The Slave Ship was written by Marcus Rediker and it expresses several accounts of the Atlantic slave trade in addition to the world of the middle passage. The author discusses the nature of the slave ship and the African paths to the middle passage. Rediker also mentions the lives of historical figures (Olaudah Equiano, James Field Stanfield, and John Newton) and the roles that they had during the Atlantic slave trade. For the African captives, the sailors, and captains, the slave ship was seen as a wooden, floating, traveling dungeon and a place of terror, survival, and profit, which are the overall main themes of the book. The author’s thesis and primary purpose was to reconstruct the horrors and tragedy of the Atlantic slave trade along with the influence it had on the individuals that were ultimately affected by it.

The Book The Slave Ship, A Human History who was written by the professor Marcus Rediker, from the University of Pittsburgh who teaches History, happens to rewrite the Slave trafficking of the “Wooden world” inhabited by the kidnapping of Africans, sea captains, and their roughhewn crews. Rediker’s study was based on his original documents, performed substantial research, and obscure books on the detailing with the slave ships. In “The Slave Ship: A Human History,” he does an excellent job in detailing the horrible images at a time o period as well as with leaving readers with several thought-provoking questions. With devoting passion and power, Marcus Rediker gives to the audience The Slave Ship drama, not just the relationship between the main captain and his crew, but also the interactions between sailors and slaves, the conflicts in the ship and collaborations among the captives themselves, and the struggle between slave-trafficking merchants and abolitionists. Throughout his writing, he explains and explores the legacies of race, class, and slavery through ghost ships sailing on the edges of modern consciousness.