The course of Native African’s history has been marked by deadly wars, spreads of mortal diseases, massive droughts, food and water scarcities, but there is one tragedy that rises above all of them: slavery (involuntary human servitude). During the 15th to the 19th century massive slave trades took place across the Atlantic Ocean, from Africa to the Caribbean, North and South America. This has been the most concerning fatality that has ever occurred to Native Africans. Not only was their culture taken away, but their lives as well. The trades had no limits, slaves were from small boys and girls to elder men and women. Families and loved ones were separated and torn off with no mercy. They received a cruel treatment while being transported …show more content…
A clear example of this is Olaudah Equiano, whose narrative has been published and is now well-known by many. His biography made a great impact in society and contributed to the banning of slave trade. Olaudah Equiano was only eleven years old when he and his sister were kidnapped from their home and sold to slave traders. Before being shipped to an unknown destination, they were held up in forts or most commonly know as “Slave Castles”. Afterwards, the circumstances in which they were transported were atrocious and nefarious. They were transported in small voyages and for six to ten weeks hundreds of Africans were crammed below deck in spaces sometimes less than five feet high, shackled. Families were completely separated, men from women, placed in different holds. They were not fed for days and could hardly breathe below deck since there were many at once. Slaves were introduced to unknown diseases and suffered from malnutrition long before they reached their destination. Many of the Africans preferred death over slavery. As Olaudah Equiano mentions, some men that were traveling with him jumped to the ocean to reach death, but did not succeed. The death of the Africans meant economic loss for the traders, so maintaining them alive before selling them, was a rough
In Africa, men, women, and children were being kidnapped and sold. Once abducted from their home, Europeans would make their way back to the port to transport the slaves to the New World. Most of the time salves never knew where they would end up. Before Africans would be transported, each slave would be branded on the chest and this was a way to claim a slave for when they tried to escape (Hylton). Once boarded on a ship
He selected three less valuable slaves, killed one, and forced the others to eat his heart. Many of the ships were followed by, what Marcus called them, “greedy robbers.” Human waste and bodies were thrown off often enough to constantly have sharks following the ship, greedily waiting for the next over
The Atlantic slave trade was a huge business which had a significant impact in modern world history. For four centuries, its geographical scope encompassed four continents. Over the span of time its impact affected millions of people, and its consequences are still evident in some ways today. One such victim was Olaudah Equiano, who was from in or around what is now Nigeria. At the age of eleven he was kidnapped along with his sister and was sold in the Atlantic slave trade.
One day after the crew had satisfied themselves, they the extra fish over the side of the boat and back into the ocean. The slaves begged and begged and prayed for the crew to give them some of the fish (page 173). Some of the slaves got so hungry they tried to steal some the food, they always got caught. Not only did these slaves die of starvation or dehydration, but so did many other slaves in the world (Horton).
Frederick Douglass and Olaudah Equiano are both great writers who sat down and wrote about their lives as slaves, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The narratives of Olaudah Equiano and Frederick Douglass are presently well known and read throughout the world. Frederick Douglass and Olaudah Equiano are not just writers who gained recognition for a fictional story that they made up, but they gained recognition for a real-life story that could be used to teach individuals a valuable lesson in life. These two great writers have contributed to more than just a narrative about themselves, but a text for society to learn from and gain knowledge. Even though these two individuals are quite unique, their writing styles are
This chapter addresses the central argument that African history and the lives of Africans are often dismissed. For example, the author underlines that approximately 50,000 African captives were taken to the Dutch Caribbean while 1,600,000 were sent to the French Caribbean. In addition, Painter provides excerpts from the memoirs of ex-slaves, Equiano and Ayuba in which they recount their personal experience as slaves. This is important because the author carefully presents the topic of slaves as not just numbers, but as individual people. In contrast, in my high school’s world history class, I can profoundly recall reading an excerpt from a European man in the early colonialism period which described his experience when he first encountered the African people.
The ship went across the Atlantic to the West Indies and it lasted about three to four months to get there. The Africans were basically being sold to white people for slaves. They didn’t get to take showers or get up to move their muscles or they didn’t
The captain and crew members didn’t pay much consideration to the Africans, in fact, they were chained together and crammed below decks in order to fill ships to their maximum
The need for survival was essential for both the crew of the slave ship and the African captives. When African captives were loaded on board a slave ship, a form of a cold war would reign on the ship until they sold all the captives as slaves at their destination in the New World. The crew aboard the slave ship would become increasingly paranoid since they did not know if a slave uprising would break out or not. All members of a slave ship crew (including cooks, carpenters, and doctors) would become jail keepers. The only way the crew of a slave ship could survive the middle passage is to prevent the outbreak of a slave rebellion.
It was the most horrendous thing I had ever heard. “This ship, though a much smaller ship…. took on board at least six hundred Negroes . . . By purchasing so great a number, the slaves were so crowded that they were obliged to lie one upon another. This caused such a mortality among them that without meeting with unusually bad weather or having a longer voyage than common, nearly one half of them died before the ship arrived” (Alexander Falconbridge's Account of The Slave Trade, Module 5).
The number of Africans enslaved and traded varies from source to source, but a good estimate of slaves taken across the Atlantic was around sixty million. Of this number, only 16% survived (Donaldson). Although there were many African’s on the journey, there were many different artifacts from different African cultures. Some of the artifacts came from Nigeria, Sengal, Congo, Liberia, and Angolia (On the Water). This suggests that there were likely people from many African countries (Smithsonian).
Early modern slavery is typically defined as the forced labor of millions of Africans between the 16th and 19th centuries. It was filled with brutality, sickness, and inhumanity perpetrated by white, colonialist Europeans who were searching for wealth in a foreign land through cash crops and servitude. However, there was a different kind of slavery perpetrated in the African continent: servitude where “they were only prisoners of war, or…had been convicted of kidnapping or adultery” (Equiano, 30). Olaudah Equiano’s narrative, published in 1789, reveals a story of slavery perpetrated by his own people. This revelation brings to the light the difference in societal standing and ultimate economic worth of the individuals.
Some people tried to starve, but the crew forced them to take food, beating them, tormenting them with hot coal or forcing them to open their mouths with special tools or break their teeth. The mortality caused by various diseases was very high. More than 20 percent have died from various epidemics or committed suicide. Venture Smith, describing his test, wrote: "After the usual passage, except for the great death from pox that erupted on board, we arrived on the island of Barbados, but when we reached it, out of two hundred and sixty that sailed from Africa, not more than two hundred alive.
Ira Berlin’s Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America is a history of African-American slavery in mainland North America during the first two centuries of European and African settlement.” (1) The first slaves arrived in the New World in 1619 and over the next two hundred years the Atlantic developed from a society with slaves to a slave society. In Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America, Berlin argues that both slavery and its culture evolved over time and place to fit the needs of the surroundings.
Slavery, is the condition in which a human being is owned and controlled by another. This institution has deep roots in human history. It was practiced in most of the world, from prehistoric times to the modern era. Despite this commonality, slave systems have varied considerably. Societies have experienced different degrees of it, with different practices and different outlooks, even though the basic characteristic was the same.