The Transatlantic Slave Trade: Crash Course Black American History #1

Hi, I'm Clint Smith, and this is a

crash

course

in African American

history

, and today we're learning about the

transatlantic

slave

trade

, which spanned almost four hundred years from the late 15th century to the late 19th century.  The majority of en

slave

d Africans were taken from six main regions: Senegambia, Sierra Leone and the Windward Coast, the Gold Coast, the Bay of Benin, the Bay of Biafra and West Central Africa, also known as Kongo and Angola. In his 1935 book Black Reconstruction in America, scholar and civil rights leader W.E.B. Du Bois described the Atlantic slave

trade

as "the most magnificent drama of the last thousand years of human

history

."  And he didn't mean “magnificent” in a good way.

INTRODUCTION I want to point out from above that this episode will address some challenging topics, including sexual violence and images of extreme violence. We believe, however, that it is important to discuss these ideas thoroughly, so that we can fully grapple with the reality of American history. An estimated 12.4 million people were loaded onto slave ships and transported through what became known as the Middle Passage, which crossed the Atlantic and included many different destinations.  It was called the Middle Passage because it was the second of three parts of what became known as the triangular trade. The first leg of the voyage transported cargoes such as textiles, iron, alcohol, firearms and gunpowder from Europe to the west coast of Africa.  When the ships reached the coast of West Africa, the cargo was exchanged for people.   From there, ships loaded with humans headed to America, where enslaved Africans were sold and exchanged for goods such as sugar and tobacco, before the ships returned to Europe.

It is estimated that, over the

course

of the Middle Passage, 2 million African captives died, their bodies often thrown overboard.  What some people may not know about the slave trade is that the vast majority of people did not actually go to the United States, not at all. In fact, only about 5% of captured Africans were taken directly to what would eventually become the United States. The largest proportion, around 41%, went to Brazil, while millions of others were dispersed to islands in the Caribbean and South America. When examining slavery in the United States, from its earliest moments, when people were taken from their homes, to the end of the Civil War, it is important to highlight the narratives and stories of the enslaved people themselves, as they can provide us with insight. about this horrible institution, as few other documents can.

For example, Olaudah Equiano, an African captured as a child, wrote in his 1789 autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, about the experience of being captured and taken to the edge of the ocean and boarded on the ship: I was immediately handled and thrown up to see if he was healthy by the crew; and now I was persuaded that I had entered a world of evil spirits, and that they were going to kill me.  Their complexion so different from ours, their long hair and the language they spoke (which was very different from any I had ever heard) all came together to confirm me in this belief...

When I also looked around the ship and saw a large furnace or boiling copper, and a multitude of

black

s of all kinds chained together, each of their faces expressing despondency and sadness, I no longer doubted my fate;   and, completely overcome with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted. The captured Africans did not really understand what awaited them. Enslaved Africans did not return to Africa from America to warn people about what had happened.   The only thing people knew was what they saw in front of them. A big ship. An endless ocean.   And for many of these Africans, people who spoke a language they had never heard, with a skin color some of them had never seen.

It is also important to note that the story is not as simple as Africans being hunted and captured by Europeans and forced onto ships against their will. The Africans who were taken and placed aboard these ships were typically prisoners of war from other African tribes, criminals, and poor members of society who were often traded to pay off debts. That is, many captured Africans were sold to Europeans by other Africans in exchange for a variety of different products. Now this fact can sometimes be used in bad faith to hide the horror of what the Europeans did.   And while it is important not to ignore the fact that there were Africans trading with other Africans into slavery, we must remember that being a prisoner of war or a poor member of a society traded for goods is not the same as being held in a prison. intergenerational. , hereditary slavery which meant that their children and their children and their children would all be born into slavery.

This is something unique in the experience of slavery in the Americas. As scholar Orlando Patterson has written: “Slavery is the permanent, violent, and personal domination of natally alienated and generally dishonored people.”  You've probably heard about how horrible conditions were on slave ships, but it's worth stating explicitly. The conditions on these ships were horrible.   Hundreds of people were crowded together, chained and unable to move.  The captured Africans were forced to relieve themselves in the same places where they slept, sat and ate. As a result, the stench coming from the bottom of the ship, where there was little ventilation, was unbearable.

The disease was rampant. From yellow fever to malaria, from smallpox to dysentery, it is difficult to grasp how abhorrent these conditions were.  To imagine this, it is useful to listen to Equiano again: “I was soon taken below deck, and there I received under my nose such a greeting as I had never experienced in my life: so, with the disgust of the stench, and crying together, I I felt so sick and depressed that I couldn't eat... The proximity of the place, and the heat of the climate, increased the number of people on the boat, being so crowded that each one barely had room to turn around, it almost suffocated us.  This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unsuitable for breathing, owing to a variety of foul odours, and caused disease among the slaves, from which many died.

Violence against captured Africans was a devastating but omnipresent phenomenon as these ships crossed the Atlantic. In an effort to keep the people submissive over the course of weeks-long voyages, enslaved Africans were tortured in a variety of cruel and unimaginable ways. Sexual violence was also a common element.   It was not uncommon for sailors to rape enslaved women while on board.  But the slaves did not passively accept the conditions imposed on them, and they resisted in many ways. Some of these forms were individual and others collective. They were all attempts to regain some sense of agency and control in inconceivable circumstances.

Sometimes they were as explicit as organizing riots aimed at overthrowing the crew. And sometimes they included individual acts of resistance, such as refusing to eat or jumping overboard. Now, the idea of ​​trying to take one's own life may seem to some to be a strange form of resistance. But what you have to consider is that these captured Africans represented money, like real money, to those who kept them chained on these ships. So someone attempting to take their own life represented the ability to determine the outcomes of their life for themselves, rather than having it imposed on them by someone else.

It also allowed them to undermine the economic incentives that supported the entire institution.  Furthermore, in the case of jumping overboard, some of the spiritual beliefs of the captured Africans gave them the feeling that if they managed to reach the water, the ocean would take their bodies home. Sometimes as a result, enslavers on the ship would place nets on the side of the ship to prevent people from jumping into the sea. One of the most egregious responses to slave resistance during the Middle Passage came in the form of the speculum orum, which was a screw-like device that forced someone's mouth open and allowed the resistant African to be force-fed.

Against his will. It was not uncommon for this device to break someone's teeth, displace their jaw, or shatter their mouth. If that didn't work, other interventions included placing hot coals on a person's lips until they opened their mouth, or wing screws, a device in which the victim's fingers or toes were placed in a screw. bench and slowly crushed until he obeyed.  Given all of this, we must be clear that the decision made by millions of people to stay alive in the face of unimaginable violence and uncertainty was also an act of resistance.  Historian Marcus Rediker identifies the period from 1700 to 1808 as the most destructive time of the

transatlantic

slave trade.

Approximately two-thirds of all enslaved Africans were trafficked out of Africa and brought to the Americas during this period.  What's more, the death toll from the transatlantic slave trade was staggering. According to historian Jill Lepore, of every hundred people taken from the interior of Africa, only sixty-four would survive the journey to the coast. Of those sixty-four, about forty-eight would survive the weeks-long journey across the Atlantic.  Of the forty-eight who got off the ship, only between twenty-eight and thirty would survive the first three or four years in the colony. Before continuing, a brief note on language: throughout this series we will try to be consistent in using the term enslaved instead of slave to refer to Africans and people of African descent who were held in slavery.

This distinction is important because saying enslaved person or enslaved worker or enslaved human being centers the personality of the individual and emphasizes that slavery is a condition that was involuntarily imposed on someone, rather than being a condition inherent to someone's existence. One of the central players in the slave trade was the Royal African Company of England: a charter company that maintained a monopoly on all English trade with Africa from its creation in 1672. The period from 1675 to 1725 represented the most active years of the Royal African Company. , but continued to play an active role in the early decades of the 18th century, an era known as "free trade." The irony of that term is not lost on me.  I think it's worth focusing on one state and its particular relationship to the slave trade to better understand how this developed.  According to the work of historian Ira Berlin, the state of South Carolina banned the African slave trade beginning in 1787.

However, in 1803, the state reopened the transatlantic slave trade. It remained open until 1808, when the federal ban on the Atlantic slave trade went into effect.   Between 1803 and 1808, more than 35,000 enslaved people were brought to South Carolina (more than twice as many as during any similar period in its history as a colony or state).  The Charleston coast was the entry point for approximately 40 percent of the enslaved Africans who were brought to North America through the Middle Passage.   This has led some to refer to it as the Ellis Island of African Americans, although one obvious difference is that one group came here of their own free will and the other did not.

The federal government ended the international slave trade in 1808. The British had done so in 1807. However, traders from both nations continued illegally trafficking captive Africans for many years afterward. And although the international slave trade was abolished in the United States, the internal slave trade would continue. In Britain, it took another quarter of a century before slavery was officially abolished in 1833, and in the United States it took almost another sixty years and our nation's deadliest war to end it. Spanish and Brazilian traders continued to trade in captive Africans for another half century.  Brazil, which, remember, had the largest proportion of slaves trafficked across the ocean, was the last country in the Western world to abolish slavery, and it did so in 1888.

The transatlantic slave trade was a cruel, violent and abhorrent process that lasted centuries. project that would shape the trajectory of the world, both white and

black

life, in ways we will soon come to better understand. We will continue to talk about some of these in our next episodes.   Thanks for watching, see you next time. Crash Course is created with the help of all these nice people and our animation team is Thought Cafe.  Crash Course is a complex production. If you want to keep Crash Course free for everyone, forever, you can support the series on Patreon;   a crowdfunding platform that allows you to support the content you loveloves.   Thank you to all of our sponsors for making Crash Course possible with your continued support.