Transatlantic Slave Trade

Patrick McKinley
12/11/2015
Colonial History
The Transatlantic Slave Trade

The Transatlantic Slave Trade was an institution that persisted throughout the Atlantic world for over one hundred years. This economic system was part of the complicated triangle trade that existed between Europe, the North American and Caribbean colonies, and Africa. It is a large black mark, perhaps the largest, on the colonial era. Many aspects of the colonial economy were directly or indirectly involved in the slave trade. The most obvious culprits are the plantation owners, slave sellers, salve ship captains and crew, and owners of the slave ships but there are also more indirect players involved in this dreadful institution. Insurers of slave ships and customs officers who allowed slaves to pass through their ports, some even when the slave trade was outlawed, were also complicit in allowing the slave trade to flourish. Some also blame consumers for buying goods produced by slave labor, but these accusations are no different than modern consumers buying goods produced by child labor and are less relevant to the conversation of slave trade involvement. Furthermore, one of the most overlooked aspects of the slave trade are the slave ships, these ships could be considered floating dungeons, and many could make a dungeon look luxurious compared to what many slaves endured during what is known as the middle passage. The Transatlantic Slave Trade permeated most aspects of the colonial economy and government, and the ships used to transport slaves from Africa to the colonies were home to despicable conditions that made the passage even more dangerous than slave labor itself.
The first aspect of the transatlantic slave trade is the slaves' origination point, Africa. From the beginning of the salve trade in the mid-fifteenth century until it's end in the mid 1800's over ten million Africans were forcibly removed from their homes in Africa and transported to the New World. This sobering statistic highlights just how much the slave trade has taken over nearly every aspect of the economy during colonial times. This section of this economic entity was what became known as the Triangle Trade. The Triangle Trade consisted of the transportation of goods and slaved between Africa, the colonies in North America, and Europe. Ships originating in Europe would travel laden with luxury goods to Africa, where they would trade the goods for slaves. The slaves would then be transported across the Atlantic in what became known as the Middle Passage, which was the most dangerous and harrowing time for the lives of enslaved Africans. Upon arriving in the colonies the slaves would be offloaded and sold to plantation owners and the slave ships would load up with goods from the colonies, and transport them back to Europe, completing the triangle. This system was much complex than described, and did not move in a strict triangle, but the general pattern that the system followed has become known as the Triangle Trade.
Despite what many may believe, Europeans did not go marauding across Africa capturing and enslaving Africans. Nearly all European slavers, with the exception of the Portuguese very early on in the slave trade, stayed on the African coast in the major port cities and bought slaves from there. The one Portuguese attempt to invade Africa failed when the ship was attacked by other tribes. After that, all slave business was done by European slavers buying slaves from African tribal leaders. Most slaves were taken captive in Western and Central Africa, and then forced to march to the coastal ports where they would be auctioned and sold to Europeans. This was the highest forced march in human history, and displaced millions of slaves that disrupted the population balance in Africa for centuries. The vast majority of slaves were originally warriors that were captured by rival African nations during wartime, unfortunately, once these leaders realized the profit in slaves war in Africa exploded, as greedy leaders would want to capture as many Africans as possible to sell to their European business partners. Other ways an African could be sold into slavery could simply be they were disliked by their leader, or had committed a serious crime such as adultery, theft, or murder. In addition to the rise of war due to the slave trade, African economies also collapsed. By nature of what slaves were being bought for, only able bodied Africans were sold into slavery, this left little to no labor force within Africa itself, reducing it to essentially an area that survived solely on the slave trade. It is important to not forget the human toll that was taken on these human beings who were being forcibly removed from their homes to enter a life of slavery.
The slave trade by nature did not consider the plight of consequences that this system had on the salves at all, and because of this, slaves suffered greatly. From the very start of a slaves journey they were treated like commodities rather than actual human beings, which served to degrade their psychological well-being. There was alarmingly high suicide rate among slaves who were captured, with most of these suicides taking pace during the Middle Passage as slaves would rather die than be forced into labor. The rapid rate of suicide among slaves was high enough that it had a moderate impact on the slave traders, so much so that they started to install netting on the sides of ships in order to catch slaves that may try and jump into the ocean to die. Men who were enslaved seemed to take the forced migration and enslavement harder than woman and children, who usually got over the depression of being captured and became resigned to their fate. As mentioned above, most of these suicides occurred during the Middle Passage, the time that slaves were imprisoned on ships and brought across the Atlantic Ocean. The Middle Passage was the most dangerous and harrowing part of a slave's life according to many accounts.
The Middle Passage was an utterly miserable period for a slave. The Journey across the Atlantic could take anywhere between six and eight weeks but that does not include the time the slaves ships spent moving up and down the African coast picking up more and more slaves. Some slaves that were the first on the ship could spend many months at a time imprisoned on a slave ship before even starting the journey across the Atlantic Ocean. Onboard the ships, slaves suffered constant abuse from the crew and many of them fell into poor health due to the squalor of the slave ships. Men and women were separated from each other on the ships, opening the women up to sexual abuse from the crew and making it easier to watch over the men who may try to rebel against the crew.Attempted rebellions by slaves aboard the ships were not uncommon, but they almost always ended in failure. Hundreds of slaves were killed during these attempted rebellions, with one rebellion on the ship Middleburgs Welvaren in 1740, resulting in the death of 213 of the 260 slaves on board the ship.
While large death tolls like the Welvaren was uncommon, death in general aboard slave ships was distressingly commonplace. It is estimated that one in five slaves died during the Middle Passage, a much higher percentage than slaves that were still in Africa or slaves after they arrived in the colonies. Many of these deaths were the result of disease that ran rampant throughout the slave ships due to the poor conditions and nutrition. Unruly slaves were flogged repeatedly throughout the journey, and any salve that tried to defy the ship's crew by refusing to eat was restrained and force fed using a device that was also used in the torture of prisoners during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In both a sickening way to keep slaves fir for work, and to exert even more control then they already had, the slave ship crew would force slaves above deck to dance and exercise while being flogged and poked at by the crew. In addition to instilling fear and control over slaves through abuses of living slaves, the crew of slave ships also ruled the slaves through fear by their treatment of slaves that died during the voyage. Slaves that were able to commit suicide, and did so not by jumping overboard but through some other means, would have their dead bodies mutilated in front of the other slaves as a way of saying that suicide was not the choice to make and slaves should just endure. Bodies were then tossed overboard with no ceremony whatsoever, where they were usually consumed by sharks. The Middle Passage was an especially brutal section of the grueling injustice that was the transatlantic slave trade, and a major reason for this was the conditioned and treatment among the salve ships, which have been likened to floating dungeons.
Most slave ships were not built for the specific purpose of carrying slaves from Africa across the Atlantic. They were normal colonial era cargo ships that would be slightly modified when the need to transport slaves arose. The reason for this is because many of these ships did not transport strictly slaves, after dropping off slaves in the colonies they would then pick up goods such as tobacco or cotton to bring back to Europe. Having specific ships for slaves and specific ships for cargo would be too expensive for many traders of the day and also would have afforded slaves a luxury that many Europeans felt they did not need. In fact, the only consideration afforded to slaves compared to regular cargo was that the slaves needed to be fed, and that they needed some sort of facilities to relieve themselves. Despite these "considerations" the facilities were lacking on slave ships, greatly contributing to the health problems and death that many slaves endured. Many merchants viewed the slave ships to be just as important as the plantations themselves, as they were an integral part of the trade and contributed to every aspect of the triangle trade. To further degradation and dehumanization of slaves, many ships were referred to as "factories." The designation of ships, and eventually plantations, as factories then made slaves essentially "equipment" or "machinery," not human beings, furthering the idea of superiority that Europeans had compared to Africans.
As mentioned previously, the conditions on slave ships were horrendous. These ships were essentially mobile prisons, and even made some prisons look luxurious. Equiano, a slave who eventually gained his freedom and became one of the leading abolitionists in colonial times, was taken from his home in Africa and put on a slave ship at the age of eleven. In his diary, he described his reaction to arriving on the slave ship as one of "astonishment into terror" at the conditions he realized he would be facing. He also noted how terrifying and brutal the ship's crew was, flogging him for not eating and forcing him to take shots of liquor in an attempt to "raise his spirits." Equiano's experience is typical of many slaves during the colonial time period when the slave trade was at its peak. Captains of slave ships relied on fear and terror to keep people in line, which influenced the crew of a ship to inflict the same upon the slaves, causing a vicious cycle of sexual and physical abuse, torture, and despair.
Originally, many of the first slave ships were small sailing vessels owned and operated by the captain of the ship. As more and more elite European businessmen started to become involved in the colonies of North America they started to create more and more large plantations. Simple economics denotes that the more area that needs to be worked, the higher demand for workers. This demand naturally caused the businessmen to look towards Africa and slave trade. As the companies such as the Royal Africa Company, and other rich businessmen started to get involved in the slave trade, the small time "mom and pop" ships began to become less and less common and the floating dungeons owned by the charter companies began to take over. All these companies and businessmen cared about was profit, so not only were the conditions for the slaves horrendous, but they were also less than adequate for the ship's crew as many sailors recorded their complaints on living conditions as well. The reason no one had any sort of comfort on these ships was due to the requests of the businessmen, the ones who owned, but did not operate the ships. Timber prices were rising in England so many businessmen turned to shipbuilders in Newport, RI and Swansea, MA to commission their new ships. In order to save money this new generation of New England built slave ships only had the absolute necessities for a transatlantic journey, as slaves did not need luxury and the crew would be too busy handling the slaves. The other reason for these cheap ships was that piracy and conflict were rampant throughout the Atlantic World, and many slave ships were sunk and destroyed by rival navies or pirates, so the businessmen and trading companies wanted to put in as little money as possible due to the high chance of losing their investment. It is beginning to become clear that there were many people and aspects of society involved in the slave trade, from the traders and plantation owners themselves, to the financers and bankers, all the way down to customs officials.
The transatlantic slave trade touched all corners of the known world during the colonial period. From the African tribal leaders on the African coast, to the plantation owners in Maryland and Virginia, to the shipbuilders in Newport and Swansea, and then the bankers who financed the slaving expeditions located from Liverpool to Boston. Nearly every part of the colonial economy was either directly involved or at the very least, affected by the slave trade. England transported most of its slave to its North American colonies, and slavery became such an embedded part of the southern colonial economy it took hundreds of years for it to be abolished. The slave trade had so permeated the colonial economy that it is slightly ironic that the exploitation of an entire race of people is what contributed to the economic boom known as the consumer revolution. Without the slave trade, and slave labor that existed in the colonies of British North America, African slaves enabled the growth of the colonial economy leading to consumer revolution.
The final part of the slave trade as when the slaves that were captured in Africa made it through the Middle Passage and ended up in the colonies. The treatment a slave received in the colonies depended on where in the colonies they ended up, with different systems in place throughout New England, Maryland and Virginia, and the Carolinas. In some areas of the American Colonies the population grew through slave births outnumbering slave deaths, while in the harsher areas with tougher conditions and treatment, the only reason the salve population did not disappear was due to a constant influx of new slaves from Africa. Even if slaves survived the horrors of the Middle Passage the daunting journey still took its toll once slaves were "safely" on land in the colonies. Due to the conditions of the slave ships many slaves could not stand up or straighten their limbs for days, and other were so depressed by the journey that suicide was still a major concern. Slaves also were at risk for diseases that existed in the colonies, such as the flu, that did not exist in Africa, meaning the slaves had no natural defense mechanism and could succumb easily. Slaves were forced to live a frugal life, generally only having a roof over their head, clothes on their back, and food to eat, while their owners lived in unmatched luxury. Many slaves were forced to build their own houses, but only in their down time from working for their owner. Slaves lived lives of labor which took its toll on both their body and mind, but still they found time to socialize and create families during their small amounts of downtime. Despite the small victory of forming a family, many of these families were broken apart due to the slave owners not recognizing slave marriages, which caused families to split up and sold separately at the behest of the owner.
The transatlantic slave trade remains one of the largest black marks on history. The forced removal and enslavement of millions of Africans not only destabilized Africa for centuries to come, but also installed slavery as part of the fabric of colonial times. The slave trade affected every part of the colonial economy, from plantation owners, to slave traders, to the consumers using sugar or tobacco that was harvested by a slave in Virginia or Maryland. Slaves experienced horrors at every step in their long and arduous journey, their capture by rival tribal leaders in Africa, the deadly Middle Passage, and finally a life of enslavement. This institution shaped the colonial world to such an extent that it is nearly impossible to learn about the colonial period without first examining the impact the transatlantic slave trade had on the era.


Bibliography
"Life on Board Slave Ships." International Slavery Museum. Accessed December 3, 2015.
http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism/slavery/middle_passage/index.aspx.

Mallipeddi, Ramesh. "A Fixed Melancholy": Migration, Memory, and the Middle Passage."
Eighteenth Century: Theory & Interpretation (University Of Pennsylvania Press) 55, no.
2/3 (Fall 2014 2014): 235-254. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed December 2, 2015).

News, Va. Captive Passage: The Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Making of the Americas.
Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002.

Postma, Johannes. The Atlantic Slave Trade. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2003.

Rediker, Marcus. The Slave Ship: A Human History. London: John Murray, 2008.

"The Trade Triangle." International Slavery Museum, Liverpool Museums. Accessed December
3, 2015. http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism/slavery/triangle.aspx.


Ramesh Mallipeddi. "A Fixed Melancholy": Migration, Memory, and the Middle Passage." Eighteenth Century: Theory & Interpretation (University Of Pennsylvania Press) 55, no. 2/3 (Fall 2014 2014): 235-254. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed December 2, 2015). 235.
"The Trade Triangle." International Slavery Museum, Liverpool Museums. Accessed December 3, 2015. http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism/slavery/triangle.aspx.
Va. News, Captive Passage: The Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Making of the Americas. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002. 33.
Ibid, 35.
Ibid, 43, 50.
"A Fixed Melancholy," 239.
Captive Passage, 38.
"A Fixed Melancholy," 237.
Ibid.
Johannes Postma. The Atlantic Slave Trade. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2003. 28.
"A fixed Melancholy," 241.
Ibid, 240.
"Life on Board Slave Ships." International Slavery Museum. Accessed December 3, 2015. http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism/slavery/middle_passage/index.aspx.
The Atlantic Slave Trade,28.
"Life on Board Slave Ships"
"A Fixed Melancholy," 242.
Ibid.
Captive Passage, 82.
Marcus Rediker. The Slave Ship: A Human History. London: John Murray, 2008. 44.
Ibid, 108.
Ibid, 217.
Ibid, 47.
Ibid.
The Atlantic Slave Trade, 60.
Captive Passage, 123
Ibid, 124.
Ibid, 132.
Ibid, 135.


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