Am 214: The Atlantic Slave Trade

Plan of Lecture

• Introduction: Zurara’s account of arrival of slaves, Lagos, Portugal 1444

• Volumes and Dimensions of Slave Trade• Pre Conquest Africa• Participants: African Sellers, European Buyers,

American Planters, African Slaves• The Middle Passage: Olaudah Equaino• Slave Mortality - The Brooks • Resistance on Slave Ships• The Slave Trade: An African Holocaust?

Zurara’s Account of West African Slaves Lagos, Portugal 1444

• “On the next day … those captives, placed together in that field were a marvellous thing to behold, because among them were some who were reasonably white, handsome and genteel; others, not so white, who were like mulattoes; others as black as Ethiopians, so deformed of face and body that it seemed to those who guarded them that they were gazing upon images of the lowest hemisphere.”

Volume and Destination

• Best source: David Eltis, “The Volume and Structure of the Transatlantic Slave Trade: A Reassessment,” William and Mary Quarterly , LVIII (2001), 17-46

• See also: D.Eltis, S. Behrendt, D. Richardson and H. Klein, "The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM" (Cambridge University Press, 1999

Africa Pre Conquest

Immense Ethnic Mix

Queen Nzinga and Drummers, Kongo, 1670s

Queen Nzinga prints

• Antonio Cavazzi (b. 1621) was an Italian priest who from 1654 to 1667 joined the Capuchin mission in what is today northern Angola; after a visit to Europe, he returned to Angola, particularly the Kingdom of Kongo, where he remained from 1672 to 1677. He died in Genoa in 1678. Cavazzi made this and other watercolors, the originals of which are in his manuscript, located in a private collection in Modena, Italy (see also "Cavazzi" for other images on this website). Cavazzi's drawings must be among the earliest known eyewitness sketches of African life by a European

Soldiers, Kongo, 1670s

Musicians, Kongo, 1670s

Queen Nzinga and Entourage, Kongo, 1670s

Ceremonial Procession, Kongo, 1670s

Queen Nzinga and Entourage, Kongo, 1670s

Magician, Kongo, 1670s

African House Sierra Leone, late 17th century

Manioc Preparation, 1722

Clothes, Houses, Music, Gambia 18th century

Male Circumcision Ceremony

Coronation King of Whydah, April 1725

Procession of the Serpent, Whydah, April 1725

City of Loango, Angola, late 17th century

Don Alvaro, King of Kongo, receiving Dutch delegation, 1642

Europeans in Slave Trade: Merchants

• Merchant slave traders – Pierre Cornut (banker); Browns of Rhode Island (whalers); Richard Oswald of London (troop provisions); Sir Alexander Grant (planter)

• Jean Barbot “however unpleasant it was to be a slave in the Americas, it was better than to be one, or even a free man in Africa”

• Gerard Mellior of Nantes: “At bottom, the blacks are naturally inclined to theft, robbery, idleness and treason.”

Europeans in Slave Trade: Sailors

• Ship’s captains – men of parts• Surgeons• Ordinary seamen• John Newton: “The real or supposed

necessity of treating the Negroes with rigour gradually brings a numbness upon the heart and renders those who are engaged in it too indifferent to the sufferings of their fellow creatures”

The Middle Passage

• Olaudah Equaino , An Interesting narrative• Claimed he was an African boy from Ibo region

of Nigeria, carried to America as a nine year old boy. May have been from South Carolina.

• “The first object which saluted my eyes was the sea, and a slave ship, which was then riding at anchor … These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted to terror, when I was carried on board.”

The Slave Ship

Selection of Slaves in Africa

Europeans Haggling with African Traders

Selection of African Slaves

Being Sold into Slavery

Slave Branding

Slaves loaded onto ships

Slaves loaded onto ship

Slaves on slave ship

Slaves on slave ship

The packing of Slaves

Slave Packing, the Brooks

French drawing of slave transportation

Slaves made to dance

Slave shackles

Slave Punishment – Captain Kember

Slave Rebellion

Slave Rebellion

Slave Sale, America

The Slave Trade as an African Holocaust?

• Anne Frank: “Every night people are being picked up without warning and that is awful particularly for old and sick people, they treat them just like slaves in the olden days… If it is as bad as this in Holland whatever will it be like in the distant and barbarous regions they are sent to? We assume most of them are murdered.”