Monday, February 2, 2009
Short Essay One
During the eighteenth century countless African men, women, and children were forcibly transported across the Atlantic Ocean and sold into slavery in North America and Europe. The slave trade was created to further capitalistic advances and it certainly altered the lives of the Africans who were forced into it. For the most part European nations created the slave trade in the Atlantic as a result for the massive need for labor in the North American colonies. David Eltis, a slave trade historian writes, “Slaves crossed the Atlantic for forced labor primarily in the sugar production or the economies that made sugar exports possible” (Eltis 23). The colonies’ reliance on crop exports required an inexpensive and productive workforce which the colonies used Africans to make. The reasons they were brought into the colonies had a lasting effect on the experiences they had while there. Africans who were captured and sold quickly lost all human rights once they became a slave. The slave trade transformed them into property. James Walvin, author of Questioning Slavery and slavery historian, states “Africans were quickly transmuted in the human commodity which was to shape the Atlantic economy” (Walvin 6). Those who were traded as slaves were nothing more than chattel to the plantation owners they were sold to. There is no doubt that being sold by slave traders had a profound effect on the Africans involved. Becoming property was just one of the transformations that the Africans who were forced across the Atlantic had to cope with. Life on plantations was made even more brutal because of class distinctions. According to Walvin the plantation class structure was arranged by “a subservient black labouring class, separated from their white superiors in almost every respect: in the nature of their work and the way they were treated (face to face and by law)” (Walvin 12). The slave trade caused Africans to become unjustly treated second class citizens. Not only were Africans forced to relinquish their human right but they were compelled to abandon their identity as an African. The majority of newly arrived slaves were separated from their family and given European names. Many of the Africans dressed in European fashion and adapted to European customs. Generally only once Africans found freedom did they rediscover their African heritage if ever (Gerzina 48). A flourishing economy in North America was established due to the slave trade in the eighteenth century. Unfortunately, it came as the result of turning Africans into human chattel. Slave trading, by nature, is a merciless practice that sought unrelenting capitalistic gain and destroyed the lives of all the Africans who were captured.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
My understanding of what you are saying is that the slave trade or the "Black Atlantic" happened because North America wanted to establish an economy. In a way that makes sense. But I think there was much more to it than that. From our reading, I got the impression that, yes, the flourishing economy made the slave trade possible but at the same time so did demand for the products that were being produced in America. Once sugar and tobacco became available to the mass public people began using more and more of it. Thus as the demand grew, the production had to increase. Production increase meant that more people were needed to work on them. As more and more of these "New World" products came into the European markets, they became more affordable and were no longer considered luxury items, but they became everyday necessities. I think that this in a lot of ways made the slave trade inevitable. One of the articles we read told us that the native population could have been used to cultivate these products had they not died off from the European diseases. Europeans were also considered and sometimes used, but they were too expensive to maintain. So Africans were the next affordable alternative. All that to say that although they rising economy did play an important role, the demand must be kept in mind also.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I would not disagree with anything that was written here, I was under the impression that the term "the Black Atlantic" was directly attributable to Paul Gilroy and his Marxist theories pertaining to the development of an African consciousness, a consciousness that eschewed the heavy rationalism found in Enlightenment intellectual paradigms and the nationalism displayed by their European masters. Gilroy argued that enslaved and free Africans adopted a pre-nationalistic, post-modernist consciousness to their interactions with Europeans and this consciousness was spread throughout the black population through music.
ReplyDeleteThe Gerzina article responded directly to Gilroy's theories and took issue with Gilroy's idea that music was the purveyor of this African consciousness but travel (either forced travel like the Middle Passage or travel as sailors or tourists), literature and Christianity bound the black populations together and created a cultural consciousness for Africans that was at once distinct from the Europeans and based on emulation of the European cultural consciousness.
I saw this paper as more of a comparison/contrast of Gilroy's and Gerzina's articulation of the consciousness that grew out of the forced migration and enslavement of millions of Africans during the years of the Atlantic slave trade.
What an excellent post. I think you really captured the heart of the readings here. I found especially poignant the part of your post that discussed turning the slaves from people into property. This is very profound, and really focuses the slave trade on the human aspect. I enjoyed reading your post very much.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your main point of you essay. The motivation behind the "Black Atlantic" was in many ways economical. A common thought within all the readings were not only slave trade, but all the products that became a huge part of the industry. Sugar, especially, was mentioned throughout. The need for labor was an issue, and a major reason why the slave-trade started.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that the major force behind the slave trade was economical. Slave traders were looking to make money and slave owners were looking for extremely cheap labor to maximize profits. I also liked your point about Africans assimilate into European culture. There was really no way that slaves would be able to maintain their African culture. They were pretty much forced to blend in and adapt to their new surroundings.
ReplyDelete