On the first leg of their
three-part journey, often called the Triangular Trade, European ships brought
manufactured goods to Africa; on the second, they transported African men,
women, and children to the Americas; and on the third leg, they exported to
Europe the sugar, rum, cotton, and tobacco produced by the enslaved labor force.
There was also a direct trade between Brazil and Angola that did not include the
European leg. Traders referred to the Africa-Americas part of the voyage as the
"Middle Passage" and the term has survived to denote the Africans' ordeal.
Well over 30,000 voyages from Africa to the Americas
have been documented. But numbers and statistics alone cannot convey the horror
of the experience. However, the records provide detailed information on some
aspects of this tragedy.
The dreadful Middle Passage could last from one to
three months and epitomized the role of violence in the trade. Based on
regulations, ships could transport only about 350 people, but some carried more
than 800 men, women, and children. Branded, stripped naked for the duration of
the voyage, lying down amidst filth, enduring almost unbearable heat, compelled
by the lash to dance on deck to straighten their limbs, all captives went
through a frightening, incredibly brutal and dehumanizing experience.
Men were shackled under deck, and all Africans were
subjected to abuse and punishment.
Some people tried to starve themselves to death,
but the crew forced them to take food by whipping them, torturing them with
hot coal, or forcing their mouths open by using special instruments or by
breaking their teeth.
The personal identity of the captives was
denied. Women and boys were often used for the pleasure of the crew. Ottobah
Cugoano, who endured the Middle Passage in the eighteenth century, recalled:
"it was common for the dirty filthy sailors to take the African women and
lie upon their bodies."
Mortality brought about by malnutrition,
dysentery, smallpox, and other diseases was very high. Depending on the
times, upwards of 20 percent died from various epidemics or committed
suicide. Venture Smith, describing his ordeal, wrote: "After an ordinary
passage, except great mortality by the small pox, which broke out on board,
we arrived at the island of Barbadoes: but when we reached it, there were
found out of the two hundred and sixty that sailed from Africa, not more
than two hundred alive." It was not unusual for captains and crew to toss
the sick overboard; and some even disposed of an entire cargo for insurance
purposes.
On board slave ships, in the midst of their
oppression, the Africans, who were often as much strangers to each other as
to their European captors, forged the first links with their new American
identities. Relationships established during the Middle Passage frequently
resulted in revolts and other forms of resistance that bound them in new
social and political alliances. Ottobah Cugoano described the attempted
revolt organized on the ship that took him from the Gold Coast to Grenada:
"when we found ourselves at last taken away, death was more preferable than
life; and a plan was concerted amongst us, that we might burn and blow up
the ship, and to perish all together in the flames . . . . It was the women
and boys which were to burn the ship, with the approbation and groans of the
rest; though that was prevented, the discovery was likewise a cruel bloody
scene."
The special relations created on the ship lasted
a lifetime and were regarded by the deported Africans, torn from their loved
ones, as strongly as kinship. They had special names for those who had
shared their ordeal. They were called bâtiments in Creole (from the French
for ship), sippi in Surinam (from ship), and shipmate in Jamaica.
Far from wiping out all traces of their
cultural, social, and personal past, the Middle Passage experience provided
Africans with opportunities to draw on their collective heritage to make
themselves a new people.
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