Week 7- The Middle Passage

Sources

• Ship logs and manifests

• Sailors diaries

• Correspondence between merchants, brokers, and ship surgeons

• Transcripts of court cases

Olaudah Equaino

• The interesting narrative of the live of ______ _______

  • 1789

    • Born in South Carolina

    • Abolitionist Text

Trek from African Interior

Commdification

• Bean on African Coast

  • from as short as 60m

  • up to 450m

• Enslaved Africans

What were enslaved Africans housed in

Barracoons

Inspections

• Checking teeth

• Checking genital

• Making enslaved Africans exert themselves

• making them lick their sweat

Passed Inspections

• Enslaved Africans were traded or sold

• Enslaved Africans were branded with companies code of arms

• Referred to enslaved africans by numbers

Portuguese

branded enslaved baptized Africans with a cross

In demand

• Young men

  • 15-25

Young women

10-18 yrs old

Ill enslaved Africans

were prevented from being traded

• fear that these enslaved Africans who were ill would contaminate cargo

Refugees

Captives that were not sold

Enslaved Africans feared that Europeans were

• Cannibals

• Evil spirits

• Europeans goods were made up of

  • African body parts

Voyages lasted

6 weeks- 1 year

Overcrowding of shifts

• Common despite company regulations

• Fed 2x a day

Typical diet

• Yams

• Beans

• Rice

• Fish

• Citrus

• Alcohol

Medical Conditions on Slave Ships

• malnutrition and dehydration

• dysentery

• Measles

• Typhoid Fever

• Scurvy

• Pneumonia

• TB

• Smallpox

• Malaria

• Yellow Fever

Mortality Rates on Ships

• 15-20%

• Ships were disease enviornments

Ship regulations

• Surgeons on board

• Regular exercise for captives

• captives vaccinated for smallpox

• Ship capacity

Zong Voyage year

1781

Zong Voyage Left Africa in

Sept 1781

Zong Voyage headed for

Jamacia

Zong Voyage

Nov 1781

Zong Voyage

• More than 60 africans died

• 7 crew members died

• Captain resulted that many deaths were due to smallpox

• Captain took advantage of insurance policy

Zong massacre

Threw over 132 living Africans into the ocean who were suspected as diseased

Abolitionist of zong voyage

Prompted to push British to abolish slave trade

Trader’s concerns with Africans

• lunaticks

• idiots

• lethargicks

Distraction

deranged, insanity

Descriptions of boarded captives

• “Distraction”

• “Raving Mad”

• :Violent hysterical fits”

• “Melancholy”

  • depression

• “Pining Away”

  • health deterioration

  • longing for home

Europeans saw captives who refused to eat or take medication

• Defiance

• Used Africans who threw themselves overboard as a warning

• Retrieve the bodies

• Dismembered them in front of captives

Middle passage was not an _______ event

annihilating

transmission of knowledge and culture

• music

• dance

• healing practices

• technological knowledge

Development of new forms of kinship

• Shipmates

• Sippi

Shipmates (Jamacia)

• Captives formed bonds with one another

• Bonds endured after arrival in new world

• Shipmate became another form of brother and sister

Sippi (Suriname)

• used to refer to people who shared the middle passage experience

• maintained intergenerationally

  • children of shipmates would refer to each other as cousins, aunts, nieces

• Arrival in New World as second separation

Arrival in New World as second separation

enforced enslaved Africans as commodities