Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade – Crash Course Notes

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade – Crash Course Notes

• Content note: This episode addresses challenging topics, including sexual violence and images of extreme violence. The goal is to discuss these ideas thoroughly to grapple with the reality of U.S. history.
• The Trans-Atlantic slave trade spanned nearly four hundred years, from the late 1400s to the late 1800s.
• Major regions supplying enslaved Africans (the six primary regions):
  • Senegambia
  • Sierra Leone & the Windward Coast
  • The Gold Coast
  • The Bight of Benin
  • The Bight of Biafra
  • West Central Africa (also known as Kongo and Angola)
• W. E. B. Du Bois described the Atlantic slave trade as "the most magnificent drama in the last thousand years of human history" in Black Reconstruction in America (1935), noting that this was not a positive sense of “magnificent.”

Scope and Terminology

• The Middle Passage was the second of three legs of the triangular trade; it connected Africa to the Americas.
  • Triangular trade legs:
  • Leg 1: Europe to Africa — textiles, iron, alcohol, firearms, gunpowder as cargo.
  • Leg 2: Africa to the Americas — transport of enslaved Africans.
  • Leg 3: Americas to Europe — goods like sugar and tobacco.
• Estimated total enslaved Africans loaded onto slave ships: $12.4 imes 10^6$ (12.4 million).
• Estimated deaths during the Middle Passage: $2 imes 10^6$ (2 million).
• It is also important to note that the vast majority of enslaved Africans did not end up in what is today the United States.
  • About $5\frac{{1}}{{}}{}$ of those captured were brought directly to what would become the U.S.; the largest proportion (~$41\big/100 = 0.41$) went to Brazil.
  • Millions more were dispersed across Caribbean islands and South America.
• The episode emphasizes listening to enslaved people's narratives, such as Olaudah Equiano, to understand the lived experience.

Olaudah Equiano and Personal Narratives

• Olaudah Equiano, captured as a boy, wrote in his 1789 autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano:

"I was immediately handled and tossed up to see if I were sound by some of the crew; and I was now persuaded that I had gotten into a world of bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me. Their complexions too differing so much from ours, their long hair, and the language they spoke (which was very different from any I had ever heard) united to confirm me in this belief… When I looked round the ship too and saw a large furnace or copper boiling, and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted of my fate; and, quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted." (1789)

• Equiano described the shock of new sights: unfamiliar language, skin tones, and the ocean’s vastness, with people chained together in conditions of extreme distress.
• Enslaved Africans were not simply hunted and captured by Europeans; many were prisoners of war, criminals, or poor members of African societies who were traded for goods. They were often sold to Europeans by other Africans to pay debts or for commerce.
• This nuance matters: being captured as a prisoner of war or a criminal is not the same as hereditary, intergenerational chattel slavery that would be imposed in the Americas.
• Orlando Patterson’s definition of slavery: "Slavery is the permanent, violent, and personal domination of natally alienated and generally dishonored persons." This definition helps frame differences between pre-existing forms of bondage and the American slave system.

Conditions on the Slaving Voyages

• Ship conditions were horrific: hundreds packed together, chained, unable to move, forced to relieve themselves where they slept and ate, creating extreme stench.
• Disease was rampant (yellow fever, malaria, smallpox, dysentery).
• Equiano’s account on ship conditions:

"The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, being so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died."

Violence, Sexual Violence, and Resistance

• Violence against captives was pervasive; sexual violence by some sailors occurred onboard.
• Enslaved people resisted in many ways, both individually and collectively:
  • Revolts against crews
  • Refusal to eat
  • Jumping overboard (viewed, sometimes, as a form of resistance and a claim to personal agency)
• The economic dimension of survival: choosing life could be framed as a resistance because captives were valuable property; choosing life could undermine the economic system that relied on their sale.
• Some captives attempted suicide as a form of control over their fate; in some cases, enslavers added nets to prevent jumping overboard.
• The speculum orum (pronounced ohr-UHM) was a notorious device used to force-feed resistants:
  • A screw-like device that forced the mouth open, often breaking teeth, displacing jaws, or tearing the mouth.
  • Other coercive measures included placing hot coals on lips and thumb-screws (crushing fingers or toes) to compel compliance.
• The historical record recognizes that endurance and resistance were central to enslaved people’s agency in impossible circumstances.

Key Figures in the Timeline and Systemic Structures

• Marcus Rediker identifies the period from $1700$ to $1808$ as the most destructive stage of the Transatlantic Slave Trade: roughly two-thirds ( $\frac{2}{3}$ ) of the total enslaved Africans were trafficked out of Africa during this window into the Americas.
• Jill Lepore provides a stark mortality calculation for the Middle Passage:
  • For every 100 Africans taken from Africa’s interior:
  • 64 would survive to reach the coast: $\frac{64}{100} = 0.64$
  • Of those 64, about 48 would survive the weeks-long voyage across the Atlantic: $\frac{48}{64} = 0.75$
  • Of those 48, only about 28–30 would survive the first 3–4 years in the colony: $\frac{28}{48} ext{ to } \frac{30}{48} ext{ (approximately } 0.58 ext{ to } 0.63)$
• Language and perspective: the series consistently uses the term "enslaved" rather than "slave" to emphasize personhood and the involuntary nature of bondage.
• The Royal African Company (RAC) played a central role in British slave trade:
  • It was a chartered company that held a monopoly on English trade to Africa starting in 1672.
  • The period $1675$–$1725$ marked the RAC’s most active years, though it continued into the early eighteenth century during a period described as ‘free trade’ by some observers.

Regional Focus: South Carolina as an Example

• Ira Berlin’s work shows South Carolina prohibited the African slave trade in 1787 but reopened it in 1803, remaining open until the federal prohibition in 1808.
• Between 1803 and 1808, over $3.5 imes 10^4$ enslaved people were brought to South Carolina (more than twice as many as in any comparable period in its history as a colony or state).
• The Charleston coast was the point of entry for approximately 40% of enslaved Africans who were brought to North America via the Middle Passage: $0.40$.
• Some scholars have called Charleston a form of African-American Ellis Island, noting the difference that enslaved people did not arrive there by choice, as opposed to voluntary immigration.

International and Domestic Abolition Timeline

• The federal government ended the international slave trade in the United States in 1808; Britain banned it in 1807.
• However, illegal trafficking by both nations continued for years after these dates.
• Abolition timelines elsewhere:
  • Britain abolished slavery in 1833.
  • The United States abolished slavery after the Civil War (the war itself ending slavery in 1865 in the U.S.).
  • Spain and Brazil continued trafficking for another half-century after abolition efforts began; Brazil was the last Western country to abolish slavery, in 1888.
• The transatlantic slave trade profoundly shaped global history and the trajectories of both Black and white lives, with ongoing implications explored in later Crash Course episodes.

Language, Ethics, and Historical Framing

• Reiterating the ethical and historical significance of terminology, the series emphasizes describing people as enslaved rather than using the noun form “slave” to acknowledge personhood and involuntary bondage.
• The episode foregrounds both structural forces (economic incentives, monopolies, international law) and human experiences (Equiano’s narrative, resistance, fear, violence) to paint a comprehensive picture of the slave trade’s brutality and complexity.

Connections to Foundational Principles and Real-World Relevance

• The slave trade is tied to foundational questions about human rights, economic systems, and the ways in which wealth and power were constructed through coercive labor.
• The episode links economic incentives (profit from shipping, chattel status of enslaved people) to human suffering, illustrating the inextricable link between commerce and violence in this history.
• Ethical reflection involves recognizing enslaved people as agents who resisted, sought to preserve family and community, and navigated brutal systems with the limited tools available to them.

Closing and Next Steps

• The transatlantic slave trade is presented as a long, violent, and deeply consequential historical process that shaped global civilization and the lifeworlds of countless individuals.
• The series will continue to explore related topics in upcoming episodes, including more aligned narratives from enslaved people and the long-term consequences of slavery on American society.
• Credits: Crash Course is produced with Thought Café; readers/viewers are encouraged to support Crash Course on Patreon to keep content free and accessible.