Summary Of Saltwater Slavery By Stephanie Smallwood

Improved Essays
Focusing on the lives of those who traversed the waters of the Atlantic aboard slave ships bound for the Caribbean and America has proven to be a task by historians in recent years as more and more is added to the already growing historiography of the Atlantic slave trade, but most importantly, the lives of the Africans who were the focus of this European endeavor. Stephanie Smallwood’s book Saltwater Slavery is a testament to this ongoing research. In her book, Smallwood focuses on a narrow approach to contextualizing the slave trade through the experiences of those sold into slavery along the Gold Coast of Africa, the Royal African Company’s exploitation within the region, and its efforts at sea. Smallwood’s overall goal of the book is to trace the …show more content…
In the early chapters of the book, Smallwood sets the stage for an Africa mingling with the early attempts by Europe to colonize and establish trade with the arrival of the Portuguese, and the establishment of the idea of commodifying people, which Smallwood establishes a central premise of the book. Smallwood argues that the commodification of the people of Africa, particularly those on the Gold Coast had severe negative consequences, with Smallwood stating, “Commodification removed captives from that landscape of abundance and put them into a situation of unmitigated poverty” (43). Smallwood uses this idea of commodification to outline her next few chapters in which she illustrates how the overall process of amassing “cargo” for the voyages relied more on the ship's capacity, rather than the well-being of those being taken aboard (68). Most importantly, Smallwood illustrates how this process of commodifying people created the biggest factor throughout the slave trade, the mental destruction and dismantling of hope for those whose new lives will be across the

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    In the literary work, Slavery by Another Name: The Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, by Douglas A. Blackmon, a critical piece of untold history regarding the issue of slavery is explored in a captivating and compelling argument stating slavery had not truly been abolished until forty-five years after the emancipation proclamation. To any human who has completed grade school through high school this claim might come to shock you, as we are told that Lincoln had freed the slaves through the emancipation proclamation in 1863. This story explores the question up for popular debate concerning the role of black men in society. The author does an excellent job of explaining to the readers that despite the great strides that were made after the civil war; slavery would continue to be a battle many would fight for a much longer period of time…

    • 990 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Slavery consist of many meanings besides being owned or being in control of another humans being. In Gem of the Ocean; Austin Wilson demonstrate through his characters that not only is slavery not dead but that the effect of racism and discrimination is also very much alive. In addition, Austin Wilson has been a great historian towards the suffering of African Americans. In like manner, he has influence other talents, for example, Heather Nathan states Jefferson Pinder uses the boat Gem of the Ocean as his inspiration with quilts “He discussed the artist’s search for the visual image that will connect to the viewer, noting that the artist may discover an unlikely image-in his case, slave ships-that seem simple on the surface, but that in fact…

    • 2073 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    The Diligent Summary

    • 1711 Words
    • 7 Pages

    The Diligent was written by Robert Harms and discusses the fifteen-month voyage of the Diligent to Martinique, including the world of the Atlantic slave trade. In his book, Harms uses the recently “discovered” journal of First Lieutenant Robert Durand. The author of the book makes references to Durand’s journal as well as the overall Atlantic slave trade. The Diligent can be viewed as an accurate representation of what the Atlantic slave trade was like during the eighteenth century right down to the business of the slave trade, the voyage itself, and the middle passage. Most ships that European slave traders used on their voyages to go into Africa were owned by merchants similar to the Billy brothers.…

    • 1711 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Olaudah Equiano Thesis

    • 528 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Olaudah Equiano, a victim to the malicious slave trade, gives vivid detail and insight into the world of slavery from a slave’s point of view. The article studied was written by Equiano himself, an Ibo prince who was seized from his homeland of Africa and thrust into a cruel life of bondage at the age of only eleven. Equiano writes of the hardship of his voyage overseas in the late years of the seventeenth century. Part of his story is shared in this article, the story of an African male going from slavery to freedom. He records and shares his story in 1789 as he worked to further the Church of England after purchasing his freedom from a Quaker merchant.…

    • 528 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Alexander Falconbridge produced, An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa, and published his work in London in 1788. He recollects his experiences as a surgeon aboard four slave trade voyages between 1780-1887. Falconbridge’s first two voyages were with Captain James Fraser aboard two separate ships named “Tarter” and “Emilia”. He traveled with Captain John McTaggart on the “Alexander” for the third voyage, but returned aboard the Emilia with Fraser for his last voyage. The book illustrates the three legs of the middle passage experience.…

    • 1657 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Slave Ship: A Human History written by Marcus Rediker is a painful eye-opening novel, embodying the many truths at a life at sea. This testament to a time when Anglo-American slave ships subjected countless numbers to the hatred and terror of the world, aims to eloquently prevail the provocative stories behind it. Rediker recreates this world by using personal accounts and seafaring records to reproduce the feelings and emotions that challenged life and death along this rigorous journey. After the 1700’s in a world progressively dominated by Britain, slave ships transported millions of people from African coastlines to the New World.…

    • 1336 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The language of kinship absorbed the slave and concealed her identity within the family fold…, whereas the language of races et the slave apart from man and citizen and sentenced her to an interminable servitude” (pg. 73). Often the fact that Africans also owned and traded slaves is neglected. However, Hartman exposes just how involved the trade was even in parts of the world we would never…

    • 1285 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    The second chapter explores slavery and the transition from a mostly African-born slave to population, to a mostly American-born population, during the colonial period (late 1600s until about 1770). At the beginning of this time period, most slaves were imported and not born on American soil. After their forced immigration, these slaves underwent a process called ‘seasoning,’ or training, where they were “broken in” and made to realize that slavery would be their identity for the rest of their lives. As time went on,…

    • 1794 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    “The Atlantic Slave Trade” by Klein Herbert is a synthesis made to educate readers with extensive scholarly research from the past quarter century on the Atlantic Slave trade. This book was written to close the gap between popular understanding about the slave trade and scholarly knowledge. The Book systematically organized the Atlantic slave trade in eight chapters starting from “Slavery in Western Development” to “The End of the Slave Trade”. In the following review of Klein Herbert’s work “The Atlantic Slave trade” I will summarize the book’s content, and survey its major strengths, and weaknesses. Herbert Klein researched four hundred years of history of the Atlantic slave trade.…

    • 1291 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Today the stories of slavery is a subject of immense scholarly and popular inquisitive on both side of the Atlantic, causing an astonishing abundant worth of print and media surveillance. The gradual progressions of the Slave system flourish across the Atlantic were made feasible by the administered transportation. The institution of the Royal African Company of London played a dominant impact in establishing the trans-Atlantic Slave trade. To understand the phenomenal surrounding slaves we most not only learn from the valuable accounts of the slaves but also the accounts of the slave traders. The expedition and experience of Captain Thomas Phillips during his 1693 and 1694 voyage across the Atlantic is an incredible outlook from the perspective of a slave trader.…

    • 852 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    By the year 1854, Atlantic trade routes had already seen thousands of voyages encompassing multiple centuries that brought millions of African slaves to the Americas. Among these many Africans was Mahommah, whose quick journey from freedom and an elite status in Africa to slavery and transit to the New World was recorded. Even though someone else likely edited and published Mahommah’s narrative, the source retains the context, tone, and implications of his history. Mahommah’s history may not have been unique to him, as millions of Africans were involved in the slave trade, but the fact that Mahommah’s story was one of the few to be published and preserved proves that his experience had extra significance. As Mahommah experienced, many African slaves were no longer viewed as humans, rather as mere goods and merchandise to be traded at their…

    • 1008 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Atlantic Slavery Trade The Atlantic Slave Trade was a “Huge system of trade and migration that brought millions of slaves to the New World and Europe in the 1600s and 1700s.” ( 1 Shultz, Kevin M.,) During this time, many Europeans and colonials would force Africans onto ships that would take them across the Atlantic. This would also be known as the “middle passage.”…

    • 351 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Great Essays

    While the trans-Atlantic slave is primarily recognized with a Western emphasis, the trans-Saharan slave trade serves with distinction as an enterprise which existed mainly with the context of Arab-African…

    • 1461 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    Argumentative Essay On Modern Day Slavery

    • 1500 Words
    • 6 Pages
    • 11 Works Cited

    Not for Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade – and How We Can Fight It. New York: Harper One, 2007. Print. Far, Kathryn.…

    • 1500 Words
    • 6 Pages
    • 11 Works Cited
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Examples Of Eco Feminism

    • 783 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The Black Atlantic is an area commonly known for its history of exploitation. The Black Atlantic “represents the history of the movements of people of African descent from Africa to Europe, the Caribbean, and the Americas and provides a lens through which to view the ways that ideas about nationality and identity were formed” (The Black Atlantic Paul Gilroy). The black Atlantic was a culture born out of the Atlantic slave trade and European colonization. In the book becoming African in America, writer James Sidbury describes the ‘first generation’ of Africans in the Atlantic as “Political Activist working within the emerging antislavery movement in England and North America during the 1780s and 1790s (Becoming Africa in America Page 80.) In his book, the black Atlantic, Gilroy is attempting to state that western civilization has become gripped in a bind between racial, terror and reason.…

    • 783 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays