CONSIDERING THE EVIDENCE - Voices from the slave trade (+20)
By any measure the Atlantic slave trade was an enormous enterprise and enormously significant in modern world history: its geographical scope encompassed four continents, it endured for over four centuries, its victims numbered in the many millions, its commercial operation was complex and highly competitive, and its consequences echo still in both public and private life.The four documents that follow allow us to hear several individual voices from this vast historical process and to sample the evidence available to historians as they seek to understand this tragic chapter of the human story.
Assignment: You are to read like a historian the three primary sources below & answer the follow up questions. |
Doc 1, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano: We begin with the voice of an individual victim of the slave trade—Olaudah Equiano. Born in what is now the Igbo-speaking region of Nigeria around 1745, Equiano was seized from his home at the age of eleven and sold into the Atlantic slave trade at the high point of that infamous commerce (see Map above). In service to three different owners, his experience as a slave in the Americas was quite unusual. He learned to read and write, traveled extensively as a seaman aboard one of his masters’ ships, and was allowed to buy his freedom in 1766. Settling in England, he became a prominent voice in the emerging abolitionist movement of the late eighteenth century and wrote a widely read account of his life, addressed largely to European Christians: “O, ye nominal Christians! Might not an African ask you, Learned you this from your God, who says unto you, Do unto all men as you would men should do unto you?” His book was published in 1789 as abolitionism was gaining wider acceptance.
Despite some controversy about his birthplace and birth date, most historians accept Equiano’s autobiography as broadly accurate. Document 1 presents Equiano’s account of his capture, his journey to the coast, his experience on a slave ship, and his arrival in the Americas. It was a journey forcibly undertaken by millions of others as well.
Questions:
Despite some controversy about his birthplace and birth date, most historians accept Equiano’s autobiography as broadly accurate. Document 1 presents Equiano’s account of his capture, his journey to the coast, his experience on a slave ship, and his arrival in the Americas. It was a journey forcibly undertaken by millions of others as well.
Questions:
- How does Equiano describe the kind of slavery he knew in Africa itself? How does it compare with the plantation slavery of the Americas?
- What part did Africans play in the slave trade, according to this account?
- What aspects of the shipboard experience contributed to the slaves’ despair?
Doc 2, A Journal of a Voyage Made in the Hannibal of London: For its African victims like Equiano, the slave trade was a horror beyond their imagination; for kings and merchants—both European and African—it was a business. This document shows how that business was conducted. It comes from the journal of an English merchant,Thomas Phillips, who undertook a voyage to the kingdom of Whydah in what is now the West African country of Benin in 1693–1694.
- How would you describe the economic transactions described in the document? To what extent were they conducted between equal parties?
- Who, if anyone, held the upper hand in these dealings?
- What obstacles did European merchants confront in negotiating with African authorities?
- How might an African merchant have described the same transaction? How might Equiano describe it?
- Notice the outcomes of Phillips’s voyage to Barbados in the last two paragraphs.What does this tell you about European preferences for slaves, about the Middle Passage, and about the profitability of the enterprise?
Doc 3, King Affonso I Letters to King Jao of Portugal: While African elites often eagerly facilitated the traffic in slaves and benefited
from doing so, in one well-known case, quite early in the slave trade era, an African ruler sought to curtail it. This occurred in the kingdom of Kongo, in what is now Angola (see the map above). That state had welcomed Portuguese traders as early as the 1480s, as its rulers imagined that an alliance with Portugal could strengthen their regime. The royal family converted to Christianity and encouraged the importation of European guns, cattle, and horses. Several Kongolese were sent to Portugal for education, while Portuguese priests, artisans, merchants, and soldiers found a place in the kingdom. None of this worked as planned, however, and by the early sixteenth century, Kongo was in disarray and the authority of its ruler greatly undermined. This was the context in which its monarch Nzinga Mbemba, whose Christian name was Affonso I, wrote a series of letters to King Jao of Portugal in 1526, two of which are presented here.
from doing so, in one well-known case, quite early in the slave trade era, an African ruler sought to curtail it. This occurred in the kingdom of Kongo, in what is now Angola (see the map above). That state had welcomed Portuguese traders as early as the 1480s, as its rulers imagined that an alliance with Portugal could strengthen their regime. The royal family converted to Christianity and encouraged the importation of European guns, cattle, and horses. Several Kongolese were sent to Portugal for education, while Portuguese priests, artisans, merchants, and soldiers found a place in the kingdom. None of this worked as planned, however, and by the early sixteenth century, Kongo was in disarray and the authority of its ruler greatly undermined. This was the context in which its monarch Nzinga Mbemba, whose Christian name was Affonso I, wrote a series of letters to King Jao of Portugal in 1526, two of which are presented here.
- According to King Affonso, how had the Portuguese connection in general and the slave trade in particular transformed his state?
- How did the operation of the slave trade in Kongo differ from that of Whydah as described in Document 2? How did the rulers of these two states differ in their relationship to Europeans?
- To what extent did Affonso seek the end of the slave trade? What was the basis for his opposition to it? Do you think he was opposed to slavery itself?
- What did Affonso seek from Portugal? What kind of relationship did he envisage with the Portuguese?