...incorporates the behaviours and beliefs characteristic of a particular society. More broadly put it signifies what is normal or acceptable in a particular social setting. Slave culture is no different. Though African slaves were shipped from different parts of Africa as individuals, there was no accommodation for the retention of family units. This voyage of death became their common experience. The hardship endured in the crucible of the Atlantic crossing contributed to the state of mind and their view of the new world in which they were exiled. It was this new experience that began to shape the new African Culture. Slaves from differing colonies were thrown together and forced to form communities and work groups. Work dominated their very existence. There was no consideration for their independence or their need for socialization. Family relationships forged by fellow slaves became the foundation on which slave cultural life was built. Within these family groups, not recognised by the European settlers, emerged a broadly based slave culture of beliefs, social organization, and private and communal values, which enabled slaves to cope with the rigors of their life. The promulgation of religious belief and customs was very potent in these family groups. In the confines of the family group, young slaves were taught the religion of their ancestors referred to by the Europeans as African heathenism or obeah . Christianity, introduced by the Europeans, was couched in the...
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...2010-112963 Slave Resistance Paper Due: April 26, 2013 Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life written by Stanley Elkins in 1959 is a controversial seminal piece in the history of slavery. Elkins outlined the problems of slavery in the 1950's, and in depth detail discussed his Theory of Sambo. Elkin's defined Sambo as the standard North American slave personality, a zombie like state of mind, Elkin's believed that slave owners had complete control over a slave's body and mind. He compares slavery in the United States to the concentration camps in Germany. This comparison sparked the most controversy among historians, catapulting Elkin's thesis to become a heavy influence in the study of slavery. After the publishing of Elkin's work, historians shifted their attention away from the slave master's point of view and focused on the daily life of slaves and how they overcame their captivity. The indirect and direct forms of slave resistance disprove Elkin's Theory of Sambo. A vast majority of slaves were shipped from different parts of Africa all having a variety of different ethnic, linguistic and tribal origins fusing together into a new melting pot community upon their arrival in North America. Slaves had formed a culture, and an identity through southern institution, they had a strong family life, religion, education and rebellions to help form and shape slave culture and define the slave community. Family life among the slave community was...
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...The life of a slave in the West Coast of Africa Slavery was a time when people were treated unfairly and inhuman. Millions of innocent men, women, and children were held captive and died during this time. Slavery started in Africa but it became popular in the West Coast of Africa, where slavery was taking place at its fullest. Even though slavery in Africa was a common way of life for the people that lived there, it was not until the British came to the West Coast is when slavery became an economic interest, and was based on the trade and selling of slaves. Slavery had no age or gender. There were men, women and children and many members of their families that were taken into slavery. Men and young boys were mostly traded off to be sold during the middle passage. They were traded and sold to work in the in sugar “plantations in the Caribbean Brazil and Louisiana” (p. 107, Abina and the important men) were in need of strong healthy men and that were able to bear the harsh conditions of labor. Even though there were healthy young men and others who were young, these slaves were not lasting more than 7 years. They would die, after they died they would soon be replaced by others slaves. During the middle passage, there was an estimation of about 12.5 million Africans sold to be transferred and shipped to the Americas and other regions where labor was in high demand. This transfer and sale of slaves was taking place in the West Coast of Africa, there was an estimation of 74,000...
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...Before the slave trade started, slaves worked for the Caribbean owners for their plantations. The Caribbean owners treated slaves like they were cows, and not humans like themselves. “One English Gentlemen commented that slaves were like cows, “as hear as beasts may be, setting their soul aside” (486). The slave trade began in the mid fifteen century, the owners started to ship slaves from and to Europe, North and East Africa, around the red sea and more locations to come. The Islamic trade started capturing salves and removing them from their homes for enslavement in the Muslim lands. When it came to European slavers they had more interest in traditional African practices of Pawn ship, “The use of humans “pawn” to secure European commodities in advance of the delivery of slaves” (488). If a trailer failed to deliver his slaves as he said her would, whichever slaves the trailer pawned was getting sold, because he didn’t meet the standards and commit to his promise. There is a method called Ekpe, which is held by a secret male society that enforces payments of promised slave deliveries also. After a while Ekpe became more powerful, and supplying the slave trade in the port of Old Calabar. Now that slave trading has been going on for a while, around the African coast side there was a great amount slaves deaths because of the hostage in vast camps holds diseases and hunger were rampant. The slaves were forced to be in a cramped and crowded area among other slaves that might have...
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...Jeffrey Perez HIS-106D Atlantic Slave Trade Analysis The two sources I chose to analyze are “Instructions to an overseer” and “Examples of resistance among slaves”. They felt like these were the best two sources to use show how the Atlantic Slave Trade was really like and what some of the slaves experienced. Both sources are descriptive but don’t go into detail, mostly explains how things were ran at a farm or plantation in the south during these times. Researchers also explain in these two sources how the work on the fields was done and what punishment was given for wrong doing done by the laborers. The first of the two sources illustrates the many ways laborers showed defiance against their masters. One of the entries suggests that some slaves did eventually get away; it says that two of them ran away and only Charles got away by shoving one of the men aside in the sheep pen. You can also begin to ask why more slaves didn’t revolt if they were so strong and so many got away eventually. Another overseer Elisha Cain, writes how her slave “Darkey” would disturb practically the whole farm and punishing the slave would only make it worse as she then threatened to poison their food. Its quite understanble why slaves did this but most of them didn’t in fear that they would either be sold or just being whipped was a great chastening. Looking further into the first source it demonstrates that women were used for ploughing just as much as men. It goes step by step as to...
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...its historical struggle with slave trade and colonisation; and its resultant internecine warfare and exploitation of resources. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SLAVE TRADE Slavery is one of the most emotive issues in history. According to Black (2015), slavery is similar to war: in one light, enforced servitude, like large-scale, violent conflict, is easy to define. But, what the slave trade means for the history of East Africa or the Mediterranean lands is different from what it means for the Atlantic world. By the middle of the eighteenth...
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...The Atlantic slave trade started on the Gold Coast, present day Ghana, about twelve million Africans were transported to the America’s. African slaves became the main focus of trade between Africa and Europe. American colonization demanded labor, but since the Native American’s could not work with European’s because theytheir populations were thinning out, they focused on the enslaved African people. African slave trade helped the wealth and growth of America but at the cost of humanity. African American Mosaic by John H. Bracey Jr. tells the stories of the slave trade in West Africa, on the middle passage and in America. It suggests that West Africa were willing to capture other Africans for weapons and wealth. The story of Olaudah Equiano was about how he was kidnapped by other Africans and taken through the woods to the beach where a slave ship was waiting for him. “Was carried on board 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 (Bracey, 16).” This is probably how every African felt when they were forced onto that slave ship to sail to an unknown land. Equiano also talked about how dirty and digusting the slaves ships were. “I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life (Bracey, 16).” Also according to Alexander Falconbridge, “The deck, that...
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...slavery and a slave owner) had no African Americans. To take advantage of the slaves’ oppression, England established Emancipation for Blacks to fight. Blacks joined with the hopes of being free upon England winning the war. Unfortunately for them, the colonist who had later incorporated Blacks into their fighting force won. After the war, the northern states abolished slavery, but the south did not. Slavery was the center of their economy. During the time that the United States of America was being born into a nation. One of the founding fathers Thomas Jefferson (another advocate for slavery and slave owner) was at the Aid of Napoleon. The Atlantic slave trade was becoming unpopular in the West, Haiti was in a state of rebellion, and America due to international pressure voted to opt out of the slave trade. Though they voted to discontinue the Atlantic slave trade during the Constitutional convention, it lingered on for twenty years. The vote wouldn’t be put into effect until after Napoleons’ failure, and Louisiana was sold to the English colonist by the French who returned to France. After 1808, no more Africans were bought to the United States. Cotton was on the rise and the domestic slave trade had begun. The South did everything to hold on to slavery. They even manipulated the system by counting slaves as people in the census though at the time blacks were not considered people. This allowed thee South to have greater representation in government. Lives of slaves were ruined...
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...Atlantic Slave Trade In the mid-1400s, Portuguese ships sailed down to West African coast to avoid the Islamic North Africa that has monopolized the trade of sub-Saharan gold, spices, and other commodities that Europeans wanted. During these voyages there were many maritime discoveries that were unknown to European’s traditional limit of navigation, south of Cape Bojador, which with time will make it easier for them to navigate the Atlantic. At the beginning, Portuguese were only in the search of gold and other commodities, but with time their interest also went to the African people. Lancarote de Lagos, a Portuguese navigator, sailed in the Senegal River and captured a group of Africans and carried them off into slavery. During this period, race was not a major factor to be carried into slavery. Slaves were composed of many individuals of different ethnicities who were captured after a war, had a debt, and other situations. The Atlantic slave trade was set in motion mostly for the production of sugar. Nowadays, the production of such a benign thing such as sugar to have caused a massive slave trade is really hard to understand. However in those days sugar was not taken for granted. European’s ever-growing sweet tooth was the driving force for the development of the Atlantic world. Because the work of growing sugar was so burdensome, free workers would not do it willingly and that is why the industry came to depend upon slave labor. Starting in 1492 when Christopher Columbus...
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...Nischal Aryal Prof. Vandament Hist. 1301-73009 (11:00) April 20, 2016 Movie Review 12 Years a Slave Director Steve McQueen directed a masterpiece movie resembling the life story of a African American Solomon Northup a free man, is kidnapped and forced into slavery under the name 'Platt' for 12 years. Based on a true an incredible true story of one man's fight for survival and freedom, “12 Years a Slave” is a historical movie explaining a picture perfect definition of Slave Culture in Pre-Civil War United States. A freeman in upstate Saratoga Springs, New York in the antebellum era, Solomon Northrup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and his family live an exceedingly regular kind of life – they have jobs, their own home, plenty of friends (both black and white) – and while the emerging specter of slavery is occasionally present, it’s not something that appears to impact Solomon’s individual sense of freedom on a daily basis. Until he was tricked into journeying down to Washington, D.C. to play the violin for a pair of glorified circus tramps, Solomon is drugged and sold into slavery – he literally wakes up one morning in shackles. Waking up in chains and shackles after being kidnapped Solomon was taken to the slave dealer James H. Birch (Pronounced as Bruch in movie), where he tried to convince Bruch that he was a free man but dealer denied to take his shackles off instead called other guy who brutally whipped him with a paddle until it broke and then with a cat-o'-nine tails, delivering...
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...Transatlantic Slave Trade The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade took place across the Atlantic Ocean from the 16th through to the 19th centuries. The vast majority of slaves transported to the New World were Africans from the central and western parts of the continent, sold by Africans to European slave traders who then transported them to North and South America. The numbers were so great that Africans who came by way of the slave trade became the most numerous Old World immigrants in both North and South America before the late eighteenth century. The South Atlantic economic system centered on making goods and clothing to sell in Europe and increasing the numbers of African slaves brought to the New World. This was crucial to those European countries which, in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were vying with each other to create overseas empires. The evolution of slavery is crucial to understanding the importance of currently standing issues. Slavery began in 1440 when Portugal started to trade slaves with West Africa. The first Africans imported to the English colonies were also called “indentured servants” or “apprentices for life”. By the middle of the sixteenth century, they and their offspring were legally the property of their owners. As property, they were merchandise or units of labor, and were sold at markets with other goods and services. By the 17th century, Western Europeans developed an organized system of trading slaves. However...
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...To begin, The Stono Slave Rebellion was the most monumental rebellion organized by slaves against slave owners. The Stono Rebellion took place during the time of colonial history of the United States. The Stono Rebellion occurred in 1739 near the Stono River in South Carolina. To provide a better understanding, the Stono Rebellion was an uprising of slaves who were involved in a march towards freedom, before being defeated by the militia. Although the rebellion was documented via first and second hand reports originally written by Caucasians, two differing accounts of the Stono Slave Rebellion took place. One account of the uprising comes from an unidentified white official in the days after the incident, the other is a family account, passed...
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...Historians usually refer to “the Abolitionist Movement”, as occurring in a distinct time period between the 1700’s and the 1860’s, during which the United States commenced a major effort to put an end to the slave trade. Through this time period, innocent people were torn from their families and homes by white men profiting from the slave trade and forced to traverse to America where they would spend the rest of their lives working without any form of compensation. Upon their capture, slaves would then be sold at auction; whoever had the most money to spend would walk away with the most skilled and strongest slaves available. After being purchased, the slaves would arrive at whatever plantation they would live on under incredibly harsh conditions....
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...Jordan Everitt October 21, 2015 History 1313 Celia, a Slave Trial The presented book, Celia, a Slave Trial, written by Douglas O. Linder, is an in-depth novel about the misfortune of a nineteen year old slave named Celia. For five years, Celia has been placed on a Missouri farm and has been perpetually raped by her fairly older owner. Eventually, Celia reached a climatic part in her life and had enough of being taken advantage of. The night of June 23, 1855, she attacked her owner in her cabin as he approached her and clubbed him fatally. This prompted a murder trial for young Celia and also leveled up as far as controversy about slavery went. Questions about slaves defending themselves against abuse were asked and ideas amongst everyone were...
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...beginning of the suffering for the slaves. There were three main methods that the slave traders used to capture slaves which were tricking, kidnapping and buying them from tribe leaders. To trick the slaves, they would use pieces of colored cloth to lead the slaves to the ship. Once they realized what was happening, it was too late to escape. The slave traders also kidnapped the slaves by force and other tribe leaders would capture people from opposing tribes. Those tribe leaders would sell their prisoners to the slave traders for money. The Middle passage is the journey on board of a slave ship from Africa to the United States. The Middle passage is usually 3-4 weeks long. This journey was very painful because the slaves had little room and little food which made diseases common and spread very quickly. The two leading factors for deaths on a slave ship were starvation (since the food was randomly throw into the crowd from the top) and diseases. The dead bodies would be thrown into the ocean by the Whites. Slaves would also tried to suicide by...
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