Atlantic Slave Trade: African Paths to the Middle Passage
In African Paths to the Middle Passage, Chapter 3 of the Slave Ship, Marcus Rediker discusses the slave sources of Atlantic Slave Trade in the context of the enslavement history inside Africa and the complex African geographical factors from the 15th through 19th century. Rediker points out that enslavement began “in the interior of Africa” and slave trading has a history far before the Atlantic Slave Trade. The African continent had a complex range of “kin-ordered and tributary societies”, and there were lots of wars among these different groups. As an outcome, slavery is an “ancient and widely accepted institution” performed on the war captives by the winning group. It was also performed on criminals from the African societies’ judicial processes. What’s more, slave trading has a history from the seventh century, when Arab merchants traded North African slaves into the trans-Saharan area. Rediker goes on to investigate the different sources and forms of the Atlantic Slave Trade based on six main slaving regions in Africa, and states that the slaves traded were mainly war captives, secondly judicial criminals, and thirdly slaves traded at markets and fairs in the interior of Africa. These traded slaves, in the transition from African to European controls, though produced resistant actions along the way, had to abandon the past and face violence and threats in an uncertain new world.
It is surprising for me to get to know the Atlantic Slave Trade’s beginning phase, as it is not often mentioned in discussions on this topic. The article tells me the fact that African slaves were not slaves originally; rather, they were ordinary people like anyone else, holding ordinary jobs like fishermen and farmers, to earn livings in their societies. It was because of the long existing violence and wars that forced them to become captives and be traded as slaves. This important fact, however, is often neglected when people discuss about slavery and slave trades. The absence of discussion on the facts can be misleading and result in untrue impressions about African slaves. As Miss Ginsburg mentioned in the lecture, people tend to think that “African slaves were slaves”; in another word, people give an over-simplified definition of who they are, as if they were born as slaves. However, as the article suggests, the “African slaves” we are talking about, were not inferior than anyone before they became captives and got traded; rather, they were ordinary people with a similar social status like anyone else.
What’s more, the article shows how culture, economics, power and politics intertwined in the starting phase of the Atlantic Slave Trade. At first, it was difficult for me to understand the reason why African slaves were traded by African merchants and societies, their “own people”. However, as indicated by Rediker, Africa is a continent with lots of diversity and cultures, and people are in different societies that often time have conflicts with each other. Also, it has been a centuries-old practice for the dominating group in Africa to keep another groups as captives or slaves. Violence has also existed for centuries as a method for settling arguments and conflicts. Therefore, influenced by the existing practice and the violent aspect in their cultures, African merchants at the time didn’t have ethical burdens of trading slaves, nor emotional or cultural ties with their slaves.
More importantly, as mentioned by Miss Ginsburg, African trading societies and merchants were incented by the economic opportunities provided at the time. There is a strong relationship between the Atlantic Slave Trade and African societies’ pursuit of power and political status. The slave trade influenced African societies’ social structure and politics. As suggested by Rediker, different African societies benefited from the slave trades, where they could receive higher technologies, like firearms, from the Europeans. With these weapons, they were able to defend themselves and to violently raid and take over other societies, and therefore, establishing a society with bigger power and higher political status. Similarly, African merchants were able to thrive in their societies by accruing money and power, and therefore, improve social class status. What’s more, because of the benefits that these trading individuals and societies could get from the slave trades, the trading individuals and societies tried to maximize their benefits by using their power and the societies’ system. For example, as Rediker suggested, some societies, by using their political systems, let innocent people go through unfair judicial processes in order to make them into criminals and trade them with Europeans. Also, some merchants, like “Captain Lemma Lemma”, who had accumulated money and power from the trades, raided or kidnapped innocent people onto his canoes for slave trading. These examples show how people with dominating power in the societies, incented by a power and economic accumulating motive, took actions that help them maintain their powerful status and could have influence on the society’s structure.
Facing all these hardship, it is moving to know that the traded slaves were not obedient along the way; rather, they resisted “immediately and spontaneously”. Described by Rediker, “people fought back, fled, did whatever they could to escape the enslavers”. From being captives by the enslavers, to the slave ships, to the “completion of the voyage”, to eventually the “plantation societies of the New World”, people didn’t stop resisting, but brought the resistance with them into the “New World”. The “slaves” traded in the Atlantic Slave Trade were not slaves, rather, were strong individuals.
The article broadens the discussion of Atlantic Slave Trade to its beginning phase with regard to African continent’s geographical factors and enslavement history, and helps us to gain a fuller picture of the Atlantic Slave Trade for deeper reflections.
