Middle Passage Research Paper

The middle passage was the taking of African from Africa to the new world on a ship. It was called the middle passage because it was the middle section of the trade route taken by ships. The first section was the outward passage which was from Europe to Africa. The middle passage took enslaved Africans from their homeland. All were from different countries and most never even seen the sea before. The slaves had no knowledge of where they were going or what was waiting for them.
The slaves were packed below the decks of the ships. The men were usually the ones that were shackled together in pairs using leg irons, or shackles. They considered the men dangerous but they were mostly young, strong, and more likely to turn on the people who captured
them if they had in opportunity to do so. The slaves were packed so close together they could not get to the toilet buckets so they had to lay in their own filth. Sea sickness, heat, and lack of air all were part of the terrible smell. The conditions made it easier to get diseases, mostly fevers and the ‘ Bloody Flux’ or gastroenteritis which is a serious stomach bug.
Africans were often treated like cattle during the crossing.
On the slave ships people were stuffed between decks in spaces too low for standing. The heat was unbearable and the air nearly unbreathable. Women were used sexually, Men were chained in pairs shackled wrist to wrist and ankle to ankle.( Africans in America, part 1, Narrative,The African slave Trade and the middle passage). Slaves were crowded together and forced to lay on their backs with their heads between the legs of each other. This meant they often had to lie in each other's feces,urine,and in case some diarrhea, or even blood. In cramped quarters, diseases such as smallpox and yellow fever spread like wildfire. The people with diseases were sometimes thrown overboard to prevent wholesale
epidemics.
The voyage usually took six to eight weeks, but because of bad weather it increased this to 13 weeks or even more. Few ships crossed the middle passage without any deaths. Some ships lost most of their cargo. The average losses were between 10% and 20%. Through the sickness, suicide, and murder at the hands of the slave crew and captains 10% means over 1,000,000 Africans died on board the ships. The 20% represents over 2,000,000 deaths.
Women and children were often allowed a degree of mobility compared to the bonded men. Without any legal protection African women and children were without defense against crewmen who abused and raped them during the travel to the americas. Shipboard conditions created the environment for contagious sickness which, were the bloody flux, which infected the captives, killing many and reducing others to a wretched state. Some resisted the horrors of the middle passage and the only way slaves could were through starvation and or suicide.(Middle passage, Slavery and Remembrance). The true death rate for Africans transported to the Americas were very high then approximately one million that died during the middle passage. It included those who died in Africa when their communities were attacked. Followed by the march to the coast and those who died shortly after arriving to the Americas. The middle passage was but one of many horrific journeys experienced by enslaved Africans. Countless captives died along African slave routes through deserts,forests, or interior waterways. Through the great majority of Africans survived the crossing. More than one million died during the middle passage.
Many men, women, and children slave survivors stepped ashore tired and often sick. In the first three years ashore in Brazil and the caribbean, the high death rates were likely due more to the victims experience on the ships and in Africa than to life in the Americas. The middle passage did not complete the forced journey of African captives. From points of arrival in American port cities, Captives were subsequently taken over land or water on lengthy passages that took survivors to the mines, field, and houses of their New World Owners. For many Africans who survived the atlantic journey only to labor in harsh conditions in America perhaps it seemed that the middle passage never really ended.
An examination of many sources dealing with west and west central African slaving activities strongly indicates that many, if not most captive Africans, were stripped of their clothing. Not long after their capture or during their treks overland n coffles or riverine transport from interior to coastal ports. The trips could sometimes last months, and even take place over many miles, and involve any number of African middlemen slave traders. Clothing could range from elaborate robes or gowns made from woven fabrics, and skirts, or loincloths or breechcloths of various styles and materials, depending on the cultural area and socioeconomic level of the captive. If not completely naked of their clothing during their transportation to coastal points. When captives were loaded on the slave vessel, The evidence indicates their clothing was removed and the transatlantic crossing was usually made in state of nudity, in ragged or tattered loincloths, breechcloth,or some form of coverings(Middle passage, Slavery and Remembrance). In order to demonstrate this and what follows. “I give examples of evidence from primary sources”( J Handler). It’s stressing that although this evidence is widely scattered, never detailed, and is usually quite fragmentary and sketchy, if not ambiguous, it provides a more or less consistent picture. Africans reporting on their experiences offer several examples of clothing removal. Augustino was shipped across the atlantic to Brazil in 1830,when he was about 12 years old.Testifying through an interpreter. “ when we were put on board the slave ship the clothes of all negroes going on board the ship were stripped off them even to the last rag”(Augustino). Ali Eisami from the Empire of Bornu in today’s Northern Nigeria was captured and sold to Europeans in 1818. On the slave ship they took away all the small pieces of cloth which were on their bodies and threw them into the water. Abu Bakr was captured in warfare around 1805 and on that same day they made him a captive. They tore off his clothes and bound him with ropes. Examples from European sources are numerous but are never detailed. “Planters buy newly arrived Africans out of the ships where they found them stark naked and therefore could not be deceived in any outward infirmity(Richard Ligon).
Slave trading between Europeans and African began in the early 1600’s: Curtin came up with two theories for this trading of captured and the sale of Africans in his book. One was that slaves raiding of African communities,It became an economic activity consciously pursued for the sake of the European imports that could be bought with slaves and slaves alone. The other one was that african societies like those people in other places settled disputes by military means. Warfare produced prisoners of war who can be killed, enslaved, or exchanged.
Many of the sales had the full cooperation of African kings and merchants who in return they received enslaved men, women, and even children.
Trade between the europeans and Africans created the first route of the triangular slave trade.Europeans brought to goods like cooper, cloth, silks. Glassware etc to Africa in exchange for slaves. For weeks,months, and even years the slaves waited in dungeons of the slave factories around the Africa’s western coast.Slaves had already made the journey from africa’s interior but just barely. 20 million slaves were taken from their homes, sold into slavery, and half didn’t finish the journey to the African Coast because most of them died along the way. African slaves were about to take on the journey through the middle passage, it began and ended in
Europe. The first leg of the voyage carried the cargo that often included iron,cloth,brandy,firearms, and even gunpowder.When landing on the Africa’s slave coast the cargo was exchanged for Africans. Loaded with its human cargo the ship sailed for the americas.The slaves were exchanged for sugar, tobacco, or some different products.The final leg brought the ship back to Europe, The African slaves had no idea where they were going. Slaves who had made the middle passage to the plantations of the new world did not return to their homeland to tell what happened to the people who had disappeared out of nowhere .White men usually told the slaves that they were to work in the fields.More than a few thought that the European men we’re cannibals. “When he looked around the ship too and saw a large furnace of copper boiling,and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, he no longer doubted of his fate and quite overpowered with horror and anguish,he fell motionless on the deck and fainted”(Olaudah Equiano). The slaves were branded with hot irons and restrained with shackles. Their living living quarters was often a deck within the ship that had less than five feet of headroom. Throughout a large portion of the deck,sleeping shelves cut this limited amount of headroom in half, lack of standing headroom was not the most worries of the slaves.
With 300 to 400 people packed in a tiny space called area5. Area5 was an area with little ventilation and in some cases not even enough space to place buckets for human waste. Disease was prevalent. The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn themselves and it almost suffocated them. That produced copious perspirations, and the air soon became unfit for respiration. From variety of loathsome smells and brought on a sickness among the slaves many had died.
A middle passage from Africa to American jews traces the forced migration of 300,000 African slaves who left the gold coast which is known today as Ghana in a fifty year period from 1675 to 1725.These slaves didn’t make up the most largest number of Africans exported from west during the century. American born slaves were favored by the slave owners and even the enslaved were clear advantages to having been born in the americas. The two groups often looked down on new arrived african captives who they called the newcomers and or saltwater negroes. The history of slavery in the Americas began in Africa
The slaves owners were to be compensated as slaves were emancipated. Resolving the complaint that the ending of slavery represented a deprivation of the slave owners right to their properties.American society members actively asked congress for funds to pay for the repatriation on slaves to Africa.One plan called for taxes on slaves and free blacks to subsidize the repatriation of approximately 2,096 people a year.
Faced with harsh conditions the voyage and the future that laid beyond, many Africans preferred to die. Even the choice of suicide was taken away from the slaves. The captain's point of view was the human cargo was very valuable and had to be kept alive and uninjured.Slaves who tried to starve themselves was tortured.If the torture didn't work the slaves was forced fed with the help of a speculum orum which held the mouth open.(Africans in America,part1,The middle passage)
Despite the captain's desire to keep as many slaves alive as possible , the middle passage rates were high although it’s hard to figure out how many Africans died in the route to the new world. Slave captains dated chiefly off the guinea coast for a month to a year to trade for their cargoes of 150 to 600 people. Most of them had been taken from their homes and forced to march to the coast under bad conditions. While at sea and after departure from Africa those who were on the ships were around continuous dangers, such as raids at port by hostile tribes, epidemics, attack by pirates or enemy ships and bad weather.
Although these different things affected the ships crews as well as the enslaved. They had to deal with sexual,physical,and psychological abuse at the hands of the captain’s.Africans who survived the initial horrors of captivity revolted.Males were constantly shackled together to prevent mutiny of which 55 detailed accounts were recorded between 1699 and 1845.
. Slaves were wedged belowdecks and chained to low platforms stacked in tiers. The average individual space was 6 feet long and 16 inches wide and 3 feet high. Not able to stand up or turn over many slaves died in this position. In the daytime, slaves were brought on deck for exercise or for dancing which was forced jumping up and down. At that time some of the captains wanted the sleeping quarters scraped and cleaned by the crew. In bad weather the heat and noxious fumes in the unventilated and unsanitary holds caused fevers with high mortality rate. Deaths during the middle passage, caused by epidemics and even suicide. The middle passage supplied the new world with its major workforce and brought enormous profits to international slave traders. The same time it exacted a terrible price in physical and emotional anguish on part of the uprooted Africans. The captains didn’t provide any kind of hygiene. In the other boats the captains placed buckets for slaves but there was never one bucket per slave. Slaves who were closed to the buckets used it those who were farther away often tumbled and fell on others while trying to reach it. Severely hindered by shackles that were tightly secured around their ankles. Slaves preferred to ease themselves where they were rather than to bruise themselves in the process of trying to reach it. Although the crew avoided the slaves they would often call the women on the deck to satisfy their desires. When the weather was bad the conditions of the dramatically worsened the slaves holding the quarters were so hot and humid that the floor of their rooms was covered with layers of filth during most of the voyage (Among the traders). Suicide on the ships occurred daily and in painfully cruel ways. Slaves tried jumping overboard and even asked others to strangle them. One of the most common way to avoid punishment was to not eat. Starvation suicide attempts became common that a device was introduced to forcefully open mouths of slaves who refused to eat to make them eat. Some slaves believed that their death would return them to their homeland and to their friends and relatives. To prevent slaves from killing themselves the captain’s began to chop the heads of corpses so that it was implying that when they died they would return to their homes headless. Food was a very big problem for the slaves and captains. The captains thought food was too expensive and tire to buy as little food as they could.(Among the traders).