Olaudah Equiano During The Middle Passage

In the beginning time of the North American colonies, the slave trade became extremely popular and vital to the culture and economy of America. People from Africa were enslaved and sent on ships across the Atlantic to North America; this voyage was called the Middle Passage. “The North American colonies remained peripheral markets for the European slaving industries in the Atlantic, which, in the years before about 1800, delivered 90 percent or more of their captives to the West Indies, Brazil, and the mainland colonies of Spain.” (Miller) Several individuals kept record of their slave experience, and many of these tended to be very violent and terribly inhumane. One such person to record his journey was Olaudah Equiano, who was separated from
his family and sent across the Atlantic to be sold off after arriving in the West Indies, writing about it in The Interesting Narrative of The Life of Olaudah Equiano. Olaudah Equiano shares information about the conditions, treatment, and industry of slavery in the 18th century through his autobiography. First of all, the conditions of the slave trade, specifically during the Middle Passage, were awful for Africans as Equiano shares.
“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 himself, almost suffocated us.” (p.171) The extreme lack of room just described is only one of the terrible conditions in which slaves were kept in transport; just like barn animals would be kept. These people were truly treated like garbage and were extremely disrespected as basic human beings. In fact, “Estimates for the total number of Africans imported to the New World by the slave trade range from 25 million to 50 million; of these, perhaps as many as half died at sea during the Middle Passage experience.” (Todd) Before slaves ever made it into the actual slavery world, they had to survive the trip alone which often times didn’t even seem worth surviving to many, including
Olaudah. Besides the conditions of slave transport, the actual treatment of these people was incredibly inhumane as Olaudah’s experiences prove. The condition of transportation was its own area of mistreatment, but the mistreatment through social interactions had a category all of their own. One example of this is how white men would satisfy themselves off of fish in front of the slaves, and then throw the leftovers overboard instead of giving them to those who were starving. “…When they had satisfied themselves with as many as they thought fit, to our astonishment who were on deck, rather than give any of them to us to eat, as we expected, they tossed the remaining fish into the sea again….” (p.173) White men had no respect for the slaves as actual human beings, but more like property of lesser value than themselves. The thought of slavery is directly connected with the thought of mistreating humans: “…the enslavement and trade of Africans, a legacy related to both poverty and racism….” (Darity) To conclude these thoughts, we must recognize that all of the mistreatment was motivated for a desire of money, which was generated by the largely popular slave trade in the 18th century.
“The major reason for bringing all of these Africans to the Americas was the production of cash crops to make profits and satisfy European tastes.” (Kerr-Ritchie) Slaves were, overall, cheap labor and a money maker for any owner. Slaves, like Equiano, were sometimes unaware of their purpose when they were in transportation to the market, but they eventually learned they were merely a piece of property to make money off of. “They told us we were not to be eaten, but to work….” (p.175) The purpose of the slave trade as a successful industry was clear to both the employers and employees by the height of its power, and it seemed completely natural to those who participated in
it. Olaudah Equiano’s personal account of his experience is one of several that have helped us to understand several major factors of the slave trade during the 18th century. He helped expose the terrible conditions in which the slaves were kept during the Middle Passage, helping to explain why so many were killed by the journey alone. He also gave exposure to how the white men extremely mistreated the slaves and failure to acknowledge them as human beings. Lastly, he shed light on how the slave trade was really an industry, but from a worker’s point of view. The pubic knows much more about the harsh reality now than they did during the time it was happening, and this is due, in part, to people like Equiano who shared his own personal experience. “Slave narratives had a dual purpose: exposing the abominations of bondage and persuading a removed readership to actively oppose the institution of slavery.” (Dubcovsky)