Old Calabar: An Inaccurate Portrait Of The African Slave

lavery has long existed throughout the continent of Africa. Millions of persons were bought and sold into forced labor by merchants and forced to travel to unfamiliar towns to work for unfamiliar masters. Many accounts of the times are available and they portray the slave trading business from multiple perspectives. These narratives provide an insight into how the business was ran by merchants. They also detail the hardships experienced by those traded like animals. When reading accounts from both sides, you see how truly unfair the business was. Antera Duke’s diary paints an inaccurate portrait of the African slave trade by making it out to be business as usual. Meanwhile, Mahommah Baquaqua’s autobiography shines light on the harsh
It is immediately apparent from the journal just how little conscious thought and consideration went through the minds of the slave traders as they exchanged persons for goods such as iron rods. Antera and his fellow merchants were participating in an obvious form of human domestication; treating the slaves as if they were livestock. The slaves were traded for goods daily as if they were just an asset to the merchants, like a bag of sugar. The slaves were bought/sold/traded away like candy in an elementary school lunchroom. No consideration of human feelings went into the transactions. No thoughts of the ramifications and struggles the merchants were implementing onto those taken from their homelands and sold into forced unpaid labor in an unfamiliar town. There was no consideration of the families being torn apart or the lives being destroyed. “Captain Burrow’s tender went away with 430 slaves.” (Diary of Antera Duke, 141). It was as if the slaves were just a number or just another good open for trade. In short, they were treated like anything but fellow human beings. It is sickening to see how these people’s lives
One side tells the cold-blooded and heartless business aspect of the slave trade while the other provides a window into the immensely difficult life of a common African slave. It is hard to believe that Antera could be so thoughtless and unemotional in his trading of persons as goods. To Antera, a slave was not a human being at all, they were simply an asset to be bought and sold for his own prosperity. Mahommah showed that slaves were people too, and that they were human beings unjustly and wrongly sold into awful lives as forced laborers with no payment. When Antera sold a slave he saw it strictly as a money making transaction, he paid no mind to the lives he was ruining and the lifelong repercussions of his actions. It would be interesting to see Antera Duke spend one day enduring the struggles experienced by Mahommah on a daily basis. Maybe then Antera would have more to complain about than rainy weather or a scarcity of whisky. At times, Antera acted like he had it so rough in life, having to pay large debts he owed to other merchants. How he could be so oblivious to how well he had it compared to those he bought and sold heartlessly? Antera’s narrative tells the story of the failed attempt to domesticate humans as if they were animals. Mahommah’s story tells the tale of a slave overcoming immense hardships while proving that slaves never lose touch with what it means