Slave Ship

The Slave Ship by Marcus Rediker is a great fiction novel that describes the horrifying experiences of Africans, seamen, and captains on their journey through the Middle Passage. The Middle Passage marked the water way in the Atlantic Ocean between Africa and the Americas. The use of slaves provided a great economy for the European countries due to the fact that these African slaves provided free labor while cultivating sugar cane in the Caribbean and America. Rediker describes the slave migration by saying, “There exists no account of the mechanism for history’s greatest forced migration, which was in many ways the key to an entire phase of globalization” (10). This tells us that African enslavement to the Americas causes a complete shift in the balance of globalization. Africans who became enslaved were usually prisoners of war between tribes. Merchants would give goods to the chiefs of villages for these people. Men, women, and children were stripped away from their own homes by being kidnapped, as well. These slaves would travel up to six months to the coast of the Atlantic Ocean to reach what is known as the “slave ship”. From here, they were abused by having to live in a harsh environment in the journey through the Middle Passage. Many slaves would not even make it to their destination, but those who did were sold to spend the rest of their life cultivated mainly sugar cane. Rediker offers new insights to human history by researching many documents to find the hard truth in this novel to how slavery was introduced in the Americas. Rediker uses his research to explain how difficult it was for Africans to be introduced to the harsh lifestyle of slavery. He uses many diaries of the slave ships captains, and even a few slaves, to bring to life the brutality that was inflicted to these innocent people emotionally and physically on the slave ship. Africans rebelled constantly against the slave traders every chance they had. They’re very few slaves