Their religions varied—many Africans, especially in Angola, were exposed to Christianity through Portuguese missionaries. Their languages also varied, but, especially among Africans of the same region, were often mutually intelligible. Although captains worried about chaining men of shared backgrounds together, lest they know how to speak to one another and plot insurrection, they also feared chaining together men who could not speak to one another, lest their inability to communicate in their shared distress lead to quarrels and injuries.
Some captains even declined to restrain certain ethnic groups that had proven over time unlikely to rise in revolt. After sixteen hours in the hold, all Africans were herded onto the main deck for about eight hours each day, weather permitting. Africans on the slave ships lived in terror. Many of them had been separated from their friends, families, and communities when first captured, and then separated again aboard ship. They were the victims of often-terrible punishments and sexual exploitation, and many believed that the white men planned to kill and eat them.
Their misapprehension of European cannibalism was actually encouraged by some African elites who manipulated their people with the fear of enslavement. Africans did resist, however. Some committed suicide by jumping overboard, while others refused to eat. The latter were fed with the help of the speculum oris , a scissors-shaped instrument that, with the help of a thumbscrew, forced the jaws open. Officers often treated hunger strikers with special ruthlessness because such acts of resistance were prone to spread.
Slaves revolted nonetheless. They planned their actions carefully, using a variety of means to communicate even while discovering just as many obstacles to effective coordination. The risk of discovery was so great that groups of conspirators were often kept small, with the hope that others would join spontaneously when the time came.
Physical separation hindered communication between males and females, and tensions between ethnic groups, sometimes caused by nothing more than language barriers, also caused problems.
In carrying out an insurrection, many African men benefited from previous experience in the military and, in some cases, with European firearms. Occasionally slaves were able to survive the weaponry arrayed against them and take control of the ship, as they did aboard the Clare in Although several hundred uprisings are known from the records of slave ships, insurrections usually failed and resulted in a large loss of African life and gruesome punishments.
Here those who had bonded over the length of the Middle Passage—through terror, sickness, and resistance—were separated again. Having been known to their custodians on the ship just as numbers, they now were given English names. And, as the historian Marcus Rediker has argued, if they boarded the ship as Igbo, Fante, or Ndongo, they left it enslaved and black.
Encyclopedia Virginia Grady Ave. Virginia Humanities acknowledges the Monacan Nation , the original people of the land and waters of our home in Charlottesville, Virginia. We invite you to learn more about Indians in Virginia in our Encyclopedia Virginia. Skip to content. Contributor: Brendan Wolfe.
Background Tobacco Wrapper. A Chain of Slaves travelling from the Interior. Abolitionist Tea Caddy. Or the Inhumanity of Dealers in human flesh exemplified in Captn. Discipline Aboard Slave Ships. Joseph Cinquez. Bowker and Son, Eltis, David and David Richardson. Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Harms, Robert. New York: Basic Books, Heywood, Linda M. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, Miller, Joseph C.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, Rediker, Marcus. New York: Penguin Books, Smallwood, Stephanie. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, Snelgrave, William. A new account of some parts of Guinea, and the slave-trade. Stanfield, James Field. Observations on a Guinea voyage. In a series of letters addressed to the Rev. Thomas Clarkson. By James Field Stanfield. Mortality in the Middle Passage. There was also a consistency to the mortality figures in this period as well. Given the continuation of the same size of vessels, and the continued use of sailing ships to the end, the times of crossing from the s to the s remained the same.
Nor had feeding and handling the slaves changed at ail. Given the lack of use of steamships, except on a few exceptional voyages, the length of voyage remained steady between the 18th and 19th century. Moreover this had been the range since the middle of the late 18th century. Graph 3: Mean Mortality per Voyage, A venge of 9. Thus more and more ships were arriving at or below the mean rate as the 19th century progressed - a trend that had begun in the 18th centuries and continued on well into the end of the trade see graphs Clearly there were some changes going in either sailing arrangements, housing of slaves aboard ship, or food and water supplied which made it possible for ever greater numbers of ships to arrive at or below the mean mortality and this trend continued over time.
Given its increasing illegality, we know little about the provisioning practices of the traders. But what is also impressive is that the mean mortality remained high in comparison with ail other trades as it had in earlier periods. The mortality suffered by the slaves differed little by national carrier and was not related to the manner of carrying the slaves. No country was any better at maintaining low mortality rates than any other, and the Portuguese, the largest of the slave traders, delivered slaves with the same monthly and daily mortality rates as did the English.
Moreover, despite the very limited. Graphs Slave Mortaiity in the Middie Passage. African origins in the 19th century. In the 19th century, as well as in earlier periods, there was a constant shift in the sources of Africans entering the slave trade. But there was also the influence of European policies which began to reduce the number of in the trade, and slowly force major states in Africa to withdraw from the trade itself, especially after American destinations in the 19th century.
Most of that change would be due to the collapse of slave plantation agriculture in Saint Domingue as a resuit of the. This would represent a major gain in markets for such new sugar and coffee producers as Cuba and south-central Brazil. While the French slave trade still brought slaves into Martinique and Guadeloupe, and Cuba now became a significant importer of slaves, there is little question that Brazil was the primary consumer of slaves in the 19th century.
Though there was a slowdown in the early s because of fears of a closing of the trade, by the s almost 9 out of 10 slaves came to the ports of this major South American slave state see table 2. Cuba's importation of slaves was more erratic in the 19th century, reaching almost 27 slaves per annum in the late s, dropping to only some 6 per annum in the next quinquennium and finally obtai- ning 16 per annum in the late s before being closed down see table 2.
The trade in the 19l century also brought the same higher ratio of maies and adults as had been the norm in the previous years. But, as had occurred earlier, there was variation in the ratios of maies carried in the trade, most likely due to changing conditions of supply within Africa itself. At the same time, there was also some variation in the movement of children and infants in the trade. While on average one quarter of the slaves were children, in the 19th century this ratio.
Commercial organization of the trade. But there were fondamental changes from onward in the ownership of vessels and the national participation in the slave trade. With the end of the French. In the s the British naval blockade moved from a passive intervention on the High Seas, to an active interventionist policy on the African coast itself.
After even the Portuguese agreed to trade only below the Equator and by the late s the British were landing on the African coast to close slave markets. In , for example, the Angolan port of Luanda received some 78 visits of French and British. The resuit was to force a profound change in trading practices. Slave traders could no longer remain for several months in Africa trading for slaves.
This in turn demanded local and by the s and s Brazilian and Cuban factors were living in Africa and purchasing slaves the year round and bulking them until the arrivai of transport. Turn around time now moved from months to days. Impact of the British blockade. The naval blockade itself had impressive results but only moderately the volume of the trade. David Eltis has estimated that between there occurred about 7 slaving voyages from Africa, with the British blockading squadrons taking and condemning 1 ships 7.
There was also a rise in insurance rates as well. And it has been estimated that shipping costs by the s and s represented half the final selling prices on most Cuban routes and somewhat less to Rio de Janeiro. Increasing production and profitability of the slave produced export crops was the main factor influencing this trend, but the closing of supplies surely had an impact as well.
Ownership, costs and supply conditions changed, but overall the manner of moving slaves and selling them in the American markets changed little.
Despite ail their best efforts, the British did not stop the trade until the directly intervened on American soil by closing the ports of Brazil in From that time onward the trade was finally doomed.
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