Amistad History

522 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Amistad movie essay

Amistad (1997) is a historical film directed by Steven Spielberg and is based on a well-known 1839 uprising of African tribesmen. Director Steve Spielberg successfully presented the David Franzoni's book Munity on the Amistad: The Saga of a Slave Revolt and Its Impact on American Abolition, Law and Diplomacy (1987) on the screen by making this epic historical movie. The story is about how a group of African slaves suffered through the painstaking experience of being enslaved by Spanish slave owners and eventually set free under the help of a couple of American anti-slavery abolitionists.
The Spanish Slave ship La Amistad carries abducted African slaves from Sierra Leone and bring them to Cuba for international slave trade. Cinque, the leader of the …show more content…

The African slaves keep the captain alive and force him to navigate them back to Africa. However, the captain tricks the slaves and sail to United States instead. La Amistad is found by American military vessel. Amistad is soon confiscated and the slaves are imprisoned while the court determines whether the slaves will be freed. Spain, Great Britain and US have prohibited international slave trade but the Spanish slave owner claims the slaves were born in Cuba and are legal slaves. Abolitionist Theodore Joadson, activist Lewis Tappan, and an attorney specializing in property law, Roger Sherman Baldwin decided to help Cinque and the rest of the slaves retrieve their freedom and go back home. However, when they communicate about how to solve this case, neither side can understand each other because of language barriers. Fortunately, they eventually find a black sailor James Covey from the navy as the translator who speaks both English and the African language. Thus Cinque is

Show More
Related

  • Summary Of Ira Berlin, Generations Of Captivity?

    1823 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Tran-Atlantic slave exchange established the framework for present day entrepreneurship, creating riches for business endeavors in American and Europe society. The exchange added to the industrialization of a numerous continents’ surrounding the Atlantic area. Several of the areas where located in northwestern Europe, also the western part of Europe, the North, and South, and the Caribbean Islands. According to assign readings and observing other resources providing, the slave trade revealed deceptive inequity toward the people in America and European. There was other culture considered besides black that was residing within the domains of these state and continents. If an individual was not considering white, it is believed that the

    Read More

  • Jaws Use Of Cinematography In Jaws

    625 Words  | 2 Pages

    Jaws is a 1975 thriller that was directed by Steven Spielberg and is also based on a 1974 nook with the same name. The film is about a great white shark attacking Amity Island which is obviously not real but a fictional resort.

    Read More

  • Olaudah Equiano Thesis

    634 Words  | 2 Pages

    The North American Slave Trade began when slave traders started to kidnap people of all ages from West Africa. They were forced to endure unspeakable horrors on their trek across the Atlantic as well as when they were finally sold into slavery in the Americas. Olaudah Equiano was one of the few Africans to document his experience on paper, and have his two volume autobiography published. The journey Olaudah suffers through showed the horrors of the trip across the atlantic, but also showed how what he thought and felt about the process as well.

    Read More

  • Abina And The Important Men Analysis

    1051 Words  | 3 Pages

    Ever since there has been humanity, slavery has been a mechanism used by people in order to subjugate and dehumanize other individuals. Abina and the Important Men is a book that illustrates how slavery was still able to manifest, even after it had been abolished within British society. By enslaving young women under the false pretense that the individuals were wards, powerful African leaders and British rulers were able to maintain a social hierarchy where African women occupied the lowest rung. The trafficking of Africans through the Transatlantic Slave Trade, brought wealth to European and other western nations as well as African leaders who were willing to cooperate. Europeans, such as the Portuguese, British, and French, first began arriving to Africa in the 16th century since they were drawn by the valuable resources that could be found in coastal, African societies.

    Read More

  • Indentured Servitude and Slavery in the New World

    1072 Words  | 3 Pages

    Equiano was the youngest of his brothers who enjoyed playing outside throwing javelins enjoying the normal life of a small child. At the beginning of the day, the elders would leave their children at home while they went out into the fields to work. While they were gone, some of the children would get together to play but always took precautions of potential kidnappers. Even with all these precautions, people were still seized from their homes and taken away. Equiano was home one day with his little sister tending to the everyday household needs when out of nowhere they were captured by a couple men who had gotten over the walls. They had no time to resist or scream for help before they found themselves bound, gagged, and being taken away. Equiano had no idea where these people were taking him and they didn’t stop once until nightfall where they stayed until dawn. He tells us about how they traveled for many days and nights not having any clue where they were going or when they would get there. Slaves traveled by land and by sea, but Equiano’s journey was by sea. He tells us how he was carried aboard and immediately chained to other African Americans that were already on the ship. Once the ship halted on land, Equiano along with many other slaves were sent to the merchant’s yard where they would be herded together and bought by the

    Read More

  • Slavery John Barabot Summary

    1272 Words  | 3 Pages

    One of the major questions asked about the slave trade is ‘how could so Europeans enslave so many millions of Africans?” Many documents exist and show historians what the slave trade was like. We use these stories to piece together what it must have been to be a slave or a slaver. John Barbot told the story of the slave trade from the perspective of a slaver in his “A Description of the Coasts of North and South Guinea.” Barbot describes the life of African slaves before they entered the slave trade.

    Read More

  • The History of Slavery in the United States

    1435 Words  | 3 Pages

    An estimated 8 to 15 million Africans reached the Americas between the 16th and 19th century. Only the youngest and healthiest slaves were taken for what was called the middle passage of the triangle trade, partly because they would be worth more in the Americas, and they were also the most likely to reach their destination alive. Conditions aboard the ship were very gruesome; slaves were chained to one anoth...

    Read More

  • Reversing the Master and Slave Role in Benito Cereno

    1088 Words  | 3 Pages

    In "Benito Cereno," Captain Delano's extreme naivete and desensitization towards slavery greatly affect his perceptions while aboard the San Dominick. Delano's racial stereotypes, views of master and slave relationships, and benevolent racism mask the true reality of what was occurring on board despite his constant uneasiness and skepticism. At a time when slave revolts were not unusual, the slave conditions aboard the San Dominick should have made more of an impact on Delano.

    Read More

  • Pre-Colonial African Slavery: An Analysis

    1542 Words  | 4 Pages

    The transatlantic slave trade paved the way for mass distribution of the human civilizations strongest labor force. The thought of using other humans as a means of production was first internal only within Africa but as other nations began to witness the degradation of one race, they saw an opportunity to tap into the weakened morals of one race which in turn allowed the Africans to fall into a lower class. Thus began the dispersion of slaves to other nations needing to fill the labor gap. An event that represents the beginning moment of the trans-Atlantic slave trade within the readings arise when Equiano was on watch with one of his sisters and was kidnapped by a group of people. Ever since Equiano was kidnapped, he was sold numerous times through different masters and traveled coast to coast. Equiano also witnessed the first time in his life a slave ship that was filled with black people of every description chained together with dejection and sorrowful expressions, and it was then that he realized the future that awaits him. Through the descriptions and Equiano’s wish for his former slavery in preference to the present condition he was in, we can imagine how awful and dehumanizing the slaves were being treated on shore. According to Equiano, many of the African slaves had the unpleasant personalities and traits that were similar with the white slave owners on the ship because of the close interaction that they had with each other. According to Gomez’s Reversing Sail, the beginning moment of the trans-Atlantic slave trade occurred because “Muslim forces in al-Andalus were never in control of the entire Iberian Peninsula and were continually threatened by Christian enemies during their nearly 800-year rule” (Gomez 59). As a result, “in both Iberia and the

    Read More

  • Amistad

    639 Words  | 2 Pages

    Amistad is about a mutiny in 1839 aboard a slave ship, La Amistad, which eventually comes to port in New England. The West Africans who have commandeered the ship are taken into custody and the plot revolves around who "owns" them or if, indeed, they should be freed. This sets up the main event of the film, a courtroom drama about rights and origins, with the required flashbacks to the voyage and the gruesome conditions aboard the ship. The problem with this approach is that we learn less about the real conditions of slavery and instead focus on the more sanitized conditions surrounding the courtroom. In addition, we get a film which is largely about the efforts of the whites battling the case and much less about the struggles of the Africans themselves.

    Read More

  • Slavery In The United States

    1484 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout this essay I explained the movie Amistad and how race relations were seen throughout the movie. This movie really helps people see how horrible it was for African Americans back in 1839-1842. The movie showed the bias that this country had against people from Africa and how horrible our country treated slaves. Through John Quince Adams speech it stated how the problem was going to be fixed, and that was through a civil war.

    Read More

  • The Extreme Cruelty of the Middle Passage

    1719 Words  | 4 Pages

    There is no other experience in history where innocent African Americans encountered such a brutal torment. This infamous ordeal is called the Middle Passage or the “middle leg” of the Triangular Trade, which was the forceful voyage of African Americans from Africa to the New World. The Africans were taken from their homeland, boarded onto the dreadful ships, and scattered into the New World as slaves. 10- 16 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic during the 1500’s to the 1900’s and 10- 15 percent of them died during the voyage. Millions of men, women, and children left behind their personal possessions and loved ones that will never be seen again. Not only were the Africans limited to freedom, but also lost their identity in the process. Kidnapped from their lives that throbbed with numerous possibilities of greatness were now out of sight and thrown into the never-ending pile of waste. The loathsome and inhuman circumstances that the Africans had to face truly describe the great wrongdoing of the Middle Passage.

    Read More

  • Triangular trade

    346 Words  | 1 Pages

         On the second leg of this trade slaves were transported to the West Indies, this leg was called the middle passage. This part was horrible for the slaves. About 50% of all the slaves on one ship would not make it to the West Indies because of disease or brutal mistreatment. Hundreds of men, women and children were cramped together for most of the journey, occasionally able to move an almost decent amount.      On the third leg of the journey slaves were traded for sugar, molasses and other products.

    Read More

  • Freedom: To the African American Slave

    1102 Words  | 3 Pages

    Olaudah Equiano was not an American born slave. He was born and raised well into his childhood in Africa with his family. His slave narrative, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustav Vassa, the African, published in New York in 1791 however, had a lasting impact on America as it described the inhumane treatment of Africans being sold into slavery (Baym 1: 687). Equiano’s initial concept of freedom stemmed from his childhood of which he speaks very fondly, describing his homeland as a “nation of dancers, musicians and poets,” a...

    Read More

  • Amistad Movie Analysis

    892 Words  | 2 Pages

    The film Amistad is based on a true event that occurred in 1839. It is about a mutiny by recently captured slaves, who take over a ship known as La Amistad, and the legal battle that followed regarding their freedom. The movie begins by showing many Africans chained together on the lower deck of La Amistad. They manage to break free and go to the upper deck and attack the sailors, leading a mutiny and taking over the ship. They leave two men alive to guide them back to Africa, but they point them towards the US. When they arrive in the states, the Africans are thought to be runaway slaves, and are imprisoned. The case of their freedom is taken to court, to decide whether the Africans were originally slaves or free men. One lawyer decides to fight for them, and pleads his case that the Africans were never slaves and were indeed free men. The case eventually makes it to the Supreme Court and a translator is eventually found to communicate with the leader of the Africans, and he tells his story. He was one of many illegally captured in Africa, and sold into slavery. When the time comes for the trial, John Quincy Adams pleas for their freedom. After a grueling trial, the slaves are said to be free men, and are to be sent back to their homeland, Africa.

    Read More

More about Amistad History

Open Document