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British empire and slave trade essay
European slave trade
African Americans and slavery
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Many African Americans were captured and enslaved, while others were taken and enslaved. In the 1860s, ships were built to transport Africans to America. There were about three hundred recorded slave ships throughout the 1800s. Only about forty, of those three hundred, were infamous and well worth researching. Three of the most merciless and inhumane slave ships of all time were The Wanderer, The Hannibal, and The Henrietta Marie.
Upon ending the slave trade in all British colonies in 1808, the British began pressuring other nations to end their slave trades. Built in 1857, The Wanderer was built as a cargo ship (Grets). Once the ship was built, architects noticed the precise structure of the ship and recommended racing (Grets). The ship was measured 114 feet and weighing over 234 tons (Grets). Around 1858 William Corrie bought the ship out of greed then transformed The Wanderer into a slave ship (Grets). The vessel transported approximately 490 slaves from Africa, all the way to Cumberland Island, Georgia (Grets). The ship was one of Georgias last recorded slave ship (Grets). An outrage in the North caused the federal government to convict the owner of The Wanderer. The Union produced the ship as multi used ship during the Civil War. The six-week journey across the Atlantic caused many of the slaves to parish from sickness and torture (Grets). “The slaves who arrived in the United States on the Wanderer gained a celebrity status that spread beyond the south to newspapers in New York, Washington, and London.” (Phillips) Because of the ship they arrived on, the slaves were immediately indentified with the ship (Grets). Newspapers and private corresponders took the time to identify each individual slave and graphed the likely hood o...
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... (Lukee 3). Not one survivor emerged from the wreckage and the fate of the ship lasted unknown for almost three centuries (Lukee 2). The wrecked slave ship was found in 1972, during a magnetometer survey, operated by a subsidiary of Mel Fisher's Treasure Salvors, Inc (Lukee 4). Some artifacts were collected from the wreck that included bilboes and iron shackles that were used to restrain slaves (Lukee 4). When they realized that the wreck was most likely a slave ship and not a treasure ship, the company reburied the ancient findings and pieces of the ship hull that they had exposed and left the site.
Slave ships were not at first exposed as hell ships, but after marine biologists and geologist found some of these ships wreckage the secrets could no longer be held in. The most inhumane slave ships of all time were The Wanderer, The Hannibal, and The Henrietta Marie.
In 1756 Olaudah Equino was kidnapped and taken to a slave ship which is when his nightmare and battle with slavery began. Equiano and his countrymen were chained together and treated extremely badly. I've never heard of animals being kept in a worse place than the slaves aboard the ship. Below decks on the ship is where the real horrors took place. There were hundreds of slaves packed into a very sma...
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...
African slaves were brought to the America’s by the millions in the 17th and 18th century. The Spanish and British established lucrative slave trades within Africa and populated their new territories with captured and then enslaved Africans. The British brought the slaves to their new colonies in North America to work on the large plantations and the Spanish and Portuguese brought the slaves to South America. Slavery within North and South America had many commonalities yet at the same time differences between the two institutions.
On July 11, 1761, a slave ship from Fula, West Africa docked in Boston, Massachusetts (Weidt 7). John Wheatley, a wealthy merchant and a tailor, and his wife, Susanna, were at the auction searching for younger, more capable slaves (Weidt 9). Among those chosen, they picked a cheaply priced girl, estimated by her missing front teeth to be about seven or eight years old (Weidt 7). She was also chosen because Susanna felt sorry for her, probably because she was so emaciated (Weidt 9). Because the little girl had no identity, as it was left behind in West Africa, the Wheatleys needed to name her. Like all slave owners, they gave the young girl their last name (Weidt 10). Her first name came from the ship she was on, Phillis, which was owned by Timothy Fitch (Mason 3).
Almost as soon as the United States became an independent nation, a law was passed in 1794 to attempt to put an end to the slave trade. “An act to prohibit the carrying on of the slave trade from the United States to any foreign place or county”, it also prohibited any slave ships from being
conditions aboard ship were dreadful. The maximum number of slaves was jammed into the hull, chained to forestall revolts or suicides by drowning. Food, ventilation, light, and sanitatio...
It all began in the cold month of January, 1840, in a town familiar to many; New Orleans. Fog laid a heavy blanket on the streets and alleyways of the city. Rain steadily engulfed the seaside locality, and the sound of drunken riverboat men and the slaves celebrating their terrible festivities surrounded the area. New Orleans was the location where Jessie Bollier lived, and 'tis the place where he was captured on that dark January evening. Jessie then found himself aboard The Moonlight, the slaver with its towering sails and masts, cabins and storage space under the deck. For these were places where Jessie had to 'dance the slaves' and where the captain and crew would spend many weeks living in fear of the slaves, of each other, and of getting caught.
For most American’s especially African Americans, the abolition of slavery in 1865 was a significant point in history, but for African Americans, although slavery was abolished it gave root for a new form of slavery that showed to be equally as terrorizing for blacks. In the novel Slavery by Another Name, by Douglas Blackmon he examines the reconstruction era, which provided a form of coerced labor in a convict leasing system, where many African Americans were convicted on triumphed up charges for decades.
The film “Slavery by another name" is a one and a half hour documentary produced by Catherine Allan and directed by Sam Pollard, and it was first showcased by Sundance Film Festival in 2012. The film is based on Douglas Blackmonbook Slavery by Another Name, and the plot of the film revolves around the history and life of African Americans after Emancipation Proclamation; which was effected by President Abraham Lincoln in 1865, for the purpose of ending slavery of African Americans in the U.S. The film reveals very brutal stories of how slavery of African Americans persisted in through forced labor and cruelty; especially in the American south which continued until the beginning of World War II. The film brings to light one of my upbringing
The slave trade into the United States began in 1620 with the sale of nineteen Africans to a colony called “Virginia”. These slaves were brought to America on a Dutch ship and were sold as indentured slaves. An Indentured slave is a person who has an agreement to serve for a specific amount of time and will no longer be a servant once that time has passed, they would be “free”. Some indentured slaves were not only Africans but poor or imprisoned whites from England. The price of their freedom did not come free.
Rediker, Marcus. The Slave Ship A Human History. New York, New York: Penguin Group, 2007. Print.
Also, the ship’s crew often treated the Africans badly; they often whipped them because many of the people resisted and tried to escape from the cargo ship.
The Middle Passage (or Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade) was a voyage that took slaves from Africa to the Americas via tightly packed ships. The trade started around the early 1500s, and by 1654 about 8,000-10,000 slaves were being imported from Africa to the Americas every year. This number continued to grow, and by 1750 that figure had climbed to about 60,000-70,000 slaves a year. Because of the lack of necessary documents, it is hard to tell the exact number of Africans taken from their homeland. But based on available clues and data, an estimated 9-15 million were taken on the Middle Passage, and of that about 3-5 million died. While the whole idea seems sick and wrong, many intelligent people and ideas went in to making the slave trade economically successful.
It is prudent to speak here to the inhumane way in which the slaves were transported during this first leg of the journey. The trading of slaves was very lucrative for the Europeans. As it goes in business, the higher the demand, the larger the quantities supplied. All the slaves were branded to show to whom they belonged, and the male slaves were shackled together and packed in the hole like sardines, while the women and children were sometimes allowed to stay on deck. Any acts of aggression by the men or women resulted in severe beatings to discourage the behavior. Imagine being beaten and shackled with a rival tribe man or not being able to communicate with the person beside you because you both spoke different languages!
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, slavery connected the world. Slaves were present on almost every continent and were traded frequently across the Atlantic Ocean. Various countries influenced their allies, persuading others to join the chaotic process of selling human lives. Slaves were taken from their native homeland in Africa, sold to plantation owners in the West Indies, and then shipped to their final destination: the United States of America. This was not just a bad habit or business tactic; slavery became a cruel lifestyle. Thousands of lives were altered, leaving a considerable impact on the physical, emotional, and social aspects of society. Many causes attributed to American