Middle Passage
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This is about the slave trade route. For the novel, see Middle Passage (novel). For the album, see The Middle Passage.
The Middle Passage was a portion of the Atlantic slave trade route, which involved the forced transportation of African people from Africa to enslavement in North America, South America and the Caribbean. It was called the Middle Passage because the slave trade was a form of triangular trade; ships left Europe for African markets, sailed to Africa where the goods were sold or traded for prisoners and kidnap victims on the African coast, then sailed to the Americas and Caribbean (West Indies) where the Africans were sold or traded for goods for European markets, and then returned to Europe. The slave trade involved Peruvian and Mexican mines, Brazilian coffee plantations, South Carolinian fields, and Caribbean sugar, coffee, and cotton plantations. The European powers, including Spain, Portugal, France, England, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Brandenburg, as well as Canada, all played a role. The Germans were also involved by supplying slave voyages with financial aid; and Asian textiles were used as trading goods in Africa.
Contents |
[edit] The journey
The Middle Passage took anywhere from 1 to 5 months depending on weather conditions with wind conditions varying by time of year. The ships used were designed for the transport of goods rather than people, since two of the legs of the triangular trade involved cargo such as casks of rum or molasses or crates of textiles and other goods such as bales of cotton and tobacco. Due to this design, the conditions aboard ships running the Middle Passage with human cargo were poor with practically nonexistent sanitation facilities as the ships were not designed for the transport of several hundred people.
African kings, warlords and private kidnappers sold their captives to Europeans who held several coastal forts. When rare opportunities arose, the Europeans themselves kidnapped African people. The captives were usually force-marched to these ports along the western coast of Africa, where they were held for purchase to the European or American slave traders. People were usually packed into the ships transporting at least 400 slaves that were chained in the cargo hold, guarded by approximately 35 crew. Many ships contained up to 700 slaves aboard one slave ship. The male captives were normally chained together in pairs to save space; right leg to the next man's left leg — while the women and children may have had somewhat more room. The captives were fed very small portions of beans, corn, yams, rice, and palm oil, normally just enough to sustain them. Slaves were fed two meals a day with water, but if food was scarce, slaveholders would get priority over meals. Sometimes captives were allowed to move around during the day, but many ships kept the shackles on throughout the arduous journey.
About 11 million Africans were forcefully taken from Africa and took the voyage overseas. Disease and starvation due to the length of the passage were the main contributors to the death toll with amoebic dysentery and scurvy causing the majority of deaths. Additionally, outbreaks of smallpox, syphilis, malaria, measles, and other diseases spread rapidly in the close-quarter compartments. The number of dead increased with the length of voyage, since the incidence of dysentery and of scurvy increased with longer stints at sea as the quality and amount of food and water diminished with every passing day. In addition to physical sickness, many slaves became too depressed to eat or function efficiently because of the loss of freedom, family, security, and their own humanity. This often led to worse treatment like force-feeding or lashings. Some even committed suicide before they arrived in the New World.
[edit] Abolition
The Haitian revolution of 1804 led to the outlawing of the Atlantic Slave Trade by the primary slave trading nations, Great Britain and the United States, in 1807. However, the transport of captives from Africa to the Americas continued on a reduced scale until the middle of the century. Within the United States, several Southern slave states (primarily Virginia) provided slaves to other slave states especially the new states coming into existence as the United States expanded westward (see Northwest Ordinance). This slave trade internal to the United States ended with the Emancipation Proclamation, the American Civil War, and the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- [1]
- The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery- "Middle Passage"
- The William and Mary Quarterly (scholarly journal)-"Middle Passage" at [2]
- [3]
- Teaching resources about Slavery and Abolition on blackhistory4schools.com
