The Global Scale of The Slave Trade

The slave trade was a very tragic thing in the world when it occurred. It impacted just about everyone on a global scale. The impact was not the same for everyone though. It impacted some people negatively, and some people positively. There are four passages that give their first hand experience of being apart of the slave trade. These accounts are from different people, different places, and different impacts. John Barbot made two voyages in the late 1600s for the french to the coasts of North and South Guinea.

He relates the sold blacks as prisoners of war for the most part.

Most were captured during a fight or caught when they were on the run. Some were either sold by their own family or countrymen. The countries were ruled by kings who had absolute power. So if anyone were to ever step out of line the king had no empathy for them and wouldn’t hesitate to sell their subjects.

It didn’t matter their social status or rank, if they made an offence then they were sold. Some people would even sell themselves to make it out of famine alive. The slaves were found on remote islands sometimes and would be traded for great profit. It was mainly the rulers and higher ups in the economy who would sell these people. They were treated terrible though, by the time they arrived they were in poor condition from being beaten and starved.

So, even the people who bought the slaves could tell that what was going on was wrong, but they also knew the profit slaves provided so they didn’t step in to stop this.

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This next account is from an actual slave named Olaudah Equiano. He was a slave during the middle passage by the Europeans. He says he was scared that he would be eaten by the European slavers at one point. He recalls the different features between himself and the slavers. He noticed the horrors from all around him as every black person was chained up, being treated horribly by their captors. Not one person looked happy, but instead their face was filled with horror and sadness. He then went on to describe that some blacks who were receiving their pay for selling them were trying to uplift his spirits.

Soon, though, he realized it was lies as he was being abandoned. He described this feelings so bad that he wished death would take over and end his pain. He then describes the terrible treatment that his is given after arriving to the white people. Though, he says even some white people were being treated just as cruelly, so cruel that he has never seen anything like it before. Another account is from a man named James Barbot Jr. He was an English Sailor. He gives a story about a slave uprising that was onboard the ship. It was a revolt that was going on that was noticed a little too late. The slaves had broken the shackles off each others feet to free them. He describes it as a terrible fight where many were killed, including lots of the slavers. They lost about twenty seven or twenty eight slaves as James Barbot says. They died through being killed by the captors, or from drowning.

After they had everyone settled down they talked to the slaves in harshness to make sure they wouldn’t try anything like that again. The next day they had every slave that they suspected of creating such a ruckus to be brought onto the deck. Here they figured out who the leaders were and began to punish them and whipping them. They then began to manage them on board more carefully so something like that wouldn’t happen again. They also had the women separated from the men on the ship. This came with managing them better so no feelings or anything like that would be involved for the slaves to misbehave. It was hard to do this though because some slaves thought that their destination would be death by being eaten. They thought this terribly so they would try to escape and cause problems for the sailors. This was an issue when it came to management.

So all in all from these experiences from a few different people with a few different perspectives on the slaves, it is easy to notice the difficulty for the slaves. They were scared and helpless throughout the whole slave trade and their life. They had no control over their fate. They were brutally beaten and their captives were beyond harsh to them, enough to make some of them wish death upon themselves rather than being a slave. They were mistreated and misguided along the whole trip that was usually three months. Three months of pure torture is a long time, punishing innocent people just to be punished more for when they made it to land. They knew their fate was a terrible one, but there was nothing they could. There was even nothing the slavers could do even if they wanted too because they had a task to fulfill.