The Transatlantic Slave Trade: Crash Course Black American History #1

Summary

In this Crash Course episode, Clint Smith delves into the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, a 400-year-long tragedy that forcibly displaced millions of Africans. Highlighting the Middle Passage's horrors, Smith discusses the conditions, resistance, and the trade's global impact. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the narratives of the enslaved to grasp the full scope of this dark chapter in history.

Takeaways

• 🌍 The Trans-Atlantic slave trade lasted nearly 400 years, from the late 15th to the late 19th century.
• 📚 W.E.B. Du Bois described the Atlantic slave trade as 'the most magnificent drama in the last thousand years of human history,' highlighting its devastating impact.
• 🚢 An estimated 12.4 million enslaved Africans were transported through the Middle Passage, which was part of the triangular trade system.
• 📈 The Middle Passage had a high mortality rate, with approximately 2 million African captives dying during the journey.
• 🌐 Only about 5% of captured Africans were brought directly to what would become the United States; the majority were sent to Brazil and other parts of the Caribbean and South America.
• 📖 Personal narratives, such as Olaudah Equiano's autobiography, provide firsthand accounts of the horrors and experiences of the enslaved.
• 🔄 Many captured Africans were prisoners of war, criminals, or poor members of society, often traded by other Africans for goods.
• 🚫 The conditions on slave ships were inhumane, with overcrowding, lack of sanitation, and rampant disease leading to a high death toll.
• 💪 Enslaved Africans resisted their captors in various ways, including revolts, acts of defiance, and self-harm as a form of resistance against their captors' economic interests.
• ⏳ The period from 1700 to 1808 was particularly destructive for the Transatlantic Slave Trade, with a significant number of enslaved Africans trafficked during these years.
• 🏴‍☠️ The Royal African Company played a central role in the slave trade, maintaining a monopoly on English trade to Africa until the early 18th century.

Q & A

What is the Trans-Atlantic slave trade?

The Trans-Atlantic slave trade was a period of nearly four hundred years, from the late fifteenth century to the late nineteenth century, during which enslaved Africans were transported across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas.

Which regions were the primary sources of enslaved Africans?

The primary regions from which enslaved Africans were taken were Senegambia, Sierra Leone & the Windward Coast, the Gold Coast, the Bight of Benin, the Bight of Biafra, and West Central Africa, also known as Kongo and Angola.

What was the Middle Passage and why was it named so?

The Middle Passage was the second leg of the triangular trade route, during which enslaved Africans were transported from Africa to the Americas. It was named the Middle Passage because it was the middle part of the three-part trade system.

What were the three parts of the triangular trade?

The three parts of the triangular trade were: 1) European goods being shipped to Africa, 2) the transport of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic, and 3) the return of ships to Europe carrying goods like sugar and tobacco.

How many African captives are estimated to have died during the Middle Passage?

It is estimated that 2 million African captives died during the Middle Passage, with their bodies often thrown overboard.

What percentage of captured Africans were brought directly to the United States?

Only about 5% of captured Africans were brought directly to what would eventually become the United States.

Which country received the largest proportion of enslaved Africans?

Brazil received the largest proportion of enslaved Africans, with around 41% of the total.

Why is it important to focus on the narratives of enslaved people themselves?

Focusing on the narratives of enslaved people provides a perspective on the institution of slavery that few other documents can, offering insights into their experiences and resistance.

What role did other Africans play in the capture and trade of enslaved people?

Many captured Africans were sold to Europeans by other Africans, often as prisoners of war, criminals, or poor members of society, traded for various goods.

How did enslaved Africans resist during the Middle Passage?

Enslaved Africans resisted in various ways, including staging revolts, individual acts like refusing to eat or jumping overboard, and enduring torture and other forms of violence.

What was the speculum orum and how was it used against enslaved Africans?

The speculum orum was a screw-like device used to force open the mouths of resistant Africans, allowing for force-feeding. It often caused severe injuries, including broken teeth, displaced jaws, or ripped mouths.

When did the United States and Britain end the international slave trade?

The United States ended the international slave trade in 1808, while Britain did so in 1807.

Why is the term 'enslaved' preferred over 'slave' when referring to those held in bondage?

Using the term 'enslaved' emphasizes the personhood of the individual and that slavery was an involuntarily imposed condition, not an inherent aspect of a person's existence.

Outlines

00:00

🚢 The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

This segment introduces the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, a horrific period spanning nearly 400 years from the late 15th to the late 19th century. It discusses the six primary regions from which enslaved Africans were taken, and highlights the work of W.E.B. Du Bois, who described the slave trade as 'the most magnificent drama in the last thousand years of human history,' emphasizing the tragic nature of this period. The script also sets the stage for a challenging discussion, acknowledging the inclusion of topics like sexual violence and extreme violence, which are deemed necessary for a complete understanding of US history. The Middle Passage, a term derived from the triangular trade, is explained, detailing the journey of enslaved Africans from Africa to the Americas and the tragic loss of approximately 2 million lives during this forced migration. The paragraph concludes with a surprising statistic: only about 5% of captured Africans were brought to what is now the United States, with the majority going to Brazil and other parts of the Caribbean and South America.

05:02

🌊 The Horrors of the Middle Passage

This paragraph delves into the appalling conditions aboard slave ships during the Middle Passage. It describes the overcrowding, lack of sanitation, and the resulting spread of diseases like yellow fever, malaria, smallpox, and dysentery. The narrative includes a firsthand account from Olaudah Equiano, whose autobiography provides a vivid description of the abhorrent conditions and the psychological and physical torment experienced by the enslaved. The paragraph also addresses the various forms of resistance by the captives, ranging from individual acts like refusing to eat or jumping overboard to collective actions such as revolts. It underscores the significance of these acts as a means of asserting control and autonomy in the face of dehumanization. The segment concludes with a discussion of the brutal methods used to suppress resistance, including torture devices like the speculum orum and thumb-screws, which were designed to inflict maximum pain and submission.

10:03

⚖️ The Legacy of the Slave Trade

The final paragraph discusses the historical context and legacy of the slave trade, focusing on the role of the Royal African Company and the state of South Carolina's involvement in the trade. It notes the irony of the 'free trade' era and South Carolina's temporary prohibition and subsequent reopening of the slave trade, leading to a significant influx of enslaved people between 1803 and 1808. The paragraph also touches on the broader timeline of the slave trade's abolition, with the United States and Britain ending the international slave trade in 1808 and 1807, respectively, and the domestic slave trade continuing for decades thereafter. The narrative concludes with a reflection on the long-term impact of the slave trade on the world and the lives of both the enslaved and their descendants, setting the stage for further exploration in subsequent episodes.

Keywords

💡Trans-Atlantic slave trade

The Trans-Atlantic slave trade refers to the forced transportation of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas, spanning nearly four hundred years from the late fifteenth to the late nineteenth century. It was a pivotal part of the triangular trade system and is central to the video's theme, illustrating the horrific institution of slavery and its lasting impact on history. The script mentions that the majority of enslaved Africans were taken from six primary regions, highlighting the vast scale of this trade.

💡Middle Passage

The Middle Passage was the second leg of the triangular trade, referring to the segment of the journey where enslaved Africans were transported from Africa to the Americas. It is a key concept in the video, symbolizing the harrowing journey and inhumane conditions that millions of Africans faced. The script notes that an estimated 12.4 million people were loaded onto slave ships during this passage, with around 2 million dying during the journey.

💡Triangular trade

The triangular trade was a trading system that involved three legs: goods from Europe to Africa, enslaved Africans from Africa to the Americas, and then goods like sugar and tobacco from the Americas back to Europe. This concept is crucial to understanding the economic motivations behind the slave trade and how it interconnected different regions. The video script explains that this trade system was named as such because the Middle Passage was the second part of this cycle.

💡Enslaved Africans

Enslaved Africans refers to the people who were captured and forced into slavery, primarily from various regions of Africa and then transported across the Atlantic. The term is used in the video to emphasize the humanity of those who were subjected to the brutal conditions of the slave trade. The script points out that only about 5% of captured Africans were brought directly to what would become the U.S., with the majority going to Brazil and other parts of the Caribbean and South America.

💡Resistance

Resistance in the context of the video refers to the various ways enslaved Africans fought back against their captors, both individually and collectively. This concept is integral to the video's narrative, showcasing the agency and resilience of the enslaved people. The script describes acts of resistance such as staging revolts, refusing to eat, and jumping overboard as attempts to reclaim control and undermine the economic incentives of the slave trade.

💡Sexual violence

Sexual violence is a term used in the video to describe the systematic rape and abuse of enslaved women during the Middle Passage. This concept is a critical part of the video's exploration of the atrocities committed during the slave trade, highlighting the extreme violence and degradation that enslaved people faced. The script mentions that sexual violence was a common and horrific aspect of the journey.

💡Orlando Patterson

Orlando Patterson is a scholar mentioned in the video who has written about slavery. His work is referenced to define slavery as 'the permanent, violent, and personal domination of natally alienated and generally dishonored persons.' This definition is significant in the video as it emphasizes the severity and dehumanization inherent in the institution of slavery, which is a central theme of the video's discussion.

💡Royal African Company

The Royal African Company was an English chartered firm that had a monopoly on all English trade to Africa from its inception in 1672. This company is highlighted in the video as a central player in the slave trade, illustrating the institutionalized nature of the trade and its deep roots in European economic systems. The script notes that this company was particularly active during the period of 1675 to 1725.

💡South Carolina

South Carolina is mentioned in the video in relation to its historical involvement in the slave trade. The state initially prohibited the African slave trade in 1787 but later reopened it in 1803 until the federal prohibition in 1808. This example from the script is used to illustrate the complex and often contradictory history of slave trade regulations in the U.S. and the significant role that South Carolina played in the transatlantic slave trade.

💡Charleston

Charleston is noted in the video as the coast of entry for approximately 40 percent of the enslaved Africans brought to North America. This fact emphasizes Charleston's role as a major hub in the slave trade and its historical significance. The script refers to it as 'African-American’s Ellis Island,' drawing a parallel to the point of entry for many immigrants, although with the stark contrast that the Africans did not come by choice.

💡Abolition

Abolition refers to the ending of slavery, a theme that is integral to the video's narrative as it discusses the eventual end of the transatlantic slave trade and the institution of slavery itself. The script mentions that the British abolished slavery in 1833 and the U.S. did so after the Civil War, almost sixty years later, while Brazil, which had the largest proportion of enslaved people, abolished slavery in 1888.

Highlights

The Trans-Atlantic slave trade spanned nearly 400 years from the late 15th century to the late 19th century.

The majority of enslaved Africans were taken from six primary regions: Senegambia, Sierra Leone & the Windward Coast, the Gold Coast, the Bight of Benin, the Bight of Biafra, and West Central Africa (Kongo and Angola).

Scholar W.E.B. Du Bois described the Atlantic slave trade as 'the most magnificent drama in the last thousand years of human history,' not meant in a positive way.

An estimated 12.4 million people were loaded onto slave ships, and 2 million died during the Middle Passage.

Only about 5% of enslaved Africans were brought directly to the U.S., while 41% went to Brazil and millions to other locations in the Caribbean and South America.

Olaudah Equiano, an African boy captured into slavery, described the terrifying and inhumane experience of being taken aboard a slave ship.

Africans traded into slavery were often prisoners of war, criminals, or poor individuals, sold by other Africans, but their fate in the Americas was distinct as hereditary chattel slavery.

Conditions on slave ships were horrific: Africans were packed together, chained down, and subjected to unsanitary, disease-ridden, and violent conditions.

Acts of resistance by enslaved people during the Middle Passage included revolts, hunger strikes, and attempts to jump overboard.

The speculum orum was a cruel device used to force-feed resistant Africans, often causing severe physical damage.

Historian Marcus Rediker identifies 1700-1808 as the most destructive period of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, with two-thirds of the enslaved trafficked during this time.

Historian Jill Lepore states that out of 100 people taken from Africa's interior, only 28-30 survived beyond their first few years in the Americas.

The distinction between using 'enslaved person' rather than 'slave' is important to emphasize the personhood of those forced into bondage.

The Royal African Company was a major player in the slave trade, controlling English trade to Africa in the late 1600s and early 1700s.

South Carolina, despite banning the slave trade in 1787, reopened it between 1803 and 1808, during which 35,000 enslaved people were brought to the state.

Although the U.S. and Britain officially ended the international slave trade in 1808, illegal trafficking and the domestic slave trade continued.

Transcripts

Hi, I’m Clint Smith, and this is  Crash Course Black American History,  

and today we’re learning about the  Trans-Atlantic slave trade, which  

spanned nearly four hundred years from the late  fifteenth century to the late nineteenth century. 

The majority of enslaved Africans were  taken from six primary regions, Senegambia,  

Sierra Leone & the Windward Coast, the Gold Coast,  the Bight of Benin, the Bight of Biafra, and West  

Central Africa also known as Kongo and Angola. In his 1935 book Black Reconstruction in America,  

scholar and civil rights leader W.E.B. Du  Bois described the Atlantic slave trade as  

“the most magnificent drama in the  last thousand years of human history.” 

And he didn’t mean “magnificent” in a good way. INTRO 

I want to note up top that this episode  will address some challenging topics  

including sexual violence and images of  extreme violence. We believe, however,  

it is important to discuss these ideas  thoroughly, so that we can fully grapple  

with the reality of US History. An estimated 12.4 million people  

were loaded onto slave ships and carried through  what came to be known as the Middle Passage,  

which moved across the Atlantic and  included many different destinations. 

It was named the Middle Passage because it was  the second of three parts of what became known  

as the triangular trade. The first leg of  the journey carried cargo like textiles,  

iron, alcohol, firearms, and gunpowder  from Europe to Africa’s western coast. 

When the ships reached the coast of Western  Africa, the cargo was exchanged for people.  

From there, ships, loaded with human  beings made their way to the Americas,  

where the enslaved Africans were sold and  exchanged for goods like sugar and tobacco,  

before the ships made their way back to Europe. It is estimated that, over the course of the  

Middle Passage, 2 million African captives  died, their bodies often thrown overboard. 

What some people might not know about the slave  trade is that the vast majority of people did not  

actually go to the United States, far from it. In fact, only about 5% of captured Africans  

were brought directly to what would eventually  become the U.S. The largest proportion,  

around 41%, went to Brazil, while millions  of others were scattered across islands  

throughout the Carribean and South America. As we examine slavery in the United States,  

from its earliest moments when people are first  taken from their homes, all the way through the  

end of the Civil War, it is important to lift up  the narratives and accounts of enslaved people  

themselves, as they can provide us with a  perspective on this horrific institution,  

in ways that few other documents can. For example, Olaudah Equiano,  

an African captured as a boy,  wrote in his 1789 autobiography,  

The Interesting Narrative of the Life  of Olaudah Equiano, about the experience  

of being captured and taken to the edge of  the ocean and being boarded onto the ship: 

I was immediately handled and tossed up to see  if I were sound by some of the crew; and I was  

now persuaded that I had gotten into a world of  bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me. 

Their complexions too differing so much from ours,  their long hair, and the language they spoke,  

(which was very different from any I had ever  heard) united to confirm me in this belief… 

When I looked round the ship too and  saw a large furnace or copper boiling,  

and a multitude of black people of  every description chained together,

every one of their countenances  expressing dejection  

and sorrow, I no longer doubted of my fate;  

and, quite overpowered with horror and anguish,  I fell motionless on the deck and fainted.

Captured Africans didn’t really have an  understanding of what lay ahead for them. Enslaved  

Africans weren’t coming back to Africa from the  Americas and warning people about what happened.  

All people knew, was what they saw in front  of them. A large ship. An endless ocean.  

And for many of these Africans, people  speaking a language they had never heard,  

with a color skin some of them had never seen. It is also important to note  

that the story is not as simple as Africans  being hunted and captured by Europeans and  

forced onto ships against their will. The Africans who were taken and placed  

onboard these ships were typically prisoners  of war from other African tribes, criminals,  

and poor members of society who were often  traded to pay off debts. Which is to say,  

many captured Africans were sold to Europeans, by  other Africans, for a range of different goods.

Now, this fact can sometimes be used in bad faith  to obfuscate the horror of what Europeans did.  

And while it is important not to ignore, the  fact that there were Africans trading other  

Africans into bondage, we should remember  that being a prisoner of war or a poor  

member of a society traded for goods is not the  same thing as being held in intergenerational,  

hereditary chattel slavery that meant  your children and their children and  

their children would all be born into bondage. That is something unique to the experience of  

slavery in the Americas. As the scholar Orlando  Patterson has written “Slavery is the permanent,  

violent, and personal domination of natally  alienated and generally dishonored persons.” 

You’ve likely heard about how horrible  the conditions were on the slave ships,  

but it’s worth naming explicitly. The  conditions on these ships were horrific.  

People were packed by the hundreds alongside  one another, chained down, unable to move. 

The captured Africans were forced to relieve  themselves in the same places where they slept,  

sat, and ate. As a result, the stench from  the bottom of the ship, where there was  

little ventilation, was unbearable. Disease  was rampant. From yellow fever to malaria,  

from smallpox to dysentery, it is difficult  to capture how abhorrent the conditions were. 

To imagine this, it is helpful  to hear from Equiano again:

“I was soon put down under the decks, and  there I received such a salutation in my  

nostrils as I had never experienced in my life:  so that, with the loathsomeness of the stench,  

and crying together, I became so sick  and low that I was not able to eat…The  

closeness of the place, and the heat of the  climate, added to the number in the ship,  

being so crowded that each had scarcely  room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. 

This produced copious perspirations, so that  the air soon became unfit for respiration,  

from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on  a sickness among the slaves, of which many died.”

Violence against the captured Africans was  a devastating yet ubiquitous phenomenon as  

these ships crossed the Atlantic. In  an effort to keep people submissive  

over the course of the several week-long  trips, enslaved Africans were tortured  

in a variety of cruel and unimaginable ways. Sexual violence was a common fixture as well.  

It was not uncommon for sailors to  rape enslaved women while onboard. 

But enslaved people did not just passively  accept the conditions that had been thrust  

onto them, and they resisted in a myriad of  ways. Some of these ways were individual and  

some of them were collective. All of them  were attempts at reclaiming some sense of  

agency and control in inconceivable circumstances. Sometimes they were as explicit as staging revolts  

meant to overthrow the crew. And sometimes  they included individual acts of resistance  

like refusing to eat or jumping overboard. Now, the idea of trying to take one’s own life,  

might seem like a strange form of resistance to  some. But what you have to consider is that these  

captured Africans represented money, like real  money, to those who were holding them in chains on  

these ships. So someone attempting to take their  own life, represented the ability to determine the  

outcomes of your life for yourself, rather than  having it imposed on you by someone else. It also  

allowed them to undermine the economic incentives  that undergirded the entire institution. 

Furthermore, in the case of jumping overboard,  some of the captured Africans’ spiritual beliefs  

gave them the sense that if they could just make  it into the water, the ocean would carry their  

bodies home. Sometimes, as a result, the enslavers  on the ship would put nets on the side of the  

boat, to prevent people from jumping into the sea. One of the most heinous responses to slave  

resistance during the Middle Passage, came in the  form of the speculum orum [ohr-UHM], which was a  

screw-like device that forced someone’s mouth open  and allowed the resistant African to be force-fed  

against their will. It was not uncommon  for this device to break someone’s teeth,  

displace their jaw, or rip their mouth apart. If that didn’t work, other interventions included  

placing hot coals on a person’s lips until they  opened their mouths—or thumb-screws, a device in  

which a victim’s fingers or toes were placed in  a vise, and slowly crushed until they complied. 

Given all of this, we should be clear that  the decision millions made to stay alive  

in the face of unimaginable violence and  uncertainty,that too, was an act of resistance. 

Historian Marcus Rediker indentifies the period  from 1700 to 1808 as the most destructive time  

of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Roughly  two-thirds of the total of enslaved Africans  

were trafficked out of Africa and  to the Americas during this period. 

What’s more, the death toll of the  transatlantic slave trade was staggering.

According to historian Jill Lepore, for every  one hundred people taken from Africa’s interior,  

only sixty-four of them would survive the  trip to the coast itself. Of those sixty-four,  

around forty-eight would survive the  weeks-long journey across the Atlantic. 

Of those forty-eight who stepped off the ship,  only twenty-eight to thirty would survive the  

first three to four years in the colony. Before we go on, a quick note here about  

language: throughout this series we will try to be  consistent in using the term enslaved rather than  

slave to refer to African and African-descended  people who were held in bondage. This distinction  

is important because saying enslaved person or  enslaved worker or enslaved human being centers  

the personhood of the individual and emphasizes  that slavery is a condition that was involuntarily  

imposed on someone, rather than being an  inherent condition to someone’s existence.

One of the central players in the slave trade  was England’s Royal African Company: a chartered  

firm that maintained a monopoly on all English  trade to Africa following its inception in 1672. 

The period of 1675 to 1725 represented the  most active years of the Royal African Company,  

but it continued to play an active role in  the first several decades of the eighteenth  

century--an era known as ‘free trade.’ The irony of that term is not lost on me. 

I think it’s worth honing in on one state, and  its particular relationship to the slave trade,  

in order to better understand how this played out.  According to the work of historian Ira Berlin,  

the state of South Carolina prohibited  the African slave trade beginning in 1787. 

In 1803, however, the state reopened the  transatlantic slave trade. It remained opened  

until 1808, when the federal prohibition of  the atlantic slave trade went into effect.  

Between 1803 and 1808, over 35,000 enslaved  people were brought to South Carolina  

(more than twice as many as in any similar  period in its history as a colony or state). 

The coast of Charleston was the point  of entry for approximately 40 percent  

of the enslaved Africans who were brought  to North America through the middle passage.  

This has led some to refer to it as  African-American’s Ellis Island, though an  

obvious difference is that one group came here  via their own free will and one group did not.

The federal government ended the  international slave trade in 1808.  

The British had done so in 1807. However,  traders from both nations continued illegally  

trafficking captive Africans for many years  later. And while the international slave  

trade was abolished in the United States,  the domestic slave trade would continue.

In Britain, it took another quarter century  before slavery was officially abolished in 1833,  

and in the United States it  took almost another sixty years  

and our nation’s deadliest war, to end it. Spanish and Brazilian traders  

continued trafficking captive  Africans for another half century. 

Brazil, which, remember, had the largest  proportion of enslaved people trafficked across  

the ocean, was the final country in the Western  world to abolish slavery, doing so in 1888.

The transatlantic slave trade was a cruel,  violent, abhorent centuries-long-project that  

would shape the trajectory of the world, of both  black and white life, in ways that we’ll soon come  

to more fully understand. We’ll continue to talk  about some of these in our next few episodes.  

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