Tate Mulligan Reaction Paper #1

Kathleen Tate Mulligan

Reaction Paper Number One

September 29, 2014

History of Slavery

mulkt-18@rhodes.edu

Commodification and its Effects on Humanity

The process of commodification of Africans throughout the period of slavery attempted to dehumanize the African slaves, but even though the methods were gruesome, the European and American colonists failed. The Africans rose above the system of commodification, specifically during the Middle Passage, enduring physical, mental, and spiritual abuse by the slave traders. The endurance the African population showed in the United States was magnificent because they beat the system of commodification and death that was seemingly unbeatable in the Caribbean and South America.

The purpose of commodification of Africans during the Slave Trade was to transport humans at the lowest price and get them to the final selling destination alive. Men were considered the labor workers, and the “strongest, healthiest men” would go for the highest prices. [1]The slave traders’ ideal boat load was full of strong men that were middle aged so they could be advertised as long-term field workers.  Women were seen as reproductive vessels, and they were the “easiest to obtain and to dispose of” in Africa. [2]  Women were easy to control in the whole process of abduction, imprisonment, and marketing and were looked at as less of a threat to security. The European slave traders would buy the slaves - many as prisoners of war, in Western Africa from African slave traders.  For the African tradesmen, it was profitable to sell the captives or trade them for European trade goods. [3] The fear of rebellion from the slaves was in both the slave traders from Europe and Africa. Both traders had strategies to suppress the slaves, and ultimately the strategies enforced the commodification of the slaves. The Europeans slave traders had it down to a science how to keep a slave alive without spending more money than necessary. The food, water, and personal space that each slave was given for each passage was considered. [4] The idea was based on economic strategy and how much profit the slave traders and their companies could reap.  The captains tried to keep it as impersonal as possible when interacting with the African slaves. The slaves were mere numbers on a sheet of paper, and many of times not much thought was given to the descriptions of the slaves.[5] As well, the European slave traders would buy African slaves from many different ports and ethnic tribes to eliminate the chances of large numbers of the same community being on the same boat to reduce communication and ideas of rebellion. [6]When it came time to sell the slaves in the Americas, they were looked at like animals by the North and South American planters, “stark naked and therefore (no one could be) deceived” of what they were buying. [7] The absolute humiliation and indecency the slave traders had for these slaves was inhuman, yet the slaves continued to seek and hold onto their humanity. The slaves were under such horrible conditions that the European slave traders were trying to strip the Africans of who they were and reduce them to the lowest denominator.  The theme of commodification is a major reason why the slave trade happened. The Africans kept their humanity by staying alive and dealing with these problems together.

The forced immigration of the Africans slaves was called the Middle Passage, and the journey consisted of unthinkable inhumanity, yet the slaves endured the violence with their boat communities. Some of the mental challenges included the “profound displacement” the Africans suffered, created a sense of isolation that humans of this time period had never experienced before.[8] The African tribes were not knowledgeable of the ocean or the maritime sciences that the Europeans were engaging in. Their sense of distortion from the ocean and its “relentless motion” was an alarming factor for the Africans. [9] The Africans were constantly asking questions of where they were and where they were going, and with many of these questions, they answered them with “magic” because some kind of explanation would be better than no answer at all.[10] One of the ways the slaves tried to grasp a sense of time was through moon cycles, because “certain days held (certain) rituals.” [11] These traditions were an important part to the spirituality of the African tribes. The spiritual tradition was one of the things that kept the slaves sane, and created a commonality within the African communities that many of the Europeans could not relate to, or did not understand. One of the cruelest parts of the attempt to commodity the Africans was the hopelessness the Africans saw in death. In Africa, the funeral rituals of the family members were essential for the person who had passed away to go into the afterworld with their ancestors. The boats of the Middle Passage were “marked by the absence of the traditional rituals” because normally there were no family members available to perform the rituals if a person passed away on the boat. [12] Many of times, the slaves would be  described as having a  “mixed melancholy… [and had become] morose, moody, and unresponsive.”[13]  The African slaves saw no hope in their new lives yet saw no comfort in death if they could not be with their ancestors.

As well, the physical conditions of the Middle Passage contributed to the commodification of the slaves. “Sweat, vomit, urine, and excrement painted the decks,” - where the slaves lived on the boat. [14] The slaves were packed in so tightly into the boats that “on average there were some three hundred or more people” on the boat and many of times the “children (were the) fillers to top off the cargo.” [15] The shear lack of space depressed the immune systems of the slaves, and many of them became sick and died. [16] The women of the slave community were able to wander freely on the deck, but were at the mercy of the crew and were “available for exploitation.”[17]  The slaves were battling commodification mentally, spiritually, and physically, but it was not an individual battle; they were battling these injustices together. Africans who were enemies in their homelands turned towards each other, helping one another survive the upward battle of commodification.

Because of the unity of the African slaves, the Europeans were constantly in fear of rebellion on the boats. So afraid they would “pray to send some shackles,” meaning the power of the unity of the African slaves was a real force. [18] The proof that the dehumanization through commodification of the Africans did not work was in the fear of the Europeans, because if the Africans were in fact not human after this process, the Europeans would have no reason to fear the African slaves. The tactics that the Europeans and African slave traders created were out of fear of rebellion from the slaves, and to deny how they really were treating other human beings.  The Africans survived the system of slavery, and because of it, the foundations of the United States of America were built on the blood, sweat, and tears of these Africans and their kin.