Kirsten Samuels
25 September
2014
History 205
Samka-18@rhodes.edu
Commodification and Resilience
The commodification of human beings
seen in the transatlantic slave trade focused on eliminating slaves’ sense of
agency, yet the resistance from the slaves proved to be a force to be reckoned
with. Slaves demonstrated their
resistance through mutiny, suicide and their overall determination to cling to
their sense of identity. The paradox of
slavery was a continuous push and pull between the attempt to reduce slaves as
property, and the slaves’ struggle to be treated like more than just a
commodity. The themes of the
commodification of human beings and the resulting defiance from the slaves
themselves embodied the harsh reality of the transatlantic slave trade.
The commodification of slaves began
even before the slaves reached the colonies.
Africans were kidnapped from their homes and were boarded onto ships
that would take them away from everything they’ve ever known. The journey to the west was one of the most
horrifying and degrading aspects of the slave trade. Men, woman and children were chained and held
in extremely tight quarters, “You would really wonder to see how these slaves
live on board; for though their number sometimes amounts to six or seven
hundred, yet by the careful management of our masters of ships, they are so
regulated that it seems incredible”.[1] The threat of death from disease and
starvation always lurked. The Africans
were separated from their families and friends on the ship to prevent the
possibility of rebellion and mutiny. The
Africans being held captive together could often not communicate with each
other because they spoke different languages.
The only link that these people had to each other was the fear they
shared and their final destination.[2]
Old documents provided information
about how slaves were only viewed as a number.
These slaves were given a number, and their sense of self was completely
eliminated. The identity of these slaves
was reduced to a simple figure. They
were no longer human beings with feelings, beliefs and families; they were now commodities
of the colonies. Despite the harsh reality that slavery provided in the
colonies, it laid the groundwork for the American economy, “In addition, the
economic exchange had to transform independent beings into human commodities
whose most ‘socially relevant feature’ was their ‘exchangeability’.”[3] Slaves were the basic commodities who then
produced agricultural commodities for the colonies. The wealth of colonists was measured by their
property, the amount of slaves and land that they had.
One of the ways that slaves were
stripped of their humanity was by the changing of their names. Owners renamed their slaves as another way of
asserting their dominance over them and eliminating their sense of self. In Ira Berlin’s essay, Historicizing the Slave Experience, he captures the essence of why
slaveholders renamed their slaves, “In the months that followed, the drill
continued, with Carter again joining in the process of stripping newly arrived
Africans of the signature of their identity.”[4] Terror and confusion accompanied being taken
from their homeland and given a new identity in a foreign place. The slave owners used white names or barnyard
animal names to reiterate the fact that the slaves belonged to them. The animal names proved the fact that they
believed that the slaves were animalistic beings that were not human. This renaming also cut one of the last ties
that would connect the slaves to their home, lineage and their past.
The
cultural matrix that developed around the slave trade bent social, religious
and moral ideals to adhere to the concept of slavery. The manifestation of the notion of race was
created to help socially justify slavery for the colonists. This racial difference also sought to
distance themselves from their savage and primal slaves. The slaves were viewed as a different species
from the colonists. Because of the fact
that slaves looked different from the colonists, they were easily labeled as
nonhuman entities. To validate slavery,
they thought that they were doing the slaves a favor by introducing them to a
civilized society. Not only did social
norms change with the introduction of slavery, but also did religion. Christianity was bent and twisted in order to
accommodate the idea of slavery. Slavery
was such a driving force in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that it
was able to mold the theology of the time.[5] The altering of social and religious views was
in attempt to justify the commodification of human beings and the elimination
of their identities.
The commodification of humans was not met
without resistance. The determination
required by these slaves in order to survive under the institution of slavery
was astounding. Resistance was found in daily
acts of defiance, such as vandalism, and in organized rebellion.[6] Mutiny, suicide, running away and refusing to
give up their beliefs were also ways that slaves challenged their owners. Despite slave owners’ attempts to rob the
slaves of their hope, some slaves held their resolve and attempted to fight
back. Slaves would respond with violence
against bad owners, hoping to find an escape.
Slaveholders feared this idea of rebellion, because organized insurgence
could be extremely dangerous for the institution of slavery.
Suicide was another form of resistance demonstrated
by the slaves. Slavery embodied the
concept of “the survival of the fittest”, and sometimes suicide was the only
way of escape for them. On the journey
across the Atlantic, slaves would often abandon all previous beliefs of their
culture by jumping overboard and drowning. Africans believed that dying meant
returning to their ancestors, but they could not be with them unless proper
mortuary practices from their homelands were performed. Smallwood explains how the slaves believed
that their souls could be trapped forever, “the death of one of their number
left them with the burden of a tormented soul, trapped here among them because
its migration to join the ancestors had been thwarted”.[7] These slaves were in such psychological
distress and hopeless states that they would abandon a peaceful afterlife in
order to escape the cruel reality of the slave trade. Slavery was such a terrifying reality, that
the slaves would rather have their souls wander the earth aimlessly forever
than continue on their journey.
The cause and effect relationship between
the commodification of slaves and the resistance that followed is extremely
interesting. Owners attempted to take
the humanity an agency from their slaves, yet some slaves were able to speak
their existence and let themselves be known.
Slaves were not objects: they thought, they cried out, and they fought
back. Slaves were resilient in their
efforts to battle commodification.
[1] Thomas C. Holt and Elsa
Barkley Brown, Major Problems in African-American History Volume 1: From
Slavery to Freedom, 1619-1877 (Houghton Mifflin Company 2000), 43-44.
[2] Stephanie E. Smallwood, Saltwater
Slavery a Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora. (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008), 121.
[5] Peter
Kolchin. American Slavery, 1619-1877. (New York: Hill and Wang,
1993),145.
[7] Smallwood, Saltwater
Slavery a Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora. 141.
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