Laurel Galaty
Prof. McKinney
History of Slavery in the US
9/29/2014
Discussion of an event as horrific and prolonged as the trans atlantic slave trade begs the question: How could anyone have forced other people to live through such terrible conditions and treatment? This question haunts anyone studying the slavery that developed in the colonies because it was one of the most brutal and thoroughly demeaning forms of slavery that has ever developed in human history. The answer, according to the authors of the texts used in this class, is clear. The commodification of African slaves was a crucial element in the evolution of slavery in the United States, and it was present from the establishment of slavery as an institution to beyond the abolishment of slavery.
In Stephanie Smallwood’s Saltwater Slavery, she begins by explaining that Europeans were not the first to find slaves along the Gold coast. It was actually African Merchants that began buying African people as slaves. She says “Gold-bearing African merchants traveling to the coast from upland forest territories required large retinues of porters to transport the bulky European goods they purchased. To meet this need, it was a simple matter for Portuguese traders to supply slaves alongside the textiles and metals they sold to African buyers”. This is important to note because when Europeans began to take advantage of the people available for purchase, they were not introducing a new concept; selling people as goods was common practice. Also important to note was that African merchants were major players in human trade. As nation states in Africa warred, prisoners of war were commonly sold into slavery, and the increase in slavery in the 18th century was in part due to the African Elite realizing that profit could be made by sending their captives to the coast to be sold. Smallwood explains “In the closing decades of the seventeenth century a pattern was establishing itself as wars… began to send some among their captives to the waterside”. The process of commodifying humans was not instinctual, or even necessarily racial. The commodification of slaves began as those seeking profit began to realize the economic possibilities of turning people into dollars.
Of course, once people were sold into slavery, their commodification was furthered by slave traders’ attempts to maintain their businesses. Since the expense of “shipping across the Atlantic doubled the price of slaves”, Tight packing ships became common practice, and “as the ship’s physical dimensions were fixed, crowding ever more bodies onto its decks… was key to a slave ship’s profitability”. The comfort of the cargo was abandoned to ensure that each shipping was as profitable as possible. Food was not measured to maintain the health of the individual. Because profit was at stake, they had “an exceedingly narrow range within which to subsist… between absolute or near absence of food at worst and daily rations even at best too scanty and nutritionally limited to supply nourishment beyond a minimal level”. Food was carefully calculated to minimally preserve life, and if there was too little even then, it was distributed in such a way that would control death rates within the group. The lack of acknowledgment of each slave as an individual with needs that varied from the group continued their commodification in their Atlantic crossing.
When slaves reached the colonies, their commodification reached new heights. Smallwood uses the term “slaves in chains” to illustrate the way that an African Person in the colonies is forever marked as a slave. Even if they ran, they would not be able to find an area where they would not be recaptured and sold, even if their original purchaser could not be found. Smallwood explains “as they tried to return, if not ‘home’, then to any alternative place of social belonging, they discovered that time and circumstances were firmly against them”. Without a means to integrate themselves socially into any aspect of the society that they have been forced into, they lose their identity as people. Rather, they were now universally recognized as property, and would remain that way their entire lives.
In his essay The Paradox of Slavery and Freedom, Edmund S. Morgan points out that “The rise of liberty and equality in this country was accompanied by the rise of slavery. That two such contradictory developments were taking place simultaneously over a long period of our history, from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth, is the central paradox of American history”. He argues that there is evidence to suggest that black Africans in america were not always so entirely regarded as inferior people. For example, he asserts that “There is no evidence during the period before 1660 that [African Americans] were subjected to more severe discipline than the other servants”. By recognizing that Africans were at least allowed similar status to white servants, Morgan recognizes that commodification had not fully formed at this point. It wasn’t until the oppression of indentured servants became dangerous that the colonists turned overwhelmingly to slave labor. He explains “To have attempted the enslavement of English-born laborers would have caused more disorder than it cured. But to keep as slaves black men who arrived in that condition was possible and apparently regarded as plain common sense”. The mass enslavement of Africans required that their commodification continue after they step off the boat. In this way, Morgan’s essay is not only successful in describing the paradox of slavery and freedom developed in America, but also how the commodification of Africans became a useful tool in expanding America’s economic strength.
From all of these points, it’s clear that commodification had a heavy influence on the evolution of the trans atlantic slave trade. It was a critical component at every step, and it did not cease once slaves arrived on Western shores. While there are certainly other themes that are essential to the story, it’s critical that commodification remain at the front of our minds as we consider how one of the most essential pieces of the economy became a horrific scar on our history.
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