Nick Parinella
History 205
Professor McKinney
September 26, 2014
Reaction
Paper 1- Slavery; the Commodification of Humans
Throughout
all the readings in the class thus far, one major theme in all of them is the
commodification of people into products. The slaves in America had lives before
slavery, even though it may seem like they did not. Slaves did begin birthing
their children into slavery, however Africans were not always slaves. At some
point in history, people began forcing Africans into slavery, which lead to
viewing them as commodities instead of humans.
A
few hundred years ago, the Gold Coast was important for exporting gold, however
it eventually became better known for exporting slaves. At first, war captives
were shipped with gold to help with labor. Then people started believing the
labor was more valuable than the gold itself. In a matter of time, people were
craving slaves more than gold, and some humans began to be commoditized.
Certain areas of Africa “became a more reliable outlet for slaves than for the
precious metal”[1].
The process of the commodification of humans began by selling war captives into
slavery, who had their freedom taken away during battle. Over time, the slaves
became more appealing, and people began selling Africans into slavery,
regardless if they were war captives or not.
Africans
were taken from their homes and shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to foreign
lands along with other goods. Since the captains only cared for the slaves as
products, they shipped as many slaves as they could without killing them to
maximize their profits. The captains did not care about the conditions or
comfort level of the rooms on the ships that the slaves were kept in. Usually
the slaves were crammed into small, dark, barely-ventilated rooms for weeks or
months at a time. They would only be let out to the top of the ship for an hour
a day to get “exercise” and fresh-air. Inside the cabins, they had to sit and
live surrounded by their feces, urine, and vomit. When loading the ships, the
captains would bring just enough food and water for the slaves to sustain life,
not to satisfy their hunger and thirst. Stephanie Smallwood wrote that “slaves
became, for the purpose of transatlantic shipment, mere physical units that
could be arranged and molded at will—whether folded together spoonlike in rows
or flattened side by side in a plane”[2].
Children were used to fill in the small, empty spaces on the ships like a game
of Tetris, except with slaves. Through this process of taking Africans and
shipping them across the ocean to America, people began viewing them as
commodities. Therefore, traders did not feel bad for making the slaves live in
these conditions because transporting slaves across the Atlantic was strictly
business, and they shipped them as business products.
Slaves
were also dehumanized when their entire lives were compressed to a single line
on an inventory sheet. When captains were loading their ships, they had an
accountant keep track of all their slaves. They would write down their name,
sex, and height and make sure they were on the ship. The captains did not care
about anything else regarding the slaves’ families, friends, religious views,
lifestyle, or status in their town; all they cared about was if their “product”
was on the ship. Smallwood wrote that “through their graphic simplicity and
economy, invoices and ledgers effaced the personal histories that fueled the
slaving economy”[3].
These accounts took the entire life of a slave and converted it into a single
line on a document. The captains also had insurance on the slaves like they
were merchandise. One of the insurance policies covered death from drowning,
but not from starvation. After running low on water, “the captain of the Zong ordered 132 Africans thrown
overboard”[4]. The
slaves drowning is like losing goods in the ocean, which could happen to any
product, but starving is a human quality, which is not covered. The insurance
policy proves that they treated slaves no differently than other products on
the ship. The captain of the Zong was
more concerned with making money and conserving water than he was for the
slaves’ lives. He threw them overboard without any regret just so he could get
some extra cash from the insurance company.
A
tactic almost all slave traders used was capturing slaves from different towns
and villages and shipping them together. Therefore, the slaves would not know anyone
and could not communicate with each other. This lessened the chance of an
uprising as well as created a feeling of loneliness and hopelessness. Without
anyone to communicate and share their story with, the slaves would lose hope of
continuing their lives and would accept their life as a slave. It is difficult
to share one’s story and ideas when no one speaks the same language. In Saltwater Slavery, Smallwood stated that
“on the ship at sea the logic of commodification reached its nadir”[5].
While the slaves spent weeks and months at sea with complete strangers, they
struggled to continue life as subjective beings. Their time spent on the ship
made them realize that they were now commodities.
Once
the slaves arrived in America, they were put to work on plantations and more
and more slaves were continuously brought over. Taking another humans freedom
and forcing them to work may seem inhumane, but to the slave owners they did
not see a problem. To them, the Africans were already slaves when they got
them. They did not personally capture the Africans and turn them into slaves;
they simply purchased a product. The slave owners convinced themselves slavery
was not bad because they were simply doing what everyone else was doing and
that was buying a good with their money. Throughout the next couple hundred
years, as slaves had children and generations of people grew up with slavery,
it just seemed natural. After the first slaves were brought over to America,
the children of slave owners were raised with slaves around and therefore
believed it was a normal part of life. After multiple generations grow up and
live with slaves, ideas develop that slaves are simply products and a part of
everyday life.
Africans
were not always viewed as commodities, but through the Atlantic slave
trade and the Gold Coast, the transformation happened. Once people began to
realize that slaves were extremely helpful and how easy it was to enslave
someone by taking them to a foreign country, slavery became popular. Once
captured, slaves were treated the same way as all the other products on the
ship. They were shoved in tight spaces, checked for inventory, and shipped
across the ocean to the buyers. These steps, combined with generations of
people having slaves do all their labor lead to the transformation of Africans
into commodities.
[1] Smallwood,
Stephanie E. Saltwater Slavery a Middle Passage from Africa to American
Diaspora (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008), 26.
[2] Smallwood,
Saltwater Slavery a Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora, 68.
[3] Smallwood,
Saltwater Slavery a Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora, 98.
[4] Kolchin,
Peter. American Slavery, 1619-1877 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), 19.
[5] Smallwood,
Saltwater Slavery a Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora, 122.
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