Kelly Schaefer-Flake
Reaction Paper #1
9/29/14
History 205- Slavery in the United States
How
is it that a human being can be systematically reduced to an object? An answer
to that question is offered by a mere glimpse into the history of colonization.
Although different in the way that they approach African slavery, Stephanie
Smallwood’s “Saltwater Slavery,” Peter Kolchin’s “American Slavery,” and the
essays within “Major Problems in African-American History” all point to the
idea that African slaves were, at least in the minds of European colonists,
nothing more than disposable objects. However, that logic was not necessarily
innate to the European mindset. The Europeans’ clearly recognized that there
was a process involved in turning African slaves into a transportable commodity.
Had the slaves been considered nothing more than objects inherently, the
Europeans would not have had to forcibly transform them through a process as
harsh as the middle passage. The means through which slaves were strategically
removed from their families and placed in unbearable conditions supports an initial
acknowledgement of Africans as human beings. It was as it the Europeans
understood the slave humanity as an infection that had to be extracted.
Keeping the European mindset in
mind, it is important to question how the process of human commidification was
possible. Chains, starvation, and unimaginable isolation were just a few of the
methods that European slave traders employed when transporting Africans slaves
to the Americas[1]. Smallwood
discusses the operation of commodification as partially a scientific feat. She
says that,
The economic enterprise of human
trafficking marked a watershed in what would become an enduring project in the
modern Western word: probing the limits up to which it is possible to
discipline the body without extinguishing life within[2].
But, human commodification was not merely a physical
pursuit. To fully understand the means through which Europeans attempted to
strip the slaves of their humanity, one must consider the physical as well as
the metaphysical experiences. The emotional abuses that the slaves endured were
numerous. It was the procedure of being shipped across the ocean that was
perhaps some of the worst torture that Africans experienced. As Smallwood
notes, the epistemologies of the African people had countless negative
associations to water. Water, was bad, water was where life was not[3].
Additionally, the Africans were, to their knowledge, on a journey that would
never end. Time had no meaning for the African slaves at sea[4].
They were trapped for a time period that had no end. With the endless torture,
the Africans must have been left with endless fear. For Africans attempting to
make sense of it all, their identity was completely changed. Life as they knew
it was over. Their families and their communities were either left behind or
starkly divided. The European slave traders actively sought to push the human
capacity to its limits, to find the place between having a usable human body
and maintaining humanity. For the individuals directly involved in buying and
selling the slaves, the unfortunate process was seen as a necessary evil to
facilitate their economic interests.
One important aspect of slavery
that Smallwood describes well is the execution of slavery as an aggregate of
competing economic preferences. Smallwood details this best when she describes slave-ship
captains attempting to meet capacity. She says, “only when the human cargo was thought
to be large enough to raise the probability of death and the attendant loss of
property could the slave ship be deemed ‘full,’ its complement of captives
‘complete’”[5].
Most often, the slave ship captains were not independent entrepreneurs[6].
They were employees of large European companies dependent upon the sale of
slaves. Similarly, the African merchants selling the slaves to the Europeans
were not necessarily aware of the long-term implications of their actions. Although
slavery was in existence years before European contact with Africa, the
Atlantic Slave Trade marked the birth of an entirely new kind of slavery, a
kind of harsh slavery that would pervade the norms of future American
societies.
In “American Slavery” Peter Kolchin
describes the evolution of slavery once it reached colonial America. Regarding
slavery Kolchin says, “It grew like a cancer, at first slowly, almost
imperceptibly, then inexorably, as colonists eager for material gain imported
hundreds of thousands of Africans to toil in their fields”[7].
Worth noting is the fact that slavery, as it existed in Africa prior to
European influence, was not the captive, total institution that colonial and
American slavery came to be. One of the greatest distinguishing factors between
the type of slavery exercised in Africa and the type of slavery that was
exercised in the Americas is the Americas’ dependence on agriculture.
Especially in colonial North America, agriculture was the driving force behind their
economic success. According to Edmund Morgan in his essay “the Paradox of
Slavery and Freedom”, it’s not inconceivable that the colonists, quite
literally, purchased their independence from the British with products made by
colonial slaves[8]. For colonists then, American slavery
was seen as necessary for America’s success as an independent nation. Without
slavery, there was no possibility of a successful independent American nation.
So, was slavery intrinsically a
discriminatory practice based on the color of one’s skin? Winthrop Jordan suggests
that racism and slavery grew together[9].
But, an argument can also be made for racism growing out of the colonial economic
need to justify slavery as a social imperative. In fact, according to Peter
Kolchin, “the initial demand for labor [in colonial America] was precisely that
– for labor—and was largely color blind”[10].
It was simply practical for slaves to be easily identifiable as slaves; African
slaves played directly into that need. As the entire nation began to depend on
the economics of slavery so completely, there had to be some way to justify the
horrific institution. It’s as if the early Americans believed that a nation
founded on freedom could never willingly enslave other human beings so, as the
Europeans had done before them, they relegated the slaves to objects. Race
turned into a practical way to differentiate “objects” from humans.
[1] Charles
McKinney, “The Terrible Transformation” (lecture, Rhodes College, Memphis, TN, September
9, 2014).
[2] Stephanie E.
Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery a Middle Passage from Africa to American
Diaspora. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008), 36.
[3] Ibid., 125
[4] Ibid., 135
[5] Stephanie E.
Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery a Middle Passage from Africa to American
Diaspora. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008), 36.
[6] Charles
McKinney, “The Terrible Transformation” (lecture, Rhodes College, Memphis, TN, September
9, 2014).
[7] Peter
Kolchin. American Slavery, 1619-1877. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), 4.
[8] Thomas C.
Holt "The Origins of North American Slavery and Racism." In Major
Problems in African-American History: Documents and Essays, 84-108. Vol. 1.
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 100.
[9] Ibid., 98
[10] Peter
Kolchin. American Slavery, 1619-1877. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993),
7.
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