Sam Sefton
Essay 1
9/29/14
History 205- slavery in the US
Physical and Emotional Trauma
Resulting From the Commodification of Slaves
Stephanie Smallwood’s Saltwater
Slavery and Peter Kolchin’s American Slavery, paint a picture of
desperation, denial, and disturbance in the middle passage. Desperation describes the feelings of the
slaves, fighting to stay alive. The
captains, masters, and people of authority deny that they are doing anything
wrong. Disturbance is the emotion the reader feels when placed into the lives
of these slaves. This new movement
towards a world of slavery was not a singular event, but rather a series of
events that left the victims of the movement with emotional and physical
damage. However, they knew their
emotions and feelings were worthless because they were objects, not
people. The commodification movement was
despicable, and left the slaves with incurable emotional and physical trauma.
The victims of commodification
understood they were no longer humans, and the emotional trauma of this event
was constantly occurring. They no longer
had control of their own lives, but rather their lives were controlled for
them. Smallwood enlightens the reader,
“Captives learned that when they reached the littoral, their exchangeability on
the Atlantic market outweighed any social value they might have”.[1] Masters saw the slaves as an item that could be
exchanged for a more valuable item, whether that was another slave or a resource
like gold. Masters ripped the humanity
away from the slaves. Once the victims
were aboard the slave ship, they were no longer their own person. Smallwood describes the horrid nature of the
ship, “The slave ship at sea reduced African captives to an existence so
physically atomized as to silence all but the most elemental bodily
articulation, so socially impoverished as to threaten annihilation of
articulation of the self, the complete disintegration of personhood”.[2] The question is begged- how can people treat
others with such little respect? The
masters and captains don’t see the slaves as people. In their eyes, the slaves exist primarily to
be objects of monetary value, and nothing else.
In addition to emotional trauma,
there was an enormous amount of physical abuse and a general lack of care
towards the conditions in which the slaves lived. Kolchin challenges his reader to recognize the
physical trauma, “Born in violence, slavery survived by the lash. Beginning with the initial slave trade that
tore Africans away from everything they knew and sent them in chains to a
distant land to toil for strangers, every stage of master-slave relations
depended either directly or indirectly on physical coercion”.[3] Kolchin makes it apparent that the slaves
were left with nothing when moving to America.
Their masters became a symbol of physical trauma. This relationship must have been one of fear
and distress. The masters used shackles
as a form of control over the slaves.
Smallwood depicts this harsh nature; “shackles were an important element
in the arsenal of tools used to physically disable captives during their
incarceration in coatal factories”.[4] The idea was to provide a way to hold the
slaves captive at the expense of their own pain and suffering. Masters did not worry about the slaves pain
or discomfort, only the fact that they were still alive so they could sell and
trade them.
Slaves were packed into the ships as
tight as possible. The idea was to transport
as many slaves as possible on one ship without increasing the death rate. Smallwood describes the situation, “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’”.[5] Increasing the numbers was key to get more
slaves to America, but death proposed problems. Finding the perfect balance was
vital. Smallwood continues, “Every new
delivery of captives added to the effluvia of sweat, vomit, urine, and
excrement that painted the decks where the captives lay; each new body required
space where now none was to be had”.[6] The allotted space for individuals was
essentially the size of their body. The
space would inevitably decrease as more slaves were forced onto the ship. Their holding space was also where they were
to use the restroom, and many were bound to vomit from seasickness. With the increasing number of slaves being
crammed, this meant there was more people’s bodily fluids mixed. Evidently, this was not an ideal situation,
but the captains did not feel remorse. Kolchin
explains the voyages, “Successful voyages brought large profits, but the risks
were also great: sea travel was hazardous under the best of circumstances, and
on most ships between 5 and 20 percent of the slaves (and crew) died in
transit”.[7] It was very important to find the balance
between bringing as many people as possible without a large death rate. The large profits were necessary, but could
only be obtained under perfect circumstances.
The slaves were also at high risk
for disease and infection. Smallwood
states, “with crowding came lack of sanitation, and the enslaved Africans found
that none of the familiar habits of personal hygiene could be observed. Thus, illness was nearly impossible to avoid
in that setting”.[8] The amount of people on the ship was
proportional to the spread of disease.
Therefore, disease was another factor that needed to be considered for
finding that ideal number of people for the ship. If there were too many people disease could
spread easily, causing a mass number of death.
The lack of private space on the ship was a contributing factor to the
outbreak of disease. Another factor that
played into disease was immunity. It is
clear that “we know now that extraction from one’s native epidemiological
environment leaves all long-distance migrants vulnerable to infectious diseases
to which they have no natural or acquired immunity”.[9] The slaves often caught illnesses during the
voyage to America due to the fact that they were moving into a new
environment. Along with this, many
slaves were from different regions, carrying different and sometimes terminal
diseases.
The middle passage was a movement
full of trauma and disaster. Smallwood sums
it up, “the violence exercised in the service of human commodification relied
on a scientific empiricism always seeking to find the limits of human capacity
for suffering, that point where material and social poverty threatened to
consume entirely the lives it was meant to garner for sale in the Americas”.[10] The
masters worked to keep the slaves alive.
They relied on the lives of the slaves for profit, and as long as they
were alive they could impose as much pain as possible on them. A high death rate made it impossible to
obtain a large profit for each shipment of slaves. Masters and captains had no remorse for the
slaves. It was evident that their
humanity was ripped away from them, leaving them with nothing but feelings of
despair. They were ripped away from
their families, cultures, and homes.
Most of the people on the ship with them didn’t even speak their
language, so trying to communicate was nothing short of impossible. This was most likely done as a way to avoid
collaboration and resistance towards authority.
The commodification of slaves and the voyage to America left the victims
with emotional and physical trauma that could not be cured. This is evident through the treatment towards
the slaves.
No comments:
Post a Comment