The Slavers

1. The Slavers • Small and narrow ships • Two slaves per ship-tonnage formula • Most captains were “tight packers” • Ignored formula in the name of profits

2. The Slavers (cont.) • Crowded, unsanitary conditions • Slaves rode on planks 66” x 15” • only 20”– 25” of headroom • Males chained together in pairs • Kept apart from women and children • High mortality rates • One-third perish between capture and embarkation

3. Tight Packing

5. Tight Packing

6. Provisions for the Middle Passage • Slaves fed twice per day • Poor and insufficient diet • Vegetable pulps, stews, and fruits • Denied meat or fish • Ten people eating from one bucket • Unwashed hands spread disease • Malnutrition, weakness, depression, death

8. Sanitation, Disease, and Death • Astronomically high before 1750 • Poor sanitation • No germ theory prior to early 20th century • Malaria, yellow fever, smallpox, dysentery • After 1750 - Faster ships • Hygiene and diet better understood • Early forms of smallpox vaccinations

9. Resistance and Revolt at Sea • Uprisings were common • Most rebellions before sailing • Some preferred death to bondage • Justification for harsh treatment by slavers

10. African Women on Slave Ships • Less protection against unwanted sexual attention from European men • African women worth half the price of African men in the Caribbean markets • Separation from male slaves made them easier targets

11. VI. Landing and Sale in the West Indies • Pre-sale • Bathed and exercised • Oiled bodies to conceal blemishes and bruises

12. VII. Seasoning • Modify behavior and attitude • Preparation for North American planters

13. VII. Seasoning (cont.) • Creoles • slaves born in the Americas • worth three times price of unseasoned Africans • Old Africans • Lived in the Americas for some time • New Africans • Had just survived the middle passage • Creoles and Old Africans instruct New Africans

16. Check Point • Up until the 1970s, there was almost no information at all about the middle passage. • Why do you think the history of the middle passage repressed for so long?

17. Regions of Colonial North America, 1683–1763 The British colonies on the North American mainland were divided into four regions. They were bordered on the south by Spanish Florida and to the west by regions claimed by France.

18. Africans Arrive In the Chesapeake • First arrivals, origins unknown • Luis Vasquez de Ayllon • Brought 100 African Slaves from Hispaniola (modern Haiti and Dominican Republic) • Plan to establish a Spanish colony in current South Carolina

19. First Arrivals • St. Augustine Oldest city in the nation • 1565 Africans helped construct the Spanish settlement.

20. The British and Jamestown • First permanent British colony in North America founded in 1607 • Trading company looking to make money for investors • Gold, trade, lumber, rice, silk • Tobacco was a profitable crop • Labor intensive • Undesirables - Indentured servants

21. English Colonies cont. • Smoking became popular in England • Virginia and Maryland produced tobacco • Harvesting tobacco was labor intensive. Not many “Indians” left due to disease. Couldn’t enslave like the Spanish did. • Initial solution – help Britain with unemployed, poor and criminals.

22. Race and Origins of Black Slavery • White indentured servants sought greater opportunities elsewhere • Race and class shaped the character of slavery • Belief that Africans were inferior to English • Prohibitions against bearing arms • Discrimination in colonial polices

23. Chattel Slavery • From unfree to slave for life • Mid-17th century men, women, and children served masters for life • Slavery followed the mother • Slave codes 1660-1710 aimed to control and exploit • owning property, making contracts, leaving without a pass • Christianity offered no protection against enslavement • Masters exempt from charges for murdering slaves while administering punishment

24. Cool Down • Explain how the economic boom caused by tobacco created the racially based slave system in the English colonies.