The above image is a famous diagram often referred to as "Description of a Slave Ship." It was used by early abolitionists to illustrate the great horror of the Atlantic slave trade to a public that otherwise was mostly content to enjoy its slave-produced items without thinking of the consequences of its consumption. I retrieved the image at http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/abolition/gallery/index.asp. The linked website contains other images in the public domain worth viewing. A story earlier this year in the Cornell Daily Sun reflects on the power of the image, both in its use in the abolitionist cause and the insights it still holds for us today. The article is an excellent read and may be found at http://cornellsun.com/node/41076.
The image drives home for me the point made by Sidney Mintz in Sweetness and Power (1985) about the dependence of the transatlantic triangle trades on the "false commodity" of human beings. Mintz's language about the slaves' being "themselves consumed in the creation of wealth" by the trade routes echoes early abolitionists' claims that in ingesting slave-produced sugar people were drinking human blood (43). But the image itself of the ship seems to show human beings swallowed up, almost monstrously. It is hard for me to look at the image and not think about people who were quite literally buried alive in such ships. If they survived the voyage, they faced a life of hardship seemingly unimaginable for us today: a deathly life.
The shapes in the diagram are recognizably human but also anonymous, which only adds to the image's horror. Part of being made into a commodity is being stripped of one's identity as a human being. What I admire about slave narratives such as Frederick Douglass's and Harriet Jacobs' is their power to give a voice back to people who have been made anonymous objects.
It is really hard to realize how different things were back then. It seems as if the people of that time had no moral conscience. They tried to justify their actions by saying that slavery was a good thing and that it was a benefit for the African Americans. Just by looking at the picture of this ship, we know this to be completely false. How can jamming that many innocent people into one ship, whom like you said, were literally buried alive there, be beneficial let alone justified? Money is a powerful agent that seems to work against many men in humanity's past and present. Our hearts and minds can easily be corrupted by our necessities. For instance, the idea that you present about how if you consumed a slave-produced product, you were basically drinking human blood is mind blowing. This idea really hits me hard, because if I were a part of society during that time I would be a part of slavery just by drinking tea or wearing the clothes on my back. Almost every product at that time would be tainted with human blood.
ReplyDeleteIn conclusion, I completely agree with your admiration of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs. Their words were very powerful and I think that how they stood up against all odds was unbelievable. If they could go through the hardships they had to go through and still accomplish what they set out to do, then it means almost anything is possible if you just stand up for it and believe in it. Sometimes, we take a lot of things for granite and looking back at things like these help us to see how lucky we really are.
Just looking at that ship is rather appalling. I'm embarrassed for the people of the time, their priorities obviously needed some examining. Treating humans as objects, is like stripping them of their humanity.This journey was probably the first step in the dehumanization of the people. I wonder if the people on the boat could even communicate with the sailors. It seems like from little tribes they wouldn't which would ultimately make things more scary.
ReplyDeleteThe structure of that boat also gets to me how close the spacing must have been, packing people in. It's no wonder people could die of lack of sufficient air, it wouldn't be like there was a way of recirculating clean air down there. In a way it surprises me that anyone would want to work on these ships. How could they not feel the slightest bit bad? The picture for me just brings up a series of other questions to pounder. It makes me curious what type of people they would recruit. to do those jobs. W I suppose as we were discussing before, drunk people or power hungry ones. How did little children survive if at all? What would happen if their parents died? For anyone it would be a feat of strength in and of itself to get past a journey. It almost makes me feel bad complaining about airlines these days. The only flip side I can think of for these ships is that at the very least they have each other. Later on they would be split form their children and loved ones but on the boat cramped or not they had each other.
I guess this is just another example of what people will do for money, if society allows it. Capitalism then. like now still drives people to do ridiculous things. Such atrocities could only really occur if it was so well embedded in the nature of peoples routines. Than again after African American rights, and women's rights it almost seems like as the periods change we continually refine our way of life. It's easy to judge and of course the way they were treating people was wrong. But I wonder if years from now there are problems current society people will criticize us for.