Bouazza Azzouzi

Professor Micheal Rumor

March 16

Being Enslave

Nothing is stronger to illustrate the life of enslaved Africans during the seventeenth and eighteenth century than pictures or diagrams, because of their ability to create an image of their life in our mind and express what language cannot do. For this reason, I have chosen one picture and one diagram of enslaved Africans to be the main objects for my paper. These pictures illustrated the struggle of enslaved during their voyage and continuing of this miserable life in the new land. also, these objects are proving the theme of slavery in “Oroonoko” by Aphra Behn.

During the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thousands of enslaved Africans were preferred subject for British Empire and brought them to America as enslaved labor on the plantation as Mighty Sparrow addresses this sad moment in our history in his powerful and emotional song.

“I was caught

And I was brought here from Africa

Well it was licks like fire

From de white slavemaster

Every day I down on knees” (5-9)

Let us imagine that we never had learned about slavery and focus just on this diagram then try to have an idea about the life of enslaved Africans and their living condition. This diagram from 1789 shows British ships full of enslaved Africans in unhuman condition some of them are sitting, and rest are standing and how they were cramped. We can say that the journey of transporting enslave was violent and brutal. Furthermore, we can describe this British cargo ship as a slow death journey, This ship  supposed to be used just for goods because they are designed just for that purpose, but the owner of this kind of cargo ship used them to carry hundreds of enslaved not carrying for their health and safety.“ Middle Passage of the transatlantic slave trade was crowded and often deadly. Many historical accounts have linked the overcrowded conditions on the voyages to slaves’ ill health and high mortality rates … a that, without meeting with unusually bad weather, or having a longer voyage than.” Nicolas J Enslaved Africans were placed underneath the decks of the ship in a miserable condition and were very crowded.  they were packed closely to each other. Thus, tens of them could not make it to another world because they were vulnerable to deadly diseases such as malaria, yellow, and fever. At the same time, the enslaved Africans and the ship owners sometimes had to fight with other powers on the sea as Kenneth Morgan “The slave trade, however, was a particularly risky form of maritime enterprise. It was frequently interrupted by warfare on the high seas when conflicts between European trading powers impinged on Atlantic and Caribbean shipping lanes” (3). These conflicts between European powers made the sea a very dangerous and deadly place, enslave Africans had to fight with the owner of the ship just to save their life, sometimes they forced to fight by their traders and if they rejected they got punched. Merely, the life of enslaved Africans was full of challenges and they faced a lot of obstacles when they were crossing the sea to the new world.

After the survived the miserable life on the British ship, they had to deal with another life that differs from their homeland in Africa, so how their life looks like when they got to the new world?

Based on pictured and on what the life of “Oroonoko” by Aphra Behn Enslave, life was not different than what they faced during their voyage. After they had sold to the new owners, enslaved Africans forced to wok in plantation, building roads and nearly every sort hard job that required physical actions  as Aphra Behn stats in her book Oroonoko “Those then whom we make use of to work in our plantation of sugar are Negroes, black slaves altogether, which are transported thither in this manner.” (12) Not only that they forced to serve their owners and they were not allowed to refuse their demands, but also as we can see in the picture white owners treated enslave Africans as animals without any mercy. Therefore, enslave Africans had to obey their owners otherwise, they will get punishment and get killed. “and had him carried to the same post where he was whipped; and causing him to be tied to it, and a great fire made before him, he told him he should die like a dog,… that he was the only man, of all the whites, that ever he heard speak the truth.” Behn (76) this quotation from “Oroonoko’’ confirms what the picture that I have chosen is about. The white owners of plantations made the life of enslaved African miserable and tough enough that let them think that death was better than surviving. thus, a lot of them died from this brutality or diseases, in another hand, some of them decided to end their life by themselves. Also, what made their life also difficult is that they could not escape because they did not have much knowledge about the new land also their skin made them easier to recognize by others in the case, they decided to escape the plantations.

In brief, I chose these two objects from our dark history to refresh the struggles that enslave Africans in the seventeenth and eighteenth century and; for this reason, I focused on diagrams and pictures from that time because of their ability to grab our attention and demonstrate part of human history.

Work cited

Getty Images ” whipping post, Delaware” Slavery and Antislavery, A Transnational Archive. 1865

Getty Images “ Eighteenth-Century Collection Online” 1789

Behn Aphra. Oroonoko, edited by Janet Todo, Penguin Books, 2003

Duquette Nicolas J. Revealing the Relationship Between Ship Crowding and Slave Mortality, Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History Association, Vol. 74, p 535-552.

Morgan Kenneth. Remittance Procedures in the Eighteenth-Century British Slave Trade. The President and Fellows of Harvard College. Vol.79. p 715-749.

Mighty Sparrow. Slave, The Guardian,2018.