Social Science Section 5 – Flashcards

Slavery has ancient roots, although the word used to denote it, "slav," came into use only after Spanish Muslims enslaved ethnic Slavs of Eastern Europe in the 800s ce. Many ancient civilizations—including Sumerians, Babylonians, Jews, Egyptians, Abyssinians, Christians, Muslims, Mayans, and Aztecs— supported the traffic in humans for profit and for forced, unpaid labor. Some scholars have argued that slavery may have made possible the Golden Age of Athens (480-404 bce). Aristotle believed slavery was the natural order of existence because the souls and intellectual powers of some humans were not well formed. He said, "Some men are by nature free, and others slaves, and that for these latter slavery is both expedient and right"

Between 800 and 1492, slave traders sold relatively small numbers of African slaves to buyers in the Mediterranean world, the Middle East, and Asia just east of Africa. With the arrival of Columbus to the New World, circumstances changed dramatically. The new transatlantic slave trade added a dynamic dimension of millions of people to the older trade. The transatlantic slave trade was significantly different in numbers, geography, and value

When Europeans began arriving in greater numbers in the Middle American World in the 1500s, they found significant levels of Native American cultural development in the Mayan and Aztec civilizations, but little development in terms of long distance trade. This would change significantly when Europeans took control of Native American land by force and seized Native American resources valued in European markets. The devastating consequence of this process was the unwitting introduction of germs to which Native American populations had little or no immunities. In Central Mexico, for example, the estimated population of up to 26.3 million people in 1492 fell to 1.1 million by 1605

European conquerors looked elsewhere for labor to compensate for the dramatic shortage. Seizing land was easy enough; however, working it for agriculture or mining it for gold and silver required a new labor force. Historian J.E. Inikori argues that once Europeans began to use enormous amounts of African slave labor during the heyday of the Atlantic slave trade, the slave labor economy led to the dominance of Western capitalism today and the ongoing dependence of South American and African economies

Forms of slavery existed among West African ethnic groups long before the arrival of Europeans. In Europe, one invested in land as private property. In Africa, one invested in slaves as private property. Ownership of land in Africa was largely nonexistent; rather, land was controlled by the king and ruling families, and land was given to those who could farm it. One gained status in African societies through the acquisition of slaves, much like in Europe one could rise in society through the acquisition of land. Historian John Thornton has argued that, "In Africa the development of commerce and social mobility based on commerce was intimately linked to the growth of slavery, for slaves in villages performing agricultural work or carrying goods in caravans or working in mines under private supervision were essential to private commercial development." Whereas in Europe land was revenue producing, in Africa slavery fulfilled that function

Wealthy Africans also used slaves to increase their power, as slaves could serve as loyal administrators or effective military leaders and soldiers. Unlike in the Americas, African slaves could wield much power. When the Portuguese began to make their way down the west coast of the African continent, they found slaves widely available. Africans who had the most slaves—royalty and merchants—were also the ones with the authority to carry out the traffic in humans. The early Europeans who initially became involved in trading African slaves simply tapped into an ancient, well-developed market, whether on the northern edge of the Sahara or the coast of West Africa

As the technology of the gun advanced in Europe, slave traders were able to put pressure on their African counterparts to accelerate the traffic in humans. African societies which refused were liable to find their African enemies using the weapons against them instead. Sometimes Africans fought wars to gain captives to match demand; at other times they fought to settle political differences. The winners then sold their captives to Europeans. Sometimes economics and politics mixed to produce the same result—the acquisition of slaves to meet the increasing demand of the transatlantic slave trade

Capturing slaves in war was not the only means by which slaves were acquired in traditional African societies. Some Africans kidnapped others. Some Africans sold their relatives to settle grievances. Some Africans who were convicted by judicial authorities in their societies for adultery and theft, for example, were enslaved to compensate society

Whatever the reason one became a slave in African societies, it is important to distinguish between chattel slavery in the New World and African slavery. Both were forms of slavery, but usually were quite different in terms of how slaves were treated. In the New World, a slave was a piece of property with no rights. Owners could buy and sell chattel slaves like any other form of personal property. In Africa, a slave was more like a member of one's extended family. A slave's status was not fixed as in chattel slavery, but could be flexible. A slave might assimilate into the owner's family as a junior member, have children born free, and serve in tasks outside the chattel slave's hard labor. Many slaves in Africa were women sought for their reproductive capacity, in contrast to New World owners who preferred men, whose strength in various forms of labor was more important

Some scholars have argued that the small size of most African states along the coast of West Africa, which themselves were often broken down into even smaller ethnic groups, contributed indirectly to the Atlantic slave trade. Think of the area of a large metropolitan area in the U.S., approximately six hundred square miles, which is about half the size of Rhode Island. If one keeps in mind that the acquisition of slaves rather than land determined wealth, the small size of most African kingdoms is not surprising. After all, adding land expansion to slave capture would require the expenses of an occupation force and ruling infrastructure. Rulers would also have to negotiate with those whom they defeated. Thus, many Africans took slaves but passed on the land. Africans who were recently captured were usually the first to be sold to Europeans, as ties to their captors would not have had time to develop

Some scholars have argued that the advanced firearms technology of the Europeans significantly facilitated the increase in the Atlantic slave trade. Yet Thornton argues that a close review of the evidence suggests a greater force driving the increased supply was in fact local warfare brought about by differences between Africans themselves rather than pressure from Europeans to produce slaves. The defeated were enslaved and sold at the coast. Surely there was some mix of catalysts here—both African agency and European pressure contributed to the growth of the Atlantic slave trade—but Thornton gives more weight to causes internal to African politics than to external European pressure to produce slaves

Prior to Islam, the Romans brought African slaves to Europe from North Africa. As Muslims advanced west across North Africa in the early 700s, they took control of the North African slave trade. Some slaves must have crossed into Portugal and Spain shortly thereafter, if not before, in smaller numbers, accompanying the Saharan caravan trade. In 1441, the Portuguese delivered their first cargo of West African slaves to Lisbon. From 1450 until 1500, the Portuguese imported about eight hundred slaves each year. In 1454 and 1456, the papacy approved Portugal's slave trade on the grounds that the Portuguese slave traders were to advance Christianity as well. Papal authority helped lay the foundation for Portugal's monopoly (asiento) of slave trading south of Senegal in 1468. Portugal was the first of several countries, including Holland, France, Spain, and England, that would assume asientos over the centuries

The growing number of slaves created a critical mass of African workers, both slave and free, who worked as bodyguards, soldiers, menial laborers, couriers, and concubines in maritime urban Spain and Portugal. Africans who were free formed brotherhoods and worked to free those still in bondage. By the mid-1500s, African slaves accompanied conquistadores to explore the New World. The Spanish carried their first enslaved human cargo from West Africa to the Caribbean in 1518, initiating the transatlantic slave trade. The Portuguese followed with shiploads to Brazil.

A new destination for slave labor—the east coast of North America—soon came about, although it was far less significant than Brazil and the Caribbean in terms of the long-term Atlantic slave trade. In August 1619, a ship, perhaps Dutch, took about twenty Africans on the high seas from the Portuguese slave ship Sáo Joáo Bautista, which had been crossing the Atlantic from Luanda, Angola, to Vera Cruz, and debarked at Port Comfort, Virginia, about thirty miles down the James River from Jamestown. Between 1619 and 1700, racism and profit convinced European colonists along the East Coast to pass legislation creating the extreme form of bondage called chattel slavery. These laws transformed humans into beasts of burden at the disposal of their masters with little to no oversight by the state. Once this became clear to growing slave populations in both the Caribbean and the Americas, slave leaders organized revolts. Some of the largest occurred in Brazil, Jamaica, Guyana, Cuba, Mexico, Virginia, Carolina, and Louisiana. Slaves attempted to burn New York City in 1712 and Boston in 1723

Major forces behind the traffic in humans were much the same forces that are significant drivers of our material world today—profit and wealth. During the implementation of plantation slavery in the New World in the period of preindustrial capitalism, African slaves increasingly provided the intensive labor necessary for the production of plantation-grown cane sugar in the New World. (Cooler European climates north of the Mediterranean were not suited for cane cultivation.) As European demand increased, more slaves were required in the New World to meet greater tonnage. Increased European and New World demand for cane sugar was due not only to its desirability as a sweetener and the high caloric content it provided in diets, but also to its byproduct of molasses, which was used both in cooking and in the distillation of rum. In addition to frequent irrigation, the fast pace of harvesting and processing the tall grass-like plant was critical to its success. The mill that contained crushing, boiling, and storage facilities was proximate to the fields to facilitate production. Processing sugar cane in the mill was dangerous, required long hours, and was carried out in very hot conditions. Only slaves could be forced to carry out such onerous work

The origins of New World sugar-producing plantations date back to the Crusades when Arabs and Crusaders created plantations in the Mediterranean and supplied them with enslaved war captives. As the European taste for sugar grew and the Crusades ended, Italian merchants looked to slave markets proximate to the Black Sea to provide slave labor for plantations on Cyprus and elsewhere in the Mediterranean

The foundation for the plantation sugar complex was already in place in the early 1400s when the Portuguese began to explore the Atlantic world. They first established the plantation model in Madeira, worked by slaves from the Canary Islands, which were about three hundred miles due south. (Both Madeira and the Canary Islands are off the west coast of present-day Morocco.) By 1480, the Dutch were importing several hundred tons of sugar for the European market. Soon after the plantation system was established on Madeira, the supply of slaves from both the Canaries and the Black Sea ended, forcing the Portuguese to turn to the slave traders along the West African coast

New European-African contacts led the Portuguese to establish the Madeira plantation model on São Tomé, about 180 miles due west off the coast of present-day Gabon. The problem with the location of São Tomé, however, was that it was home to equatorial pathogens to which the Portuguese had little resistance. Thus, the plantations on São Tomé attracted few Portuguese. The Portuguese used their friendship with the Kongo, who sold the Portuguese their war captives to work sugar cane on São Tomé. At its peak in the mid-1500s, São Tomé was the furthest resource-producing area from Europe that was run by Europeans for European consumption in history, as it was some 4,500 miles away. As European exploration expanded and the European population increased in the New World, Europeans took the model of the plantation complex at São Tomé and improved upon it in the Americas. By the second half of the sixteenth century, São Tomé went into significant decline as a sugar producer due to slave revolts, tropical diseases, and the rise of sugar production in Brazil

Early European contact with the Native Americans devastated the Native American population. When European workers could not be found to carry out the difficult work of sugar production, especially in the Bahia region of Brazil, the Portuguese turned to Africa. By 1600, Brazil had become the greatest sugar producer in the world. Most of the 12.5 million slaves forcibly transported in the Middle Passage from the Africa to the Americas were destined to work in sugar production

The acquisition of slaves, which the Portuguese first carried out largely by slave raiding, was not initially successful. Africans were already people with tools and weapons of iron. Some Africans also had horses. Africans also had an ally in tropical diseases to which they had some immunity. In contrast the Portuguese were vulnerable to the pathogens of the African tropics and succumbed to malaria and yellow fever quite quickly. Hampered by the impact of tropical diseases, European slave raids into the tropical maritime areas of Africa could not supply sufficient slave labor for the production of New World sugar. Thus, some other means to acquire African slaves had to be developed. The Portuguese began to negotiate with Africans along the coast to provide a steady supply of slaves for purchase

As the maritime component of the African slave trade gathered force, the triangular pattern of the transatlantic slave trade began to develop. West and southwest Africa provided the slaves. Molasses from the sugar plantations in Brazil and the Caribbean— an important ingredient in bread and bean recipes and for use in feeding livestock—was exported to New England. The New Englanders distilled rum from the molasses, which they exported to both Europe and Africa. The Europeans exported processed goods, including cloth and metal products, back to Africa, thus initiating the maritime triangular trade once again

Profits made in the Atlantic slave trade soon gained the attention of other European powers. In 1637, the Dutch took Elmina Castle from the Portuguese. Thereafter, the Portuguese traffic in humans was largely carried out south of the Congo River. At first the Dutch and English fought to dominate the Atlantic slave trade; however, pressure to supply the plantations of the Caribbean with slave labor helped end the squabbling. As Basil Davidson described it, "While the seventeenth century was the period of the establishment of the European-American trade with West Africa, the eighteenth was the period of its large expansion." Europeans built some forty-one castles on the West African coast in part to establish their national interests in the transatlantic slave trade. As plantation slavery in Brazil, the Caribbean, and Spanish America began to increase in number and sugar tonnage after 1625, the English, French, Dutch, and Danes challenged the Spanish and Portuguese dominance of the business. Even so, due to the diseases of the tropics and the organization of the Africans, Europeans could only control the sea

European demand for slaves continued to grow, which in turn encouraged some Africans to raise their level of violence inland to capture and supply those slaves. To carry out that violence, Africans increasingly needed access to firearms from Europe. By the mid-1700s, Africans were trading slaves for 100,000 muskets per year manufactured in England. New weapons brought new violence. Africans—including the Fon of Ardrah, Dahomey, and Whydah, the Asante of Gold Coast, the Yoruba of Oyo, and the Igbo of the Niger Delta—carried out much of that violence among themselves

"Buying and selling with the European and American captains...was a tricky business. There was much bargaining. The money used was generally composed of trade goods like iron bars, rolls of cotton or quantities of yams (needed by the slaveships to feed their captives as well as their crews during the voyage across the Atlantic); cowrie shells were also an important form of money. Any attempt by the European traders to bully or cheat their African partners was likely to be answered by a boycott. The Africans...simply closed the river to European trade until the Europeans made good the damage they had caused. Here in the Delta the Europeans had no castles and few shore stations. Instead, they lived in old ships, called hulks,... permanently anchored near the shore of the trading towns. The complications of this trading system can be seen from the deals that were made. In 1676, for instance, the captain of the English ship Bonaventure bought one hundred men, women, and children and had them duly branded by his crew with the special mark of the British Royal African Company: DY for Duke of York. For these carefully selected captives he paid five muskets, twenty-one iron bars, seventy- two knives, half a barrel of gunpowder and various lengths of cotton...."

As the trade increased, European crews stripped, branded, chained, and confined slaves below deck in extremely crowded conditions in a toxic environment replete with extreme heat, germs, stench, and claustrophobic terror

One of the major West African ethnic groups that participated in the slave trade was the Asante. The Asante originated in the early 1600s as a coalition of Akan-speaking farmers in the region of what is today Kumasi. In about 1695, two Asante leaders, Osei Tutu and the priest Anokye, joined together to enlarge their coalition and gain complete independence from their powerful neighbors. They created the legend of the Golden Stool, a unifying symbol brought down from the sky and placed on Osei Tutu's knees by Anokye, who instilled it with the spirit of the Asante people. Those who accepted this story joined in the coalition under the leadership of Osei Tutu

The Asante expanded outward to seek participation in the lucrative trade in slaves with the Dutch at Elmina by defeating the Denkyira, whose trade contract with the Dutch then passed to the Asante. In the ensuing century, the Asante continued to expand their power until they came into conflict with the Fante and their British allies at Cape Coast Castle. Between 1807 and 1816, a series of Asante military operations strengthened Asante control over the Fante

Between 1824 and 1900, the Asante and British fought several wars, including the Sagrenti War (1874) and the Yaa Asantewaa War (1900). Some of the Asante's hostility toward the British resulted from Britain's ban on the Atlantic slave trade in 1807 and the ban on slavery within the Gold Coast in 1875. Asantehene Osei Bonsu expressed his objections to the ban in 1820. Yet even after 1875, British administrators often looked the other way when African producers of much sought after palm oil used young African female slave labor

Much of the revulsion we feel today toward the Atlantic slave trade has been stirred by the writings of slaves themselves. Olaudah Equiano is one of the most famous of those writers. He claimed to have been born an Igbo in the mid 1740s in the eastern part of what is now Nigeria. African slave traders captured Equiano and his sister when he was about eleven years old. About a year later, Equiano arrived at the coast, was sold to a slave ship captain, and crossed over on the Middle Passage from the Bight of Biafra to Barbados. Before he was twenty-one, he lived as a slave in Virginia and London, where he learned to read and write. In 1766, after serving as a slave at sea, he purchased his freedom. He traveled widely for the next twenty years before joining the abolition movement. In 1788, he appeared before the House of Commons to argue for the improvement of conditions for slaves on slave ships. In 1789, he published his autobiography and his plea for the abolition of the slave trade

While the Atlantic slave trade was not abolished in Equiano's lifetime—that would take another ten years or so—his famous book was translated into French, Russian, and Dutch and went through nine British editions. Equiano's book and his speeches reached thousands of Europeans who otherwise would not have had much empathy for those who suffered so greatly in bondage. Equiano successfully conveyed to his readers and listeners the horrors of slavery through the eyes of an ex slave and fellow human

"The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea, and a slave ship, which was then riding at anchor, and waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror when I was carried on board. I was immediately handled and tossed up to see if I were sound by some of the crew; and I was now persuaded that I had gotten into a world of bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me. Their complexions too differing so much from ours, their long hair, and the language they spoke, (which was very different from any I had ever heard) united to confirm me in this belief. Indeed such were the horrors of my views and fears at the moment, that, if ten thousand worlds had been my own, I would have freely parted with them all to have exchanged my condition with that of the meanest slave in my own country. When I looked round the ship too and saw a large furnace or copper boiling, and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted of my fate; and, quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted. When I recovered a little I found some black people about me, who I believed were some of those who brought me on board, and had been receiving their pay; they talked to me in order to cheer me, but all in vain. I asked them if we were not to be eaten by those white men with horrible looks, red faces, and loose hair. They told me I was not; and one of the crew brought me a small portion of spirituous liquor in a wine glass; but, being afraid of him, I would not take it out of his hand. One of the blacks therefore took it from him and gave it to me, and I took a little down my palate, which, instead of reviving me, as they thought it would, threw me into the greatest consternation at the strange feeling it produced, having never tasted any such liquor before. Soon after this the blacks who brought me on board went off, and left me abandoned to despair. I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country, or even the least glimpse of hope of gaining the shore, which I now considered as friendly; and I even wished for my former slavery in preference to my present situation, which was filled with horrors of every kind, still heightened by my ignorance of what I was to undergo.... I was not long suffered to indulge my grief; I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life: so that, with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste any thing

"I now wished for the last friend, death, to relieve me; but soon, to my grief, two of the white men offered me eatables; and, on my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands, and laid me across I think the windlass, and tied my feet, while the other flogged me severely. I had never experienced any thing of this kind before; and although, not being used to the water, I naturally feared that element the first time I saw it, yet nevertheless could I have got over the nettings, I would have jumped over the side but I could not, and, besides, the crew used to watch us very closely who were not chained down to the decks, lest we should leap into the water: and I have seen some of these poor African prisoners most severely cut for attempting to do so, and hourly whipped for not eating. This indeed was often the case with myself. In a little time after amongst the poor chained men, I found some of my own nation, which in a small degree gave ease to my mind. I inquired of these what was to be done with us; they gave me to understand we were to be carried to these white people's country to work for them. I then was a little revived, and thought, if it were no worse than working, my situation was not so desperate: but still I feared I should be put to death, the white people looked and acted, as I thought, in so savage a manner; for I had never seen among any people such instances of brutal cruelty; and this not only shewn towards us blacks, but also to some of the whites themselves. One white man in particular I saw, when we were permitted to be on deck, flogged so unmercifully with a large rope near the foremast, that he died in consequence of it; and they tossed him over the side as they would have done a brute. This made me fear these people the more; and I expected nothing less than to be treated in the same manner. I could not help expressing my fears and apprehensions to some of my countrymen: I asked them if these people had no country, but lived in this hollow place (the ship): they told me they did not, but came from a distant one. "Then," said I, "how comes it in all our country we never heard of them?" They told me because they lived so very far off. I then asked where were their women? had they any like themselves? I was told they had: "and why," said I, "do we not see them?" they answered because they were left behind"

"I asked how the vessel could go? they told me they could not tell; but that there were cloths put upon the masts by the help of the ropes I saw, and then the vessel went on; and the white men had some spell or magic they put in the water when they liked in order to stop the vessel. I was exceedingly amazed at this account, and really thought they were spirits. I therefore wished much to be from amongst them, for I expected they would sacrifice me: but my wishes were vain; for we were so quartered that it was impossible for any of us to make our escape. While we stayed on the coast I was mostly on deck; and one day, to my great astonishment, I saw one of these vessels coming in with the sails up. As soon as the whites saw it, they gave a great shout, at which we were amazed; and the more so as the vessel appeared larger by approaching nearer. At last she came to an anchor in my sight, and when the anchor was let go I and my countrymen who saw it were lost in astonishment to observe the vessel stop; and were now convinced it was done by magic. Soon after this the other ship got her boats out, and they came on board of us, and the people of both ships seemed very glad to see each other. Several of the strangers also shook hands with us black people, and made motions with their hands, signifying I suppose we were to go to their country; but we did not understand them"

"At last, when the ship we were in had got in all her cargo, they made ready with many fearful noises, and we were all put under deck, so that we could not see how they managed the vessel. But this disappointment was the least of my sorrow. The stench of the hold while we were on the coast was so intolerably loathsome, that it was dangerous to remain there for any time, and some of us had been permitted to stay on the deck for the fresh air; but now that the whole ship's cargo were confined together, it became absolutely pestilential. The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died, thus falling victims to the improvident avarice, as I may call it, of their purchasers. This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains, now become insupportable; and the filth of the necessary tubs [latrines], into which the children often fell, and were almost suffocated. The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable."

"Happily perhaps for myself I was soon reduced so low here that it was thought necessary to keep me almost always on deck; and from my extreme youth I was not put in fetters. In this situation I expected every hour to share the fate of my companions, some of whom were almost daily brought upon deck at the point of death, which I began to hope would soon put an end to my miseries. Often did I think many of the inhabitants of the deep much more happy than myself. I envied them the freedom they enjoyed, and as often wished I could change my condition for theirs. Every circumstance I met with served only to render my state more painful, and heighten my apprehensions, and my opinion of the cruelty of the whites. One day they had taken a number of fishes; and when they had killed and satisfied themselves with as many as they thought fit, to our astonishment who were on the deck, rather than give any of them to us to eat as we expected, they tossed the remaining fish into the sea again, although we begged and prayed for some as well as we could, but in vain; and some of my countrymen, being pressed by hunger, took an opportunity, when they thought no one saw them, of trying to get a little privately; but they were discovered, and the attempt procured them some very severe floggings. One day, when we had a smooth sea and moderate wind, two of my wearied countrymen who were chained together (I was near them at the time), preferring death to such a life of misery, somehow made through the nettings and jumped into the sea: immediately another quite dejected fellow, who, on one account of his illness, was suffered to be out of irons, also followed their example; and I believe many more would very soon have done the same if they had not been prevented by the ship's crew, who were instantly alarmed. Those of us that were the most active were in a moment put down under the deck, and here was such a noise and confusion amongst the people of the ship as I never heard before, to stop her, and get the boat out to go after the slaves. However two of the wretches were drowned, but they got the other, and afterwards flogged him unmercifully for thus attempting to prefer death to slavery. In this manner we continued to undergo more hardships than I can now relate, hardships which are inseparable from this accursed trade. Many a time we were near suffocation from the want of fresh air, which we were often without for whole days together. This, and the stench of the necessary tubs [latrines], carried off many. During our passage I first saw flying fishes, which surprised me very much: they used frequently to fly across the ship, and many of them fell on the deck. I also now first saw the use of the quadrant; I had often with astonishment seen the mariners make observations with it, and I could not think what it meant. They at last took notice of my surprise; and one of them, willing to increase it, as well as to gratify my curiosity, made me one day look through it. The clouds appeared to me to be land, which disappeared as they passed along. This heightened my wonder; and I was now more persuaded than ever that I was in another world, and that every thing about me was magic

"At last we came in sight of the island of Barbadoes, at which the whites on board gave a great shout, and made many signs of joy to us. We did not know what to think of this; but as the vessel drew nearer we plainly saw the harbour, and other ships of different kinds and sizes; and we soon anchored amongst them off Bridge Town. Many merchants and planters now came on board, though it was in the evening. They put us in separate parcels, and examined us attentively. They also made us jump, and pointed to the land, signifying we were to go there. We thought by this we should be eaten by these ugly men, as they appeared to us; and, when soon after we were all put down under the deck again, there was much dread and trembling among us, and nothing but bitter cries to be heard all the night from these apprehensions, insomuch that at last the white people got some old slaves from the land to pacify us. They told us we were not to be eaten, but to work, and were soon to go on land, where we should see many of our country people. This report eased us much; and sure enough, soon after we were landed, there came to us Africans of all languages. We were conducted immediately to the merchant's yard, where we were all pent up together like so many sheep in a fold, without regard to sex or age. As every object was new to me every thing I saw filled me with surprise. What struck me first was that the houses were built with stories, and in every other respect different from those in Africa: but I was still more astonished on seeing people on horseback. I did not know what this could mean; and indeed I thought these people were full of nothing but magical arts. While I was in this astonishment one of my fellow prisoners spoke to a countryman of his about the horses, who said they were the same kind they had in their country. I understood them, though they were from a distant part of Africa, and I thought it odd I had not seen any horses there; but afterwards, when I came to converse with different Africans, I found they had many horses amongst them, and much larger than those I then saw"

"We were not many days in the merchant's custody before we were sold after their usual manner, which is this: — On a signal given, (as the beat of a drum) the buyers rush at once into the yard where the slaves are confined, and make choice of that parcel they like best. The noise and clamour with which this is attended, and the eagerness visible in the countenances of the buyers, serve not a little to increase the apprehensions of the terrified Africans, who may well be supposed to consider them as the ministers of that destruction to which they think themselves devoted. In this manner, without scruple, are relations and friends separated, most of them never to see each other again. I remember in the vessel in which I was brought over, in the men's apartment, there were several brothers, who, in the sale, were sold in different lots; and it was very moving on this occasion to see and hear their cries at parting. 0, ye nominal Christians! might not an African ask you, learned you this from your God, who says unto you, Do unto all men as you would men should do unto you? Is it not enough that we are torn from our country and friends to toil for your luxury and lust of gain? Must every tender feeling be likewise sacrificed to your avarice? Are the dearest friends and relations, now rendered more dear by their separation from their kindred, still to be parted from each other, and thus prevented from cheering the gloom of slavery with the small comfort of being together and mingling their sufferings and sorrows? Why are parents to lose their children, brothers their sisters, or husbands their wives? Surely this is a new refinement in cruelty, which, while it has no advantage to atone for it, thus aggravates distress, and adds fresh horrors even to the wretchedness of slavery"

Opponents of Equiano as well as some modern scholars have challenged Equiano's claim that he was born in Africa. Vincent Carretta has discovered discrepancies between Equiano's assertions and recent evidence suggesting he was born in South Carolina.Regardless, the importance of his work is not his country of origin, but rather the general veracity of his accounts of the Atlantic slave trade, the Middle Passage, and chattel slavery. To those points, there is no controversy

Scholarship on the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade focuses on three major topics. First, scholars have written much on the abolitionists themselves, including Olaudah Equiano, who appealed to the collective conscience of Europeans, especially those of the rising middle class in England who aspired to the civilizing ideas of the European Enlightenment and liberalism. Other scholars have examined the relationship between industrial capitalism and abolition, arguing that advances in machinery and technology made slave labor costly and obsolete. The inference here is that abolition was facilitated less by conscience than it was by industrial advances and free trade capitalism, which succeeded the economic protectionist system of mercantilism. Still others have pointed to the impact that slave revolts in Haiti and elsewhere had on the process of abolition. Those emphasizing this cause suggest that if abolition did not progress voluntarily, it would be brought about by force. Whatever the exact mix of causes, the end of slavery was imminent as the nineteenth century began

Some of the first Britons to oppose the Atlantic slave trade were Quakers, who founded the first British anti-slavery society in 1783. Renowned advocates of abolition included ex-slaves Olaudah Equiano and his friend Ottobah Cugoano, lawyer Granville Sharp, student Thomas Clarkson, Member of Parliament William Wilberforce, former slave ship captain John Newton, who was also the author of the lyrics to the hymn "Amazing Grace," and slave ship doctor Alexander Falconbridge

British abolitionists first devised a plan to attack the transatlantic slave trade. They believed that the abolition of slavery itself would follow the end of the traffic in humans. They successfully organized a nationwide political campaign to promote their plan. They held mass meetings, presented Members of Parliament with petitions signed by many thousands of citizens, and boycotted slave-produced products, including sugar. Tactics common to today's protests—including provocative imagery, bracelets, and graphic illustrations (such as that of the slave ship Brookes)—were largely used for the first time during the British abolitionist movement. Although the French Revolution and slave revolts in the French colonies of St. Domingue and Haiti temporarily slowed the British abolitionist movement, in 1807 Parliament banned British slave trading with all nations. The United States likewise banned the traffic in humans in the same year. In 1838, Parliament banned slavery throughout the British Empire. The Danes had prohibited the slave trade to their colonies even earlier in 1803