The early modern era. And by that i mean, essentially, three things. First, the origins and the rise of capitalism around the atlantic beginning in the late 16th century and continuing thereafter to the present. Secondly, the establishment of european dominance around the world. This is another major theme to which the slave trade is connected. And then finally, we are talking today about one of the very foundations of American History. America is the result of the meeting of three very old cultures, and you might say continents. People from europe, people from west africa, and people from native america. So today were going to talk about one of those three pillars. The african slave trade. Now, i want to begin with a quote by a very eminent africanamerican scholar activist named w. E. B. Dubois. Heres what dubois said about the atlantic slave trade. Dubois wrote the most magnificent drama in the last thousand years of Human History is the transportation of 10 million human beings out of the dark beauty of their mother continent and into the newfound el dorado of the west. They descended into hell. He continued, it was a tragedy that beggared the greek. It was an upheaval of humanity like the reformation and the french revolution. Well, i think dubois is exactly right. This is a stunning drama of Human History, the atlantic slave trade. And i would ask you to notice his reference to el dorado. The mythic city of goals sought after by the spanish conquistadorist when they came to mexico and peru. Well, el dorado was finally found. Not that actual city, but a slave system that would produce gold and wealth on a scale previously unimaginable. So it is a story about el dorado after all. Now, ive said that the slave trade is the foundation of American History. I mean that in a very literal sense. Slavery as an institution. The slave trade as something that made that institution possible are utterly central to American History from the 17th century to the present. This, folks, is important to who we are. We can pretend that thats not true. That wont help us. In a way were talking today in discussing the atlantic slave trade about the origins and the very nature of america as a human society. Now, this is not an easy subject to discuss, as ive suggested. Because the slave trade and slavery more broadly are both fundamentally premised on violence and terror. You cant coerce people into hard work for their entire lives without a system of violence backing it up. Now, this is especially clear in the slave trade. So what were going to talk about today is difficult. Its painful. And its not only painful because of the specific history, its painful because of the truths that this requires us to face. Okay. And let me be a little more specific about that. In this post 9 11 world, we talk a lot about terror, do we not . Well, the question i have is, do we have the courage to talk about the terror that was instrumental to the very making and building of American Society . Something not done by others to americans, but done by americans to others. Thats a big question. And i think that question lies at the heart of a test of any society that considers itself to be democratic. In other words, its easy to face all those glorious things in your history, like the exalted ideals of the american revolution. The question is, can you face the dark ages of your history . And i would suggest to you we need to do that, and that studying the atlantic slave trade is part of it. Because those slave ships that brought millions of people to the americas are still sailing. Theyre ghost ships that haunt us because we live with the history that theyve created. Lets start with the ship. Im sure all of you have seen these tall ships, the replicas that have been built. Have you seen them . Theyre spectacular, arent they . The european tall ship. Its a majestic thing to see, its a beautiful thing to see, but the beauty of it, the way weve transformed it into something of a fetish, actually hides its history. Because what i would have you know about this european tall ship is that, in fact, this is the technology that allowed europeans to concur the rest of the world. This thing is a machine. What happened was, european Ship Builders found ways to load cannon on to these highly mobile ships which allowed europeans to fan out over the face of the earth to trade and to make war to enforce their terms of trade. When you look at the earths surface and see how many parts of it speak european languages, think of this. This is why it happened. But, of course, there is a limit to the romance of the sea. And were going to explore that today. Because even though we love tall ships, it turns out theres one we dont love, thats the slave ship. In fact, we find it very hard to talk about it, but talk about it we must. Now, i suspect that most of you would have no way of knowing that this particular tall ship was actually a slave ship. There is a way to tell. Because if you look closely, youll see just above the waterline on the side of the vessel in the hull, youll find holes carved into it. These are airport air ports. Now, if your cargo is textiles, if your cargo is sugar, if your cargo is timber you dont carve holes into the side of the ship. But if your cargo is 300 human beings to be brought from west africa to some port in the new world, youve got a big problem. The problem is ventilation. How to let that socalled cargo breathe. Thats how can you tell its a slave ship, because of the holes carved in the side. Well, were going to talk about the slave trade in its largest dimensions and were also going to talk about it concretely. Heres a famous image you may have seen. This is actually a real ship called the brooks that sailed out of liverpool, for about 20 years in the late 18th century. Ships like this carried over a very long span of Time Beginning around 1514 and carrying on up to about 1866, thats a span of 352 years carries millions of people into bondage. One of my points here is that were not talking about a short burst of violence. Were talking about something that lasted for three and a half centuries. You have to take that on board. Now the countries that took the lead in organizing the atlantic slave trade, first of all it was portugal. The fairly small nation of portugal was the preeminent maritime nation in the 15th century. And their voyages down the coast here you have europe. Heres portugal. This is really a tiny part of the world. Look at it. These are the countries that will form maritime empires throughout the western atlantic. But the portuguese come down the coast, going further and further over time making Contact First in the senagambia region, trading originally for ivory and then slowly more and more for human beings. And then after 1492, when europeans began coming especially to the caribbean and building their new imperial systems, more and more european nations want to get involved in this process. So portugal, spain, those are the two leaders, are followed in rapid succession by the netherlands, denmark, france, england and the United States. There is really a mad rush for the wealth to be gained in the slave trade and in the building of these systems of slavery in the americas. This is really critical. Now, we want to talk about numbers. Numbers are important, and numbers when it comes to the slave trade are very controversial. Over many years, there have been wildly varying estimates of how many people were carried out of west africa, really from senegambi down the coast to southern angola and then eventually later on into south and east africa. How many people were carried to the new world . Well, it turns out that we know quite a bit about the slave trade because the slave trade was a big business. And we have an abundance of Business Records. Those Business Records and indeed practically every kind of conceivable record has now been mined and put together in something called the tra Transatlantic Slave Trade database. I would recommend it to all of you. This is a really magnificent scholarly achievement. We now have records on something more than 33,000 slaving voyages. Most of which began in europe. Some of which began in the United States, some of which began in brazil, but which resulted in this Massive Movement of humanity across the atlantic. If you want the url is slavevoyages. Org. Or go to any particular Search Engine and type in slave voyages, youll go there, this is a website that is free and open to the public. You can do remarkable things with it. I would encourage all of you to think about using it for research purposes. In any case, the latest findings of the Transatlantic Slave Trade database are that over this three and a half centuries ive mentioned, somewhere around 10 to 10. 5 Million People were loaded on to slave ships, and somewhere between 8. 8 and 9 Million People were delivered alive on the western atlantic. Now you will note that there is a very significant difference between these two numbers, do you not . A difference of about 1. 4 million. Those are the people who died along the way, whose bodies every morning on board a slave ship would be brought up from the lower deck and thrown over the rail to the schools of sharks that would follow the vessels all the way across the atlantic. Now, thats not the end of the horror, okay . Those 1. 4 million. As we think about the numbers, we also have to bear in mind that an unknown number of people died in wars carried on in the interior of africa. An unknown number of people died after they were enslaved and were being marched from the interior to the coast. And another unknown number of people died in the fortresses and barracoons awaiting their placement on board slave ships. We have very few records about what happened in any of those circumstances. But lots of scholars think it may have required to create that 10 million, resulting in almost 9 million delivered alive, to create that 10 million it may have required an extra 3 million or 4 million or 5 Million Deaths in africa. So we are talking about a human catastrophe of truly extraordinary proportions. Again over a very long period of time, but the carnage was great. Now, lets talk for a minute about destinations. The primary destination for the slaves who were brought from west africa to the americas was the caribbean. The greater caribbean. Early on, barbados was one of the Great Centers of the slave trade. Jamaica would end up being one of the greatest. Another for the french imperial system was what was called sandomang or in todays terms, haiti. The crown jewel of the french system. To the caribbean, almost five Million People were shipped. Almost 5 million. 4. 2 million arrived alive. Thats almost half. Thats almost half the total. It is not an accident that this was the great center of sugar production. The sugar industry drove the slave trade for many, many years. It was an especially brutal regime, as you know. The second most important destination was brazil. Portuguese, brazil. Also the home of a very lucrative plantation system. To brazil, roughly 3. 5 were loaded on the ships, and 3. 2 million arrived. This is about 36 of the total, a little more than a third. So overwhelmingly the caribbean and brazil are the two most important sites for the slave trade. If youre just keeping track of the numbers as i give them to you, youre going to see that these two areas account for the overwhelming majority of the slaves shipped to the new world, right . Where does the United States come into this . As it turns out, the United States was a rather minor partner in the slave trade. The current estimates are that maybe 370, as many as 400,000 people were loaded on to vessels bound for north american ports. The greatest of which, would have been charleston, South Carolina. And somewhere around 310,000 were delivered alive. Now, thats about 3. 5 of the total. And the numbers may be a little higher across the board. Maybe 4 , okay . But dont be deceived. The fact that mainland north america received a fairly small percentage of the enslaved africans belies the fact that it is going to become one of the most powerful slave systems over the course of the 18th and early 19th century. The main difference is demographic. The slave population in north america, owing partly to climate, growing season and the kinds of staple crops produced, the population, the enslaved population, was able to reproduce itself, whereas that was very uncommon in the caribbean. So those are the numbers. What is the consequence of all those numbers . Here i would quote the great historian and activist clr james who said the result of all this was the greatest planned accumulation of wealth the world had ever seen. So these millions of africans, shipped on board these vessels across the atlantic come to the new world and create a plantation system which really is el dorado after all. Take the sugar planters for example. In british society, in which in the 18th century there were enormous accumulations and concentrations of wealth, the sugar planters from places like jamaica were widely known to be the richest of them all. Their carriages were guilded. Everything they had suggested opulence. Long trains of servants and slaves followed them through the streets of london. So this is wealth on a truly extraordinary level. Okay, so, those are the numbers. We cant rest content with the numbers. As important as they are, we have to think about slavery and the slave trade in human ways. I think sometimes we take comfort in abstract. The Great British novelist Barry Unsworth in a novel about the sa slave trade has two of his characters who are slave traders, sitting in their Lush Liverpool office, surrounded by the wealth that theyve made in the slave trade, and he says, you know, they really couldnt have pictured what was happening on their slave ship off the coast of africa at that moment. And even if they could, they wouldnt have wanted to, because picturing things can choke the mind with horror. Much better to remain safely in the realm of the abstract. To think about charts and graphs and maps. Well, this is the challenge. Weve got to keep the big picture of the slave trade in mind. But we also have to understand it in human terms. We have to try to understand the slave trade as human experience. And so for the next part of todays lecture, i want to talk a little bit about just that. The slave trade experience. Im going to be drawing here on research i did for a book called the slaveship a Human History the examples that i want to give you are drawn from the bish and american slave ships of the 18th century, beginning about 1700 and going up to the abolition of the slave trade in 18071808. Peak period of the slave trade. This is the moment when more people are shipped than any other. This is the moment of the formation of the american slave system. Okay. What i would have you try to do right now, for the next few minutes is to imagine what it would have been like to be one of the roughly 300 people who were gathered together and placed on board a slave ship. Maybe this will help you think about it. Now, imagine that the 300 are going to be drawn from a number of different cultures, a number of different language groups. Imagine or know that the 300 will have been enslaved by other africans before they got to the ship. But also understand that they did not all consider themselves to be africans, least of all members of the same race. They were mandingo, fonte, ebo and to a very large extent the people they enslaved were other ethnic groups. Typically with people who they had been fighting wars for very long periods of time. So imagine being captured in war. Imagine simply being kidnapped by roving bands of marauders. These were probably the two most common means of enslavement. Imagine then being led in a human train and marched sometimes for very long distances from the interior to the coast. Imagine being shackled to someone next to you who disease dies along the way and is just discarded. Imagine arriving at the fortress of the ship and undergoing a truly humiliating medical inspection. Youd all be stripped of your clothing, men, women and children. Ostensibly for health purposes, but also because they didnt want any place where a weapon could be hidden. Youll be treated like cattle in a market. The slave ship captain will look down your throat, look at your teeth, will inspect your muscles, will squeeze them. Youre property, youre being purchased. Imagine coming on board the ship, and imagine the moment when the vessel leaves the coast. One of the most powerful pieces of evidence i came across in my research is that when the vessel would actually leave the coast of west africa, from the lower deck like this, a wail would rise up of pain at the thought of leaving the only place you had ever known and heading to somewhere unknown to you, to a fate that you could hardly grasp. In those circumstances, slave ship captains often wrote that the women slaves sang these deep and mourning mournful songs, trying literally to remember their lives in africa. To remember who they were, to remember their families, so the struggle for memory is there from the beginning. Well, an image like this can help us understand all this. I mentioned before the slave ship brooks. This is another drawing of the same slave ship. Now, i want to tell you, its a real ship. We know a lot about it. But i also want to make sure you know, this image was not drawn by slave trade merchants. It was not drawn by slave trade captains. It was actually drawn by the people who opposed the slave trade, abolitionists who wanted to see it eradicated. So they came up with what to my mind is the truly brilliant idea of representing the ship in order to make people understand what that social reality was like. To make it real for people. Well, i had sort of the same task in this book, the slave ship, how to make it real. Lets look at this, and i want to give you the sense of the dimensions of a real slave ship. This vessel was about 100 feet long and about 25 feet wide. Now, thats not very big. Think about that. Think about the fact that into that vessel of that length, 48