The Slave Ship: A Human History

“I offer this study with the greatest reverence for those who suffered almost unthinkable violence, terror, and death, in the firm belief that we must remember that such horrors have always been, and remain, central to the making of global capitalism.”

Rediker establishes his motivation for writing The Slave Trade. The book, he says, seeks to illustrate the dehumanizing violence of the slave trade, showing how this dehumanization created the economic bedrock on which much of Western capitalism was built. The entire system is indebted to the exploitation and violence of the slave trade, though this has been forgotten. Rediker seeks to explain the way in which this past violence is linked to the economic present while offering reverence and respect for the lives that were deliberately taken away.

“He could think of himself as the savior of families as he destroyed them.”

William Snelgrave exemplifies the cognitive dissonance that allowed captains of slave ships—and others who profited from the slave trade—to convince themselves that they were moral actors while ignoring their own immoral actions. Snelgrave deluded himself into believing that he was a savior figure while transporting hundreds of enslaved people from their home countries to a life of brutality and exploitation.

“This man who had counseled Captain Todd never to put his life under the power of enslaved Africans owed his wealth, standing, and genteel life to his own decision to keep hundreds, indeed thousands, of lives under his own power, as a planter and a slave-trade merchant.”

The wealthy merchant and planter Henry Laurens represents another aspect of this cognitive dissonance. Though he disdained the violent practices of the slave trade, his own wealth and power relied on others enacting that violence on his behalf. In the context of The Slave Ship, Laurens is an example of the ubiquity of violence and slavery. There was so much violence and so much wealth involved in the slave trade that men like Laurens can be remembered as politicians rather than the beneficiaries of a brutal system of slavery. The relationship between political power and the slave trade is so common as to be ignored or forgotten when discussing the history of the United States.

“Much of the wood for the slavers was hewn by slaves, many of whom had crossed the Atlantic on slave ships.”

The transatlantic slave trade, Rediker makes clear, became an economy unto itself. It was radically different in breadth and scale from examples of slavery that came before. The system of slavery was self-perpetuating, in that enslaved people were forced to cut down the trees to make ships to carry more people to the Americas. The system fed upon itself, using suffering to create more suffering for the profit of a select few.

“He sat with him night after night in the captain’s cabin (where Riland slept and ate), conversing with him by the dim light of swaying lamps, explaining patiently how ‘the children of Ham’ benefited by being sent to American plantations such as the one the senior Riland owned.”

Riland’s experiences demonstrate the eagerness of some ship captains to convince others that the slave trade was a moral positive. Each night, Riland was subjected to the patient delusions of a captain. As they dined in the captain’s cabin, hundreds of enslaved people were cramped together below deck. The juxtaposition between extreme suffering and comfortable delusion demonstrates why men like Riland could no longer maintain the belief that the slave trade was a good thing.

“Larger groups who purchased guns and gunpowder often grew into stronger, centralized, militaristic states […] using their firearms to subdue their neighbors, which of course produced the next coffle of enslaved people to be traded for the next crate of muskets.”

While a slave trade had existed in Africa for centuries, Rediker illustrates the way in which the transatlantic slave trade supercharged and changed the extant system. By arming and aiding the local groups who provided captives, Europeans created a material incentive to expand the slave trade in Africa. Africans used European guns to capture other Africans, thereby enriching Europeans.

“Nonetheless it soon grew more profitable to catch slaves than to mine gold, and the Asante, despite their independence, became reliable players and valuable partners to the Europeans in the slave trade.”

The transatlantic slave trade radically altered the existing slavery systems in Africa, turning a relatively minor aspect of society into the dominant industry. European demand for free labor created a financial incentive for people like the Asante, forging a cycle of brutality funded by European capitalists. The wealth and technology of the Europeans fundamentally changed the existing economies of African nations, exacerbating slavery as an issue.

“Igbo, like other African ethnicities, was in many ways a product of the slave trade. In other words, ethnogenesis was happening on the ship.”

Rediker compares the slave ship to a factory throughout the book. One of the unintended products of this factory was the blurring and changing of African cultures. By deliberately stripping away the identities and humanities of the enslaved people, the captains and merchants of the slave trade unwittingly created opportunities for new cultures and traditions to emerge. The emergence of such cultures speaks to the indomitable human spirit, even in the face of such adversity.

“In this way dispossessed Africans formed themselves into informal mutual-aid societies, in some cases even ‘nations,’ on the lower deck of a slave ship.”

In desperate circumstances, the enslaved people aboard the ships created support groups and networks to help one another. Even though they might have been strangers from different nations, the brutal nature of the slave ship brought them together. They put aside their differences, bonded together by their struggle. The slave ship became fertile ground for the creation of something entirely new.

“The landlord would offer inebriated, indebted sailors a deal.”

Rediker’s exploration of The Slave Trade as a Metonym for Capitalism involves recognizing the common sailors as an exploited proletariat in the miniature economy of the slave trade. Though Rediker never excuses the violence enacted by the sailors against the captives, he contextualizes the social hierarchies of the ship. Many of the sailors had been effectively kidnapped and forced into their work, a tragic mirror to the experiences of the enslaved. The “inebriated, indebted sailors” were brutalized by the same system in which they were often complicit.

“Although he could not bring himself to name the crime—‘I cannot express it in any words’—he nonetheless insisted that it was ‘too atrocious and bloody to be passed over in silence.’”

James Stanfield’s documented accounts of the behavior of slave-ship captains illustrate the complex predicament of the abolitionist movement. The violence aboard a slave ship was so extreme and so depraved, while also largely shielded from public knowledge, that the truth may have been seen as sensationalist or unbelievable to a mainstream audience. Stanfield cannot bring himself to give details about the sexual abuse of a child by one captain, though he alludes to it. Moral standards of the day (including his own) prohibited him from being explicit about what happened, but, at the same time, he could not allow the crime to go unmentioned. This tension speaks to the obligation felt by men like Stanfield to become involved in the abolitionist movement.

“Dead crew members were called by name and buried, while dead Africans were noted only by the number assigned when they came on board the ship and thrown over the side to the waiting sharks.”

In reviewing the captain’s journals from the voyages to construct a narrative of the slave trade, historians are faced with explicit examples of dehumanization. The crew is named, while the enslaved are reduced to numbers. At the same time, however, the crew was part of the same social hierarchy in which their lives were often deemed expendable. While their suffering did not match that of the enslaved, they were also exploited by a violent capitalist system. Their deaths were recorded not out of humanity but because of business practices.

“On the other hand, his Christianity limited, but did not eliminate, the cruelty so common to slave ships.”

John Newton was a religious man but also the captain of a slave ship. Chapter 6 explores how he reconciled this apparent contradiction, using his faith as a shield against his inner conflicts, excusing his own cruelty by assuring himself that he was doing God’s work. This cognitive dissonance could only limit, not eliminate, his conflicts, however, and he eventually joined the abolition movement.

“A captain who survived four voyages or more would likely have made a small fortune, far beyond what most men of his original station in life could expect to achieve. It was a risky but lucrative line of work, freely chosen.”

The slave-ship captains had a financial incentive to delude themselves. Men like Newton often found ways to excuse their behavior because they could become very rich across just a few voyages. For all Rediker’s exploration of capitalism and economies, he makes sure to remind the audience that the role of a ship’s captain was “freely chosen” (190). They chose to involve themselves in this trade because they wanted to be rich. This choice was not extended to the enslaved nor, on many occasions, to the common sailors.

“This clause was as close as the owners ever came to admitting that terror was essential to running a slave ship. The instruction admitted many interpretations.”

The contracts between the merchants and the captains were kept deliberately vague to excuse the merchants from any violence that may take place at sea. The deliberate nature of this vagueness is suggestive of a guilty conscience, in which the merchants were aware of what the captains did to the enslaved and the crew. By leaving the contracts open to interpretation, the merchants revealed their fear of reprisal and their tacit acceptance of violence in exchange for profit.

“A collective of slave-ship captains sometimes acted as a sort of government on the coast of Africa.”

At sea, Rediker notes, slave-ship captains operated with near-total autonomy. They were monarchs of their wooden domain. However, their actions and behaviors were fostered by community knowledge. Each captain did not come to his violence individually, but rather as the product of an exchange of ideas and practices among a community of captains. This “sort of government” of slave-ship captains demonstrates the industrialized nature of the violence, in which best practices were shared among a group of workers who occupied a common social status. The captains operated like a consortium of CEOs in any other industry, illustrating The Slave Trade as a Metonym for Capitalism.

“Every sailor who went aboard a slave ship did so within a profound relationship of class.”

The Slave Ship explores History From Below, a field of history in which social class is an important part of understanding the past in a holistic sense. As such, the sailors’ understanding of social class is important to the modern reader because it was important to the sailors. Their understanding of the ship was predicated on their class position, particularly with regard to the enslaved and the captain. Social class must be understood as such a profound aspect of this history because it was of such profound importance to those involved.

“Vaunting his own humanity (with no apparent sense of irony), the slave trader Robert Norris explained that such attention was necessary so that ‘the strong do not oppress the weak.’”

Throughout the book, Rediker presents the arguments of those who defended the slave trade. Rediker’s detailed descriptions of the violence and suffering that took place aboard these ships make men like Robert Norris into absurd figures. The lack of any “apparent sense of irony” and the sincerity with which men like Norris defended the trade speak to the immense challenge faced by the abolitionists. Norris and his ilk genuinely believed in their benevolence, so much so that they were willing to present themselves as victims of the abolitionist movement.

“But the practice of branding seems to have diminished over time. By the early 1800s, it was rarely mentioned. Other, more ‘rational’ means arose in order to transform human beings into property.”

Rediker suggests that the practice of branding faded from use by the early 1800s as the transatlantic slave trade perfected its methods of subjugation and dehumanization. These methods became so all-encompassing that a visible symbol of commodification—such as a brand—was no longer deemed necessary.

“The drama of dispossession and enslavement was thus reenacted, discussed, lamented, and committed to memory aboard the ship.”

The dramatic performances staged on the slave ships were part of an artistic, cultural preservation movement in which the enslaved documented and shared their experiences through the few means available to them. These plays reveal the desire and the effort undertaken to create and nurture culture, even in the face of brutal violence and dehumanization by the captain and the crew.

“He feared the power of the wealthy, self-interested people he knew he would have to challenge.”

The abolitionist writer Thomas Clarkson correctly recognized and feared those with a vested interest in the slave trade. These wealthy people were his biggest challenge, as he was fighting as much against an economic institution as a cultural one. The vast profits of the slave trade and the commodification of human life were grand obstacles to abolition, as they were woven into the fabric of nations such as Britain and the United States. These wealthy people sought to remain wealthy; Clarkson was a challenge to their fortunes as much as their morals.

“Here was the new, modern economic system in all its horrifying nakedness, capitalism without a loincloth, as Walter Rodney noted.”

The Brooks image was an objective portrayal of the real violence of the slave trade. The diagram was effective, Rediker argues, because of its lack of emotion. It simply presented the conditions in which enslaved people were kept, stripping away any pretensions or lies spread by those opposed to abolition. Just as the Brooks diagram showed slavery in all its brutality, it revealed the brutality of the capitalist system that created, commodified, and incentivized such violence.

“He built Mount Hope, one of the most sumptuous mansions in all of New England. He eventually became a United States senator.”

As depicted in Rediker’s book, Captain James D’Wolf was a convicted murderer and a beneficiary of slavery. Rather than face the consequences of his actions, however, he was allowed to continue with his life of wealth and power. Not only did he escape punishment for his murder charge, but he also later became a senator. Just as D’Wolf escaped justice for his murder charge, the abolition of slavery did not offer any criminal repercussions for those who benefited the most. Rather, they continued to enjoy their wealth and—as D’Wolf’s example shows—they were rewarded with more power and influence. The story of D’Wolf suggests that, for all the moral achievements of slavery, Rediker does not believe that justice was achieved.