The seventeenth and eighteenth century is known in history as the period where trade between Europeans and other people around the world led to the rise of global capitalism. Both Timothy Brook’s Vermeer’s Hat and Marcus Rediker’s Slave Ship discuss the topic of global capitalism but the two authors believe in very different and distinct views about capitalism’s effect on class and race relations. They come to such different assessments of capitalism’s effects on class and race relations because they discuss two different centuries of the world of trade, two different point of views of different groups of people and Brook discusses who benefited from the world of trade while Rediker discusses who suffered. Both Brook and Rediker discuss the …show more content…
Marcus Rediker’s Slave Ship takes place in the eighteenth century world of trade where intense trading is still occurring but humans are the main products being sold for profit. By the late 1780s, “slave ships had crossed the Atlantic in the thousands, delivering millions of captives to New World plantations and helping to create a powerful new Atlantic capitalist economy. (Rediker p. 308) In Rediker’s eyes, this isn't people banding together but people driven apart by the competitive demands of global capitalism. Brook’s assessment of capitalism’s effect in the seventeenth century was that the demand for commodities is what made people band together to improve class and race relations but within a century that same demand has changed into driving people apart along class and race relations in Africa. Within a century beliefs change which is why Brook and Rediker come to such different assessments of capitalism's effect on class and race …show more content…
Africans were already living miserable lives and it got worst as they were sold into slavery by their own people. Almost all slaves were treated terribly by their devilish captains but “not all masters of Guineamen were devils but almost each and every one had the devil in him… It was a requirement of the job and the larger economic system it served.” (Rediker p. 217) This devilish behavior has drove slaves to rebel, commit suicide and even kill sailors in order to get their freedom. One unknown man on a slave ship wanted to be put out of his misery and attempted to commit suicide twice and the surgeon on board “concluded that he had ripped open his throat with his own fingernails.” (Rediker p. 18) Abuse wasn't just given to slaves but also the sailors. Captains “accused sick seamen of being lazy, then lashed them, after which they died. Captains entertained themselves by tormenting sailors during the monotonous hours of a long voyage” (Rediker 218) and merchants sometimes “gave explicit instructions to get rid of extra crew before completing the voyage.” (Rediker 251) These are prime example of how slaves and seamen were driven apart along class and race lines by the competitive demands of global capitalism from captains and
The first aspects we can analyze is the level of difference between the slavery of Africa compared to the European form of slavery. As these sources illustrate traditional African slavery was quite different on several levels compared to the European form of slavery many are familiar with. Slavery in Africa as stated before can be more closely associated with indentured servitude where the slaves were often treated as a member of the family rather than treated with brutality. According to the multiple sources discussed earlier, a prominent aspect of European slavery in Africa was to the harsh treatment and dehumanizing of its slave it order to keep them subordinate to their European captures. Historians might beg the question why was European slavery different than traditional African
Timothy Brook discusses in his book the aspects of world trade during the 17th century and how through the process of globalization, how regions became as interconnected as we know of today. Most people tend to have this conceptualized idea of what globalization is as well as its process. Throughout my educational career, globalization has always been portrayed as big businesses working together providing different goods and services worldwide. In other words, globalization simply involves big, fortune 500-esque companies and has no involvement from anyone else. In the text, however, Brook gives a different interpretation and does so by examining six different paintings by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. Instead of focusing primarily on the obvious aspects of each painting, Brook draws the readers’ attention to a variety of intricate details and provides insight for all of them. This helps support his belief that globalization can be traced back to the events of the 17th century and had contributions from several individuals.
The living conditions on the ships were awful. Slaves were crammed into a small area overflowing with other slaves all crowded together. Slaves battled dehydration, being given little to no water, and malnourishment, being given small amounts of food, and no place to use the bathroom. Viruses like scurvy and fly disease spread rapidly throughout the ship. Slaves also battled dehydration and malnourishment. The long time on the ships is another condition the slaves had to go through for months at a time. Many slaves died before getting to their destination.
In the “Interpretive Essay”, Kenneth Banks discuses the consequences of the Atlantic slave trade. The negative effects on the Africans due to the Atlantic slave trade range from the influence on Africans societies and warfare, inhumane and atrocious living and working conditions, decrease of their population, and the long-term impact of bigotry. During the Atlantic save trade’s peak, the movement to abolish slavery started because it went against certain religious beliefs, several thinkers saw it as inefficient, and was unethical.
Slaves had an expanding economic force for the Europeans. “Trade between the Europeans and Africans created the first route of the triangular slave trade”. African citizens were “forcibly removed from their homes to never return”. Sales of Africans were classified as having the full cooperation of the “African kings” in return for various trade and goods. Africans who were exchanged were forced to walk chained to the coast of the Indian Ocean. Once at the coast they were stripped of all their clothes, men, women and children all alike with just a loincloth, or strips of blue tap for women to cover their chest area. Once the Africans boarded the ship they were divided by sex, males in the bowel of the ship and the women on the upper deck. The men would be chained side by side by their necks with barely enough room to move. African women were forced to do the “unmentionable acts”. Neither were fed or watered well, and the men would be forced to sit in their own “excrement, and vomit”. Once in awhile the men would be brought to the deck and rinsed off with cold water. While on deck they would be forced to dance to “entertain the ships crew”. Many Africans would try to “revolt” or commit “suicide”, when revolting against their captors many Africans would die. For as much as “3- 6 months” the Africans would endure these torments. Once the ship ported in the America’s shore, all the Africans would be “cleaned up and stripped naked to be sold”. Once the Africans were sold they were no longer Africans to the Merchants, they were product, and, no longer having rights as humans; they were caught into what is called chattel slavery. For approximately “246 years” African Americans would endure such bondage.
Many economic systems are revealed in A Respectable Trade: Slavery, Feudalism, Self-Employment, and Capitalism. England in 1788 was entering a period of economic transition. Viewing this finite period in A Respectable Trade allows us, as economists, to dissect the different market systems prevalent during that time.
The Middle Passage was a long voyage that African Americans endured just to get sold into slavery when the voyage was done. According to ushistory.org African Americans in slave ships were fed twice a day, and holes were cut in the deck to allow slaves to breath, but these holes were closed in bad weather such as storms, regardless of the attempts to keep the African Americans Alive and well most of them died of lack of water, food, and air. According to (pbs.org) slaves were stuffed between decks in spaces too low to stand, the heat was unbearable, and the air almost unbreathable. The women were used sexually, and the men were chained in pairs, slave ships were very crowded for the slaves, and slaves were forced to lie in their backs with their heads in between the legs of others, slaves would have to lie in each others feces,urine, and maybe even blood. In these slave ships diseases would spread very quickly, and sick slaves would of usually been thrown overboard to prevent an epidemic. Upon reaching the end of the voyage the remaining slaves that survived were cleaned, and checked by a doctor to see if they would make a good price at the ports, those slaves that were declared unfit to be so...
The English deemed Africans barbaric people fit to work as slaves. Social interaction between the two further allowed Europeans to assume their culture was greater than all others. Such reasoning, became a social cause for enslavement. Long before the forced arrival of Africans, Europeans considered themselves superior to the Irish and Native Americans (Txbk). They reasoned that if some didn’t conform to their English laws, customs, and culture, they were uncivilized. Since Africans had fought, dressed, and lived differently, settlers placed themselves on a higher pedestal, perhaps even feeling they have the right to enslave them due to the cultural difference (Zinn). In the long run, the English saw colored people as “savages.” One slave trader, John Newton described Africans in Sierra Leone as “wild barbarous people” (Zinn). Because Europeans assumed other cultures were inferior, hence barbaric; many deemed Africans as not even “men” (Zinn). This made enslavement much easier to achieve. Ultimately, they were considered different from white servants and so weren’t treated the same, for white settlers did not believe slavery was immoral when profit and wealth blinded them. This social, but negative interaction between whites and Africans grew into racism and helped contribute to the eventual development of
The Cheap labour provided by Slaves from the 14th to the 17th century was crucial to the prosperity and advances made, during The Age of Exploration. The only costs associated with slavery was the purchase, transport and upkeep of slaves, and in most cases, the slaves themselves provided their own food. This made slavery extremely cheap, which was especially needed in a time where a large portion of a countries’ GDP was being used to fund their empire and conquests and little was left to build and maintain the buildings of home and their colonies. Moreover, in the case of the Americas, the cheap labour slaves provided was crucial. For instance, when settlers first arrive they must clear land, build houses and of course, farm the land. All of which requires a lot of labour which in the only recently settled America’s is not only hard to find, but also expensive and investment which was also scarce. Therefore, with the addition of slaves, farmers were able to run a farm for almost nothing, but export there produce, such as tobacco for a high price, increasing prosperity in both Europe, and the Americas. Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman supported this statement heavily in their book “Time on the Cross”...
In British colonial America, indentured servitude was borne from the Virginia Company out of a need for cheaper labor, and was gradually replaced by African slaves in the 17th and 18th centuries for the same reason. The growth of slavery in America was not a result of racism or intent, but of economic opportunism. Both were exploited for profit to the maximum of the free planters ability, which in the slave’s case, was much more, because there were little to no laws protecting them, and sometimes even laws targeted against them.
The slaves were not afforded the luxury the white people enjoyed that was the universal belief that one’s life has value simply because they are human; the white oppressors did not see the enslaved Africans as humans, therefore they did not afford them the inherent value bestowed upon human life. The practices conducted aboard the slave ships coincided with the believe that the Africans were nothing but cargo or livestock. Hine describes the practice of “tight packing” writing, “most captains were “tight packers,” who would squeeze human beings together in hope that large numbers would offset increased deaths.” She continues in a subsequent passage claiming, “one third of the Africans subjected to the trade perished between their capture and their embarkation on a slave ship” (Hine, 2012). There is no clearer indication that the white slavers felt the lives of the enslaved Africans were worthless than the blatant disregard for slave mortality aboard the ships. The captors attempted to keep the enslaved alive simply in order to receive monetary recompense, however, Hine’s describes slavers as being exceptionally cruel to enslaved Africans aboard ships despite the possible monetary consequences. Finally, Hine describes how the amount of value placed on an enslaved African’s life and health was directly proportional to the amount of money that slave was worth, when describing the experience of women aboard slave ships. Hine writes, “because the women were less valuable commodities, crew members felt they had license to abuse them sexually” (Hine, 2012). This passage describes how different enslaved Africans faced different amounts of cruelty and abuse based on the assumed price this person was worth. Not only were all the enslaved black people seen as less than human, some people were
Many parties played a part in the existence of slavery in the colonial America; the most notable was the impact that it had on the personal and financial growth of the people and the nation. In the United States of America for instance, capitalism has always been a double edge sword. It began as a driving force in pushing along the economical growth, but it came at the price of the African society who were captured as slaves. History explains that it was implied and enforced that Africans were a lesser class through the means in which they were used by slave owners to advance their wealth and stature. It was seen that the larger the plantation, the wealthier and more successful people were. It means that the more one would have more slaves, the higher chances he would be prosperous. The slaves were the one who were seen to be in the position of working in the hot sun. Such condition made the slavery to be a necessity, more so to the large firm owners. The African slaves were regarded as a significant as a large, dependable and permanent source of cheap labor because slaves rarely ran away and when caught they were severely punished . The creation of the plantation system more so in America, where the assertation factors in maintaining the idea of
The African slave lost their humanity from the very moment they boarded the European slave
In Bales and Soodalter’s essay, they explore the ways of modern slavery. The two authors claim that modern slavery is an example of “capitalism at its worst.” By definition, capitalism is an economic system in which trade, industry and the means of production are controlled by private owners with a goal of making profit in a market society. Taking modern slavery into context, it can be determined that both capitalism and slavery maintain the same principles. Where as slavery is an economic system in which the trade of human beings creates profit of their owner and eventually their new owner. Modern slavery is truly capitalism at its worst because it demonstrates the true nature of how slavery can be financially successful in the modern day, how money rather than fair treatment is idolized, and the lack of obstacles that perpetuates the life of slavery.
Some of the effects of slavery in America were positive, but almost all of slavery’s impact in Africa was harmful. One major change in the areas that slaves were exported from is shown in demographics. Thousands of males were taken from their families and communities, and the tribes were expected to survive without many of their local leaders or role models. Not only did local tribes in Africa have hardships, but the leadership in many of the countries’ governments weren’t stable. The cruel trade demonstrated “how the external demand for slaves caused political instability, weakened states, promoted political and social fragmentation, and resulted in a deterioration of domestic legal institutions” (Nunn) in Africa. In addition to the crumbling political aspects of the tribes, there were cultural and native conflicts. Many wars and disagreements occurred, and those conflicts significantly slowed down development and economic growth in African countries