Winther Polk
How does a person become a “slave”?
Slavery causes a big problem to society by violation of human rights. Denying seeing one
as “human” in other's person eyes means to treat him or her as a slave, such as that of African
Americans as individuals, treated lesser and considered three-fifths of a person. Through a
tightened network of diverse individuals whose business connections facilitated entrepreneurial
needs between arriving foreigners and local black slave traders and trading operations was the
systemic mechanism of slavery. Enslaved people were commodities to be acquired through the
trading of goods for labor, sold and abused, not deemed as individuals at all. Historian Paul
Lovejoy broadly defines slavery as "absolute control over another human, often over another male"
To become a slave, African workers were frequently abducted through "warfare, military raids, or
abduction" until they were sold into the trans-Saharan slave trade.
The trans-Saharan slave trade linked major cities to Europe and the Middle East through subSaharan Africa. An estimated 3 million Africans were trafficked in the trans-Sahara slave trade.
The transatlantic slave trade linked a single economic structure to Europe, the West African coast,
and the Americas. A selection of goods was rotated from place to place by this scheme, otherwise
referred to as the triangular trade. The transatlantic slave trade was three-sided, involving voyages:
from Europe to Africa, from Africa to the Americas, from the Americas back to Europe. The
Europeans loaded their ships with manufactured goods and other items, after trading these products
with local African merchants, slave ships left European ports with supplies and human cargo. (3.2
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Defined)
This trade called the trans-Saharan trade because it crossed the Sahara Desert, which included
slaves. The slaves, usually captured as prisoners, were sold by the West Africans to traders as
ongoing repayment plans. “Foreign white traders may have come into a ready system of servitude
already existent throughout West Africa; they came as business partners in the human
manufacturing process with a shared commercial vision that over time manifested in the evolution
of race and chattel slavery.” (Mustakeem 2) Sub-Saharan Africa was connected by Trans-Saharan
trade networks to North African trade routes and then to markets in the Middle East, Asia and the
Mediterranean. They also sold and purchased textiles, spices, and other commodities from these
global markets, apart from trading the gold for which medieval West Africa was most famous.
Slavery occurred in pre-colonial Africa, like other civilizations in ancient times. (2.4 The TransSaharan Slave Trade) The most famous and influential kingdom linked to the trans-Saharan trade
was that of Mali and King Mansa Musa. (2.3 The Riches of Mansa Musa)
During the 15th century, when Portugal and subsequently other European kingdoms were
eventually able to extend overseas and reach Africa, the transatlantic slave trade started. The
Portuguese first started capturing people from the west coast of Africa and bringing back to Europe
those they enslaved. During the eighteenth century, an increasing number of foreign merchants
poured into West Africa, attracted by the pursuit of profit and eager to extend the foundation of
alliances forged in the commercial slave trade. As investors recruited sailors, these projects,
although financially and physically dangerous, represented a vital element of overseas expansion,
sending them across and into distant spaces for slave procurement. Transatlantic slave trade,
segment of the global slave trade that transported between 10 million and 12 million enslaved
Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas from the 16th to the 19th century.
Not only did the slave trade contribute to the brutal transportation of millions of Africans abroad,
but also to the deaths of many millions more. No one knows the total number of people who died
from Africa to the Americas during slave raids and wars in Africa, during transportation and
incarceration, or in horrendous circumstances during what is called the Middle Passage. In this
enterprise, all the major European powers were involved, but by the early 18th century, Britain
became the leading slave trade power in the world. It is estimated that, in that century, British ships
were responsible for the forced transport of at least 2-3 million Africans. British ships and traders
were so powerful that not only did they carry African captives to British colonies in North America
and the Caribbean, but also to the colonies of their key economic rivals, the French and Spanish,
as well as to others. (3.2 The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Defined)
As it revolved around transactions, or a form of exchange, between the African sellers and the
European buyers of captives, it is generally seen as a 'deal.' Indeed, without any African
intervention, it would have been difficult for European slave traders to venture into Africa and
procure African captives; African kingdoms and communities were too powerful and well
organized. Even when Europeans constructed forts on the West African coast, for this publication,
this was on land given or leased from Africans. Most Africans abducted were not still slaves in
Africa. They were free individuals who were abducted to provide the labor that the European
powers needed in the Americas to create their colonies. The largest number of Africans were
brought into Brazil, almost 5 million, but enslaved Africans were sent to much of South and Central
America and the Caribbean colonies, as well as to what became the United States. Many Africans
were transported to Europe and lived in these cultures.
From the medieval era to the nineteenth century, there were three periods leading to the rise of
racist ideas in theory of how one becomes a “slave” the first being The Curse of Ham (to be black
and to be slave) the Atlantic slave trade gave birth to the gradual and diverse expressions linking
blackness and slavery with servitude cultivating this idea. Travel narratives are frequently related
to the Age of Discovery as a literary form, while reports of distant travel have existed throughout
history. Travelers would write accounts of where they went, who they saw, and what their
observations back home were witnessed and written. They relied on travel narratives to help
interpret the outside world, Travel narratives led to an evolving racist European imagination that
later helped explain the conversion and civilization of the invasion and enslavement of other
cultures. The belief in the biological inferiority of some races, which started to arise in the 1700s
and became much more entrenched on the eve of the Civil War, is Scientific Racism. Historically,
Scientific Racism throughout the scientific world, scientific bias has gained credibility, but it is no
longer considered scientific. Dividing society into biologically distinct classes is often referred to
by its advocates as racialism or ethnic realism. (2.6 The Rise of Racist Ideas)
Slave castles and forts such as Elmina Castle, were used to hold slaves before they were loaded
onto ships and sold in the Americas, especially the Caribbean. The “door of no return”, millions
of Africans were shipped from places like the whitewashed fort in Elmina, Ghana, to a life of
slavery in Brazil, the Caribbean and America. European powers arranged treaties with coastal
African leaders, who allowed European traders to establish small, often well-defended centers of
trade in strategic locations. In a triangular trade that fueled Europe's colonial empires, Elmina has
a violent history — shared with other slave forts on the coast of West Africa, ports in Western
Europe and what was then known as the New World, the Americas. African slaves could face a
long-forced trek to the coast or weeks in a coastal dungeon before a long sea voyage packed in the
hold of a European ship, often sold into slavery by rival tribes, or captured during communal
disputes. (3.4 Slave Castles and Forts)
Slave narratives by African slaves from North America were first published in England in the
18th century. They soon became the main form of African American literature in the 19th century.
Slave narratives were publicized by abolitionists, who sometimes participated as editors, or writers
if slaves were not literate. The earliest slave narrative to gain international attention was the twovolume Fascinating Nigerian-born abolitionist, Gustavus Vassas, Narrative of Olaudah Equiano 's
Life, the African (1789), which traces Equiano 's career from West African boyhood to eventual
liberty and economic prosperity as a British citizen through the terrible transatlantic Middle
Passage. Slave narratives provided the most powerful voices contradicting the slaveholders'
favorable claims concerning slavery, by their very existence, the narratives demonstrated that
African Americans were people with mastery of language and the ability to write their own history.
(3.5 The Interesting Narrative of OIaudah Equiano)
In the reading ‘Waves of Calamity’ West African Quobna Ottobah Cugoano shares is narrative set
in 1770, at the age of thirteen, spent time visiting an uncle living near his home in Agimague which
led to his abduction to being sold into slavery. “No matter the stories formerly heard, once on the
shoreline he saw with his own eyes the consequences of financial greed manifested as he and his
former playmates were divided, sold, and displaced, thereby joining scores of other Africans
forced into the coastal-wide market of slave sales within West Africa as buyable goods. “Many of
my miserable countrymen” Cugoano recalled seeing them “chained two and two, some
handcuffed, and some with their hands tied behind.”” (Mustakeem 2) Cugoano begins his
Narrative with an account of his birth in and his memories of Africa, from which he was kidnapped.
After several weeks in captivity, Cugoano is eventually brought to a trading post. There, he sees
"many of my miserable countrymen chained two and two, some handcuffed," and "several white
people, which made me afraid that they would eat me, according to our notion, as children, in the
inland parts of the country" Cugoano's captor sells him for "a gun, a piece of cloth, and some
lead," telling the new slave that he must "learn the ways of the browfow, that is, the white-faced
people". Slave narratives serves as descriptions of actual experience within slavery as the enslaved.
Narratives are an expression of a struggle for freedom. They serve as both an abolitionist tool,
advocating for the end of slavery, and as an outlet, allowing slaves to document, in their own
words, their life stories.
What does it mean to be a slave? To me it’s a person legally owned by another and having no
freedom of action or right to property, a person who is forced to work for another against his will,
a person under the domination of another person. To be a slave is to be classified as a human being
but classed as property and who is forced to work for nothing. To be enslaved person is to be a
human being who is made to be a slave. The status of slaves as property has long been established.
The use of the property law meant that the enslaved were not considered humans, but commodities.
A person becomes a slave through a process of the Atlantic slave trade of the 18th century which
was a new kind of slavery and on a scale much greater than ever before. It was the British who
played a major part in this trade. The West Indian plantation owners increasingly turned to African
slaves for labor. Ideas of racial differences made it easier to justify slavery. The enslavement of
Africans was justified by the belief that Africans were inferior to Europeans.