Summary
Highlights
Clint Smith introduces the Transatlantic Slave Trade, which spanned four centuries from the late 15th to late 19th century. The majority of enslaved Africans were taken from six primary regions: Senegambia, Sierra Leone & the Windward Coast, the Gold Coast, the Bight of Benin, the Bight of Biafra, and West Central Africa (Kongo and Angola). W.E.B. Du Bois described it as 'the most magnificent drama in the last thousand years of human history,' not in a positive sense.
An estimated 12.4 million people were forcibly loaded onto slave ships for the Middle Passage, the second leg of the triangular trade. This leg transported enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas, where they were sold for goods like sugar and tobacco. Approximately 2 million African captives died during the Middle Passage, their bodies often thrown overboard. Only about 5% of captured Africans were brought directly to what would become the U.S., with the largest proportion (around 41%) going to Brazil, and others scattered across the Caribbean and South America.
The video emphasizes the importance of enslaved people's narratives, such as Olaudah Equiano's 1789 autobiography, which describes the terror and dehumanization of capture and boarding the ships. He recounts his fear and despair upon seeing the European crew and fellow chained Africans. It's also noted that Africans were often sold by other Africans—typically prisoners of war, criminals, or poor individuals—to Europeans for various goods. However, this does not equate to the chattel slavery system unique to the Americas, which was intergenerational and hereditary.
The conditions on slave ships were horrific. Hundreds of people were chained, unable to move, and forced to live amidst their own waste. The lack of ventilation and rampant disease led to unbearable stench and high mortality rates, as detailed by Equiano. Violence, including sexual violence, was pervasive, used to maintain submission during the weeks-long journeys.
Enslaved people resisted in various ways, from collective revolts to individual acts like refusing to eat or jumping overboard. Suicide was an act of resistance, undermining the economic value placed on their lives and sometimes driven by spiritual beliefs that the ocean would carry them home. Enslavers used brutal devices like the speculum orum and thumb-screws to force compliance, highlighting the desperate measures taken to break resistance.
Historian Marcus Rediker identifies 1700-1808 as the most destructive period of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, with two-thirds of enslaved Africans trafficked during this time. The mortality rate was staggering: for every 100 people taken from Africa's interior, only 64 survived to the coast, 48 survived the Atlantic journey, and only 28-30 survived the first 3-4 years in the colonies.
The video emphasizes using 'enslaved person' instead of 'slave' to center the individual's personhood and highlight that slavery was an imposed condition. England's Royal African Company, established in 1672, played a central role, maintaining a monopoly on English trade to Africa during its most active period from 1675 to 1725.
South Carolina's unique relationship with the slave trade is highlighted: it prohibited the trade in 1787, reopened it in 1803, and imported over 35,000 enslaved people before the federal prohibition in 1808. Charleston's coast served as the entry point for approximately 40% of enslaved Africans brought to North America. The federal government ended the international slave trade in 1808 (Britain in 1807), though illegal trafficking continued. Domestic slave trade in the US persisted, and it took decades for slavery to be abolished in Britain (1833) and the U.S. (1865). Brazil was the last Western country to abolish slavery in 1888.
The Transatlantic Slave Trade is described as a cruel, violent, and abhorrent centuries-long project that profoundly shaped the trajectory of the world and both Black and white life, with its impacts continuing to be explored in subsequent episodes.