The Slave Ship: A Human History

Outstanding, heartbreaking, informative, the most eye openig book about the horrific slave trade I have ever read. A must read for anyone with the desire to understand the seldom mentioned srart of slavery in the western hemisphere.

This 434 page book "The slave ship" by Marcus Rediker is a complete detailed account of the 400 years of legal slave trading that officially ended May 1st,1807.It relates all the details,including the hardware and tools used (drawings since no photography was invented yet) used to keep the prisoners,the netting surrounding the ship to prevent escapes,even down to a vivid description of the sharks who constantly circled the waters of such vessels eagerly awaiting any dead thrown overboard.In this book are 1st hand accounts of slaves,captains and deck hands of every color and background.In this book are accounts of who captured them and why and from where.Included are various drawings of the various sized ships and the legal slave capacity of 2 slaves per ton of ship weight as established by the slave carrying bill of 1799 and the Dolben act of 1788 and the exact science and logistics thereof of trafficking in human cargo.Maps of the areas are also included in this book .How many dead (both crew and slaves)were acceptable to make a profit to the owners of these ships.In short this book is a "how they did it" in easy to read thou often gruesome words are employed. An entire chapter(and then some) is devoted to John Newton,the slave captain who later renounced his allegiance to the slave trade and turned Christian and who also wrote the Gospel hymn "Amazing Grace"A reading of John Newtons bio is in order to get a fuller picture of the slave trade he objected to but still did. There are detailed notes on each chapter for further study if desired as well as a full alphabetical index to look up names or people. While reading this book I noticed quite a few silimarites between the slave trade and the abortion issue that were not mentioned in the book.Here are a few I quickly jotted down: 1.Both not considered human,thus any treatment was at the discression of the owner. 2.Both pratices were considered uncomfortable with the general public 3.Both were promoted on the backs of the poor 4.Both are mere property of their owners 5.Both were done for "the victims own good"

Caution, may contain spoilers. The Slave Ship offers an engaging, emotional retelling of the lives of those who surrounded the height of the Atlantic slave trade. As an historical text, it provides insight into the underlying motives that fueled slave labor while depicting the darker side of capitalism through the unusually cruel lives of slaves, sailors, and ship captains alike. Rediker successfully portrays what he refers to as "the greatest human drama" while drawing attention to the violence and terror inflicted upon the subjects of a growing capitalist machine. My own experience while reading the book reflected similar emotions to those of the slaves – whose journey began with profound shock, later replaced by denial, and finally transformed into a sense of acceptance and identity. Rediker’s book chronicles several gruesome stories to characterize the barbaric realities of slavery. Two examples, for instance, are of a man who uses his own fingernails to sever his jugular vein and the use of sharks by ship captains to invoke terror upon the slaves (p.17, 40). The brutality of the stories is shocking, but acclimatizes readers to the radical changes experienced by newly captured slaves. Rediker challenges the belief that most slaves originated from wars, instead suggesting, "[w]ar was a euphemism for the organized theft of human beings" (p.99). The shock I felt was eclipsed by what kidnapped and conquered Africans would have felt when stolen from their homes and sold into captivity. Equally shocking to the slaves must have been the sight of the ship itself. Rediker describes how a seemingly innocuous marvel of modern technology, when put into the context of Atlantic slave trade, became a "floating dungeon" that evolved into a diabolically efficient cog in the slave trade machine (p.45). Rediker's argument for the rise of slave trade is the notion of a runaway capitalist machine, whose uninhibited hunger for profit was only moderately satiated by consuming the lives of its participants. The opening thesis reminds readers "that such horrors have always been, and remain, central to the making of global capitalism" (p.13). When presented with this tragically unfulfilling explanation for the existence of slavery, my reaction was denial. I angrily questioned capitalism as principally contributing to the Atlantic slave machine. Certainly power and greed, ubiquitous themes throughout human history, or a human inclination towards dominant and subordinate roles in structuring society, were to blame. Surely it was not the fault of capitalist economic practices that later established the United States as a global hegemony. After all, no one at the time (neither wealthy merchants nor sugar plantation owners) would have been privy to a capitalist market economy. The denial I felt, however, must have been decidedly insignificant as compared to the Africans who found themselves bound by iron shackles in coffles. Rediker, in fact, elaborates on forms of slave resistance - refusing food, abandoning ship, and revolts. Often, the slaves resisted only long enough to ultimately be consumed by the very machine they fought against. "By far the most common outcome of shipboard rebellion was defeat " (p.299). I soon found my resistance to Rediker's claims would also be futile. It was only after reading the accounts of non-slaves that Rediker’s argument became clearer, and my anger was replaced by acceptance. The unsavory lives of the men who operated slave ships suggested that their participation was only sometimes of their own free will - or as Rediker posits, "sober or drunk, by hook or by crook" (p.202). The inherent dangers of sea travel, relatively low pay, and abuse each indicate the sailors' conditions were only marginally better than those of the slaves. While the ship captains were unquestionably brutal, Rediker also highlights the volatility of the job. "He acted as a boss, a coordinator of a heterogeneous and often refractory crew of wage laborers" (p.188). Captains, though well compensated for their work, were entirely isolated, in part from spending months at sea, but also because of their rank. At any moment, chaos could be unleashed in the form of mutinies, slave uprisings, sickness, or mere accidents (p.197). While their ruthlessness is a foregone conclusion, readers are left with the sense that it came out of unrelenting fear, profound isolation, and a precarious degree of control over the ship and crew. By acknowledging that the slave traders themselves (whose lives were hardly enviable) were consumed by the machine of Atlantic slave trade, I realized they were no different from the ship, the slaves, or the sugar – each are simply different components playing a role in keeping the machine running. Rediker is not blaming capitalist-oriented European traders for the existence of slavery, but rather suggesting that slavery, as an institution, was promulgated alongside a burgeoning capitalist market economy. As I came to identify with Rediker’s book, I recognized that as the journey from Africa to the New World concluded, the slaves, too, would have formed a new identity. To this end, Rediker distinguishes emerging themes that, without the slave ship, may never have materialized. One such theme is the abolitionist movement of the early 19th century. Other themes include race, language, song, and dance - which initially served to separate people aboard the slave ship, but eventually worked as catalysts for congruity. As divisive as the slave ship could be, it eventually served to bring its inhabitants together as "shipmates" (p.304). The Slave Ship contests the short-sighted notion of slavery being a function of capitalism, comprised of a limited drama starring a protagonist (slaves) and antagonist (slave traders). Instead, it depicts the Atlantic slave trade as an unbridled machine whose devastation insidiously devoured everyone with whom it became associated. Slavery and capitalism are portrayed as separate, but collaborating, entities that developed during a time in which colonization of the New World began to conspire with an expanding global marketplace. The Atlantic slave trade is a machine whose components are economic, agricultural, and social but also one that is fuelled, for better or worse, by a new sense of global connectedness. The true tragedy, as conceived by Rediker, is a continued unwillingness to fully admonish the terror and violence today. Rediker's most poignant rationale for writing The Slave Ship is to further unite its readers by acknowledging the horrors of slave trade and vindicating those who continue to be consumed by unrestrained global capitalism.

Very well written. Shocking record of this barbaric era.

The reviews above cover the ground quite adequately, so let me just add this: The Slave Ship is a powerful piece of essential background for all who live in today's capitalist economies. As one reviewer elsewhere so poignantly put it (Alice Walker), this book is homework of the most insistent order. The very least that we, especially the descendents of the slave-dealing participants, must do for those who suffered this terrible criminality, is try to comprehend what happened and why. Reading this book brings to mind Primo Levi's insistent plea that we listen; we, the generations who now can view the whole sorry disgrace that was the slave trade with the comfort of hindsight, have an obligation and a need to do so. That said, it is both galling and deeply sad that there exist so precious few accounts from the slaves and participants themselves. This book tries to offer some redress, and succeeds. The one image which remains to haunt you from this masterful history book, is the one of the slaves singing. Often in chains, usually in the stink of the cramped below-decks, and most movingly at night, as they were wrenched ever further away from their homes in the fetid Hell that was the floating dungeon of their slave ship, the Africans would sing on the high seas, sometimes in a call and response around the hold, to give voice to their extreme misfortune. Did they know that there was no happy ending, that they were headed to a certain death through toil and hard labour on a different continent, all to keep the coiffured whitefolks in sugar and cotton? It must have been the Blues as we have never heard it and only God and the Ocean can.

I have read a lot about the vile despicable Slave Trade-the only thing i would put on a par with the Nazi Holocaust. This book should have been excellent but it is badly written and leaves out much about the middle passage and just how greedy and disgusting the British (especially!) were. To me, it reads more like a whitewash.

Required study on Post Slavery by Accounting and Testimonials A full heart achingly documented witnessing of the curses from Deuteronomy 28. Living Hell on Waters 💧 is their DNA account of generational Post Slavery Traumatized Melanated Israelites.

excellent ,rare to find any other book on this subject.painful to know miseries and attrocities committed during the 400 years of trans atlantic slave trade, in the name of building up capitalism...A very well researched book..with a collection of facts lost in time...