Middle Passage
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Middle Passage was the stage of the Atlantic slave trade in which millions of enslaved Africans were forcibly transported to the Americas as part of the triangular slave trade. Ships departed Europe for Africans markets with manufactured goods (first side of the triangle), which were traded for slaves, as rulers of African states were willing to capture and sell members of other tribes.
Slave ships (also known as Guineamen) transported the human cargo, in wretched conditions, males and females separated, across the Atlantic (second side of the triangle). Mortality was high; those with strong bodies survived. Young females were raped by the crew. The proceeds from sale of the enslaved Africans were then used to buy hides, tobacco, sugar, rum, and raw materials, which would be transported back to northern Europe (third side of the triangle) to complete the triangle.
The First Passage was the forced march of captives (future slaves) from their inland homes to African ports, such as Elmina, where they were imprisoned until they could be loaded onto a buying ship. The Final Passage was the journey from the port of disembarkation, such as Charleston, South Carolina, to the plantation or other destination where they would be put to work. The Middle Passage across the Atlantic joined these two. Voyages on the Middle Passage were large financial undertakings, generally organized by companies or groups of investors rather than individuals.
The "Middle Passage" was considered a time of in-betweenness for those being traded from Africa to America. The close quarters and intentional division of pre-established African communities selling the cargo of enslaved by the ship crew motivated captive Africans to forge bonds of kinship which then created forced transatlantic communities. The "Middle Passage" refers to the journey from Africa to America and the conditions under which these Africans lived.
White colonists in the Americas would purchase the enslaved Africans upon their arrival. European nations such as Portugal, Britain, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Denmark–Norway, Sweden, Courland, Brandenburg-Prussia and various Italian states as well as traders from Brazil and the United States, took part in the trade. The enslaved Africans came mostly from the regions of Senegambia, Upper Guinea, Windward Coast, Gold Coast, Bight of Benin, Bight of Biafra, and Angola. Between 1525 and 1859, the slave trade from the Bight of Biafra alone accounted for over two-thirds of slaves exported to the New World.
An estimated 15% of the Africans died at sea, with mortality rates considerably higher in Africa itself during the process of capturing and transporting enslaved Africans to the ships. The total number of African deaths directly attributable to the Middle Passage voyage is estimated at up to two million; a broader look at African deaths directly attributable to the institution of slavery from 1500 to 1900 suggests up to four million African deaths.
According to modern research, roughly 12.5 million enslaved Africans were transported through via the Middle Passage to the Americas. The first European slave ship transported enslaved Africans from São Tomé to New Spain in 1525. Portuguese and Dutch traders dominated the trade in the 16th and 17th centuries, though by the eighteenth they were supplanted by the British and French. With the growing abolitionist movement in Europe and the Americas, the transatlantic slave trade gradually declined until being fully abolished in the second-half of the 19th century.
See also
- Middle Passage (Axiom, 1990) is an album by Ginger Baker.
