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Middle Passage

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture



On the first leg of their three-part journey, often called the Triangular Trade, European ships brought manufactured goods to Africa; on the second, they transported African men, women, and children to the Americas; and on the third leg, they exported to Europe the sugar, rum, cotton, and tobacco produced by the enslaved labor force. There was also a direct trade between Brazil and Angola that did not include the European leg. Traders referred to the Africa-Americas part of the voyage as the " Middle Passage" and the term has survived to denote the Africans' ordeal.

Men were shackled under deck, and all Africans were subjected to abuse and punishment.

Some people tried to starve themselves to death, but the crew forced them to take food by whipping them, torturing them with hot coal, or forcing their mouths open by using special instruments or by breaking their teeth.

The personal identity of the captives was denied. Women and boys were often used for the pleasure of the crew. Ottobah Cugoano, who endured the Middle Passage in the eighteenth century, recalled: "it was common for the dirty filthy sailors to take the African women and lie upon their bodies."

Mortality brought about by malnutrition, dysentery, smallpox, and other diseases was very high. Depending on the times, upwards of 20 percent died from various epidemics or committed suicide. Venture Smith, describing his ordeal, wrote: "After an ordinary passage, except great mortality by the small pox, which broke out on board, we arrived at the island of Barbadoes: but when we reached it, there were found out of the two hundred and sixty that sailed from Africa, not more than two hundred alive." It was not unusual for captains and crew to toss the sick overboard; and some even disposed of an entire cargo for insurance purposes.

On board slave ships, in the midst of their oppression, the Africans, who were often as much strangers to each other as to their European captors, forged the first links with their new American identities. Relationships established during the Middle Passage frequently resulted in revolts and other forms of resistance that bound them in new social and political alliances. Ottobah Cugoano described the attempted revolt organized on the ship that took him from the Gold Coast to Grenada: "when we found ourselves at last taken away, death was more preferable than life; and a plan was concerted amongst us, that we might burn and blow up the ship, and to perish all together in the flames . . . . It was the women and boys which were to burn the ship, with the approbation and groans of the rest; though that was prevented, the discovery was likewise a cruel bloody scene."

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The special relations created on the ship lasted a lifetime and were regarded by the deported Africans, torn from their loved ones, as strongly as kinship. They had special names for those who had shared their ordeal. They were called bâtiments in Creole (from the French for ship), sippi in Surinam (from ship), and shipmate in Jamaica.

Far from wiping out all traces of their cultural, social, and personal past, the Middle Passage experience provided Africans with opportunities to draw on their collective heritage to make themselves a new people.

Of the estimated ten million men, women, and children who survived the Middle Passage, approximately 450,000 Africans disembarked on North America's shores. They thus represented only a fraction - 5 percent-- of those transported during the 350-year history of the international slave trade. Brazil and the Caribbean each received about nine times as many Africans.

The labor of enslaved Africans proved crucial in the development of South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, and Maryland and contributed indirectly through commerce to the fortunes of New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. Though the enforced destination of Africans was primarily to plantations and farms for work in cash crop agriculture, they were also used in mining and servicing the commercial economy. They were placed in towns and port cities as domestic servants; and many urban residents performed essential commercial duties working as porters, teamsters, and craftsmen.

Voyages of the Slavers St. John & Arms of Amsterdam by Edmund B. O'Callaghan

(source above)

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| |Of the estimated ten million men, women, and children who survived the Middle Passage, approximately 450,000 Africans disembarked on North|

| |America's shores. They thus represented only a fraction - 5 percent-- of those transported during the 350-year history of the |

| |international slave trade. Brazil and the Caribbean each received about nine times as many Africans. |

| |The labor of enslaved Africans proved crucial in the development of South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, and Maryland and contributed |

| |indirectly through commerce to the fortunes of New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. Though the enforced destination of Africans was |

| |primarily to plantations and farms for work in cash crop agriculture, they were also used in mining and servicing the commercial economy. |

| |They were placed in towns and port cities as domestic servants; and many urban residents performed essential commercial duties working as |

| |porters, teamsters, and craftsmen. |

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| |Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America: Volume IV: The Border Colonies and The Southern Colonies by Elizabeth|

| |Donnan |

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| |Voyages of the Slavers St. John & Arms of Amsterdam by Edmund B. O'Callaghan |

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| |Hands That Picked No Cotton from Afro-Americans in New York Life and History (July 1987) by A.J. Williams-Myers |

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| |The African Presence in the Hudson River Valley from Afro-Americans in New York Life and History (January 1988) by A.J. Williams-Myers |

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| |Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America: Volume III: New England and the Middle Colonies by Elizabeth Donnan |

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| |In eighteenth-century America, Africans were concentrated in the agricultural lowlands of South Carolina and Georgia, especially in the |

| |Sea Islands, where they grew rice, cotton, indigo, and other crops. In Louisiana, they labored on sugarcane plantations. They were |

| |employed on tobacco farms in the tidewater region of Virginia and Maryland. The tidewater, together with the Georgia and South Carolina |

| |lowlands, accounted for at least two-thirds of the Africans brought into North America prior to the end of legal importation in 1807. |

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(Web Project for Primary Source)

Slavery Web Project

TransAtlantic Slave Database:

Check out Summary Statistics

Database Scavenger Hunt (PDF file)

Media Analysis

n this activity you'll screen several film interpretations of the "Middle Passage." You'll find short clips below from: 

• A Discovery Channel documentary, Slave Ship

• Steven Spielberg's Amistad.

You may also have access through your school or public library to the PBS series Africans in America.  Instructions are included for that film as well; screening it is optional.

Q&A Worksheet/Graphic Organizer

What overall impact did the film have on you?

The message

• What interpretation or reading of Middle Passage history does the film clip project?

• What historical information does the film's producer rely upon? (Identify particular sources if you can.)

• What aspects of the historical record are suppressed or downplayed, if any?

Compare/contrast

• Finally, how do the medium and the message relate to one another in each clip?

• How do the films compare/contrast as historical interpretations and as emotional experiences?

3 clips:

|Film Clip #1 |

|"Middle Passage" from Amistad (3:34 minutes) |

|Steven Spielberg's 1997 historical drama; clip edited by a history teacher for use with his students. |

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|Film Clip #2 – NO LONGER AVAILABLE. |

|"Africans in America Part 1B: The Terrible Transformation" from Africans in America (watch until 6:20) |

|Public television documentary from PBS |

|Film Clip #3 |

|"Assignment Discovery: Middle Passage" from Slave Ships (about 4:00) |

|Cable television documentary from the Discovery Channel. This is segmented into four parts. Please view the first of the four ("Middle |

|Passage" is required). You might also be very interested in the fourth clip in this collection ("Slave Captains" is optional). |

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