Ch.4 Sec 1: Slavery and Empire -Mercantilism realized: the triangular trade. -West Africa had become a thriving slave industry since the Portuguese had arrived while going to the West coast. Most slaves went to other destinations, like South America( Brazil), Caribbean and then some to the Americas. Very little of them went straight to North America. *The Ordeal of the Slave* -A state of perpetual terror: 1) first caught from her/ his tribe by the Europeans or another tribe.
Cyril Enagbare Dr. Grubbs History 2110 15 November 2013 The Narrative of Fredrick Douglass The “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave" strived to education concerning the slave's troubles. This powerful account contains Douglass' desire to escape from damaging restrictions, which lead to the writing of his story. In the Narrative, Douglass uses many themes, and representations to teach people on the reality of slavery. The Narrative’s main purpose was to teach humanity of the unnaturalness of slavery and the significances it had on the enslaved and the masters. Douglass’s Narrative really displayed how white slaveholders kept slavery by keeping their slaves ignorant.
Africans were chained and packed into quarters unfit for movement or proper breathing. The only hope of escape rested in suicide by jumping overboard. With the British Parliament's outlaw of the slave trade in 1808, the naval superpower set sail to enforce total European abolition. The Society of Friends, along with other such concerned parties, published accounts of the horrific middle passage to distribute amongst still practicing nations. These accounts, supported by memoirs such as Oladuah Equiano's, who survived the journey, informed the masses and catalyzed the destruction of slavery.
He was a very influential person in the abolition of slaves. Just as Frederic Douglass did, he wrote an autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, that discusses the time spent in slavery, how served on vessels and how gained his independence by his own. In his youth he was kidnapped along with his little sister and they were separate from each other. Equiano changed hands a few times before being shipped across the Atlantic Ocean. In Equiano’s narrative he describes how cruel was the treatment of slaves.
And so did Mary Ann.” (97). The text also talks about the importance of flow in storytelling by describing how Kiley tended to interrupt the flow of his stories with commentary and questions. Mitchell Sanders told Kiley that “that just breaks the spell. It destroys the magic. What you have to do is trust your own story.
(McKay, Chap 21, pg 570) In order to get a good perspective on what being a slave was like, we will look into a narrative written by Olaudah Equiano. Equiano was a native of Iboland who was captured at the age of eleven. He describes how some villagers would wait until the adults would go out in the plantations to work to abduct their younger children. Once Equiano was sold to the Europeans he says that they were treated horribly beaten and cramped on a very small boat. The reason that the slaves were treated badly could have been due to the fact that the Europeans had to pay a high price for them or just due to a lack of space.
- At the Berlin Conference in 1885 Leopold's claims were recognized. -Brutality was used on the people in Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness, he discusses the cruelties used in the Congo. Southern Africa -Fertile pastures and farm land and deposits of coal, iron ore, gold, diamonds, and copper made it appealing. -Boers or Dutch descendants of 17th and 18th century settlers. -British took over the Cape colony after Napoleonic Wars.
Kook and Quamana, were born, grew up, and sold into slavery. They brought with them from Africa the memories and stories of the powerful and warlike empire in which they mostly likely grew up (Rasmussen 22). The third man, Charles Deslondes, served as a slave driver, a member of the slave elite on the plantation of Spaniard Manuel Andry, a planter known for his cruelty toward his slaves. Despite how Deslondes appeared, “ he was one of the key architects of an elaborate scheme to kill off the white planters, seize power for the black slaves, and win his own freedom and that of all those laboring in chains on the German Coast” (Rasmussen
David Walker – The Appeal (418) A freed black who published “Walker’s Appeal”; Declared “America is more our country than whites-we enriched it with our blood and tears.” “Slaves should cut their master’s throats”…”Kill or be Killed”24. Frederick Douglass (419) - The greatest African-American abolitionists of all, born a slave in Maryland, he escaped to Massachusetts in 1838. After returning in 1847 after spending 2 years in England lecturing, he bought his freedom from his Maryland master in 1847 and founded the North Star, an anti slavery newspaper.25. Amistad (420) - Africans destined for slavery took over the ship and attempted to return to Africa but the U.S. navy seized the ship and treated them as pirates. The Africans were declared free in 1841(one reason being that the slave trade was illegal by then), and anti slavery groups funded their passage back to Africa.26.
Along this journey we are given an account of what slavery was like in the 1800’s, as well as an emotional outlook at the struggle which led Douglass to freedom, allowing him to become a prominent slavery abolitionist. From the beginning of the novel that slavery is evil, this is subtly apparent when I am first introduced to Frederick Douglass as a child with no identity, idea of who he is or where he comes from. Douglass has no sense of self other than his life as a slave. In a sense Douglass is