Slavery At Sea: Terror, Sex, And Sickness In The Middle Passage (new Black Studies Series)
by Sowande M Mustakeem /
2016 / English / PDF
2.4 MB Download
Most times left solely within the confine of plantation
narratives, slavery was far from a land-based phenomenon. This
book reveals for the first time how it took critical shape at
sea. Expanding the gaze even more widely, the book centers on how
the oceanic transport of human cargoes--known as the infamous
Middle Passage--comprised a violently regulated process
foundational to the institution of bondage. Sowande' Mustakeem's
groundbreaking study goes inside the Atlantic slave trade to
explore the social conditions and human costs embedded in the
world of maritime slavery. Mining ship logs, records and personal
documents, Mustakeem teases out the social histories produced
between those on traveling ships: slaves, captains, sailors, and
surgeons. As she shows, crewmen manufactured captives through
enforced dependency, relentless cycles of physical, psychological
terror, and pain that led to the making--and unmaking--of
enslaved Africans held and transported onboard slave ships.
Mustakeem relates how this process, and related power struggles,
played out not just for adult men, but also for women, children,
teens, infants, nursing mothers, the elderly, diseased, ailing,
and dying. As she does so, she offers provocative new insights
into how gender, health, age, illness, and medical treatment
intersected with trauma and violence transformed human beings
into the most commercially sought commodity for over four
centuries.
Most times left solely within the confine of plantation
narratives, slavery was far from a land-based phenomenon. This
book reveals for the first time how it took critical shape at
sea. Expanding the gaze even more widely, the book centers on how
the oceanic transport of human cargoes--known as the infamous
Middle Passage--comprised a violently regulated process
foundational to the institution of bondage. Sowande' Mustakeem's
groundbreaking study goes inside the Atlantic slave trade to
explore the social conditions and human costs embedded in the
world of maritime slavery. Mining ship logs, records and personal
documents, Mustakeem teases out the social histories produced
between those on traveling ships: slaves, captains, sailors, and
surgeons. As she shows, crewmen manufactured captives through
enforced dependency, relentless cycles of physical, psychological
terror, and pain that led to the making--and unmaking--of
enslaved Africans held and transported onboard slave ships.
Mustakeem relates how this process, and related power struggles,
played out not just for adult men, but also for women, children,
teens, infants, nursing mothers, the elderly, diseased, ailing,
and dying. As she does so, she offers provocative new insights
into how gender, health, age, illness, and medical treatment
intersected with trauma and violence transformed human beings
into the most commercially sought commodity for over four
centuries.