Slavery In Colonial America

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By 1807-1808, when Great Britain and the United States outlawed the slave trade, nine million people (give or take) had been transported from Africa to the New World, the Americas. Forced into damp cramped living quarters on the slave ships, millions of slaves died while crossing the Middle Passage, their bodies cast overboard without ceremony to either hopefully sink down into the depths of the ocean or to be devoured by a hoard of sharks. The rest of the slaves—the lucky ones or unlucky ones, depending on who’s point of view you’re looking at—remained in the belly of these wooden hells.
Slave ships, a slaves first “home” in captivity, were not built to recreate the comfort of a home but were instead designed to maximize profit of the slave …show more content…
These trips could last anywhere from six to ten weeks. The whole purpose of the slave ship was to transport quantity, not quality; “Chained two by two, right leg and left leg, right hand and left hand, each slave had less room than a man in a coffin." Because of the close quarters air in the slave holds were stale and smelled of sick and held the stench of humans trapped in their own filth and because of these conditions many slaves became sick, causing the …show more content…
Noting that the transatlantic process of the slave trade assisted to popularize now-familiar institutions— the insurance industry and the credit financing of speculative ventures—Baucom displays the Zong incident as an early embodiment of "finance capitalism," which can be associated with transitional oscillations in the history of capitalism. In the end, Mansfield ruled in favor of the insurers. He also held that the cargo had been poorly managed as the captain should have made a suitable allowance of water for each
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