Video Critique Number Two “The Middle Passage”
The Black Experience, 1619 – 1877
2040: 254 - 002
Dr.Nwa
Kristy McCoy
02/20/2014
Along the west coast of Africa, from the Cameroon’s in the south to Senegal in the north, Europeans built some sixty forts that served as trading posts. European sailors seeking riches brought rum, cloth, guns, and other goods to these posts and traded them for human beings. This human cargo was transported across the Atlantic Ocean and sold to New World slave owners, who bought slaves to work their crops. European traders waited at these forts for slaves; African traders transported slaves from the interior of Africa. Others found themselves sold and traded more than once, often in slave markets. African merchants, the poor, royalty, anyone could be abducted in the raids and wars that were undertaken by Africans to secure slaves that they could trade. The slave trade devastated African life. Culture and traditions were torn apart, as families, especially young men, were abducted. Guns were introduced and slave raids and even wars increased. After kidnapping potential slaves, merchants forced them to walk in slave caravans to the European coastal forts, sometimes as far as 1,000 miles. Shackled and underfed, only half the people survived these death marches. Those too sick or weary to keep up were often killed or left to die. Those who reached the coastal forts were put into underground dungeons where they would stay, sometimes for as long as a year, until they were boarded on ships. Just as horrifying as these death marches was the Middle Passage, as it was called, the transport of slaves across the Atlantic. On the first leg of their trip, slave traders delivered goods from European ports to West African ones. On the "middle" leg, ship captains loaded their then empty holds with slaves and transported them to the Americas and the Caribbean. A typical Atlantic crossing took 60-90 days but some lasted up to four months Upon arrival, captains sold the slaves and purchased raw materials to be brought back to Europe on the last leg of the trip. Roughly 54,000 voyages were made by Europeans to buy and sell slaves Africans were often treated like cattle during the crossing. On the slave ships, people were stuffed between decks in spaces too low for standing. The heat was often unbearable, and the air nearly unbreathable. Women were often used sexually. Men were often chained in pairs, shackled wrist to wrist or ankle to ankle. People were crowded together,
