From Numbers to Life Histories: The Transatlantic Trade
Please read Eltis; then choose ONE of the other core readings.
Please note potentially upsetting content in the Rediker, Dorsey, Mustakeem readings (though the context for all the readings is painful).
Seminar slides
Seminar Questions
- Who/what shaped the volume and nature of the transatlantic slave trade?
- How was the trade shaped by gendered power and reproductive labour?
- What were the functions of the slave ship?
- What are the advantages or disadvantages of qualitative and quantitative approaches?
- Does our view of the trade look different if we "start" with African histories of slavery (how)?
- What new perspectives on the Atlantic trade does Hicks' examination of Black sailors in the South Atlantic offer?
Core reading (Eltis and choose 1 other):
Eltis, David. 鈥淭he Volume and Structure of the Transatlantic Trade: A Reassessment.鈥� William and Mary Quarterly, 58: 1 (2001): 17-47.
Lovejoy, Paul. : A History of Slavery in Africa. Chapter 1: 鈥淎frica and Slavery.鈥� CUP 2012 (third edition).
Paton, Diana. "Gender History, Global History, and Atlantic Slavery: On Racial Capitalism and Social Reproduction." American Historical Review, 127:2 (June 2022): 726-754
Rediker, Marcus, The Slave Ship: A Human History. London: John Murray, 2007.
-
- 鈥泪苍迟谤辞诲耻肠迟颈辞苍,鈥� pp. 1-13.
- Ch. 3, pp. 73-107.
Mary Hicks, . Omohundro Institute, 2024. Introduction
Further reading:
Primary sources:
Explore the maps, data and essays in Voyages:
Primary sources on Brazil: Robert Conrad, Children of God's Fire: A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil, ch 1
Dorsey, Joseph. Dorsey, Joseph C. 鈥淚t Hurt Very Much at the Time: Rape Culture, Patriarchy, and the Slave Body-Semiotic.鈥� In The Culture of Gender and Sexuality in the Caribbean, ed. Linden Lewis, 294-322. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003 [distressing content]
Law, Robin, and Kristin Mann, 鈥淲est Africa in the Atlantic Community: the Case of the Slave Coast.鈥� William & Mary Quarterly, 56:2 (April 1999): 307-334.
Eltis, David. 鈥淔ree and Coerced Migrations: the Atlantic in Global Perspective,鈥� European Review, 12 (2004): 313-28.
- Jennifer Nelson, "The Mixed Commission and Emancipated Slaves in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro" (MA dissertation, University of Leeds, 2011), chapter 1: "Case study of the slave ship the Brilhante," pp 24-52.
* Joseph Miller Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730-1830. University of Wisconsin Press, 1988
* Paul E Lovejoy Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa. 2012, intro and chapter on the nineteenth century
* Stephanie Smallwood, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007.
Mustakeem, Sowande鈥�. Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage. Urbana and Springfield: University of Illinoi Press, 2016. [distressing content]