Summary of Marcus Rediker's The Slave Ship

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The slave trade was the largest commercial enterprise in the history of humanity, spanning continents and generations. It involved a vast and lowly proletariat, hundreds of thousands of sailors, and millions of slaves.
#2 A man named Captain Tomba was among a group of dejected prisoners in a holding pen. He was tall, strong, and defiant. He saw a group of white men observing the barracoon, with a design to buy. When his fellow captives were subjected to buyers’ inspection, he expressed contempt.
#3 The story of the boatswain is a prime example of leadership among the captives. She was a woman who was in charge of her fellow enslaved women, and she kept order on the ship. One day, she was given a cut or two by the second mate, and she flew into a rage.
#4 The man who came aboard the slave ship Brooks in late 1783 or early 1784 was a native of the Gold Coast, possibly Fante. He was accused of witchcraft and sold to the ship. He refused all sustenance, and within a week or ten days, he died of pure starvation.

Sujets

• Général
• United States

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 08 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669351061
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Marcus Rediker's The Slave Ship
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The slave trade was the largest commercial enterprise in the history of humanity, spanning continents and generations. It involved a vast and lowly proletariat, hundreds of thousands of sailors, and millions of slaves.

#2

A man named Captain Tomba was among a group of dejected prisoners in a holding pen. He was tall, strong, and defiant. He saw a group of white men observing the barracoon, with a design to buy. When his fellow captives were subjected to buyers’ inspection, he expressed contempt.

#3

The story of the boatswain is a prime example of leadership among the captives. She was a woman who was in charge of her fellow enslaved women, and she kept order on the ship. One day, she was given a cut or two by the second mate, and she flew into a rage.

#4

The man who came aboard the slave ship Brooks in late 1783 or early 1784 was a native of the Gold Coast, possibly Fante. He was accused of witchcraft and sold to the ship. He refused all sustenance, and within a week or ten days, he died of pure starvation.

#5

The story of Thomas Trotter, a slave who attempted to kill himself by cutting his throat with his own fingernails, was brought before a parliamentary committee investigating the slave trade in 1790. The debate about the man’s resistance ensued.

#6

On the Liverpool slave ship the Hudibras, a young woman named Sarah was the best dancer and singer. She was also involved in an insurrection, but she survived and was sold at Grenada in 1787. She took African traditions of dance, song, and resistance with her.

#7

Samuel Robinson was the only man alive who had served an apprenticeship to the slave trade. He grew up in Garlieston, a coastal village of southwest Scotland, where he had heard stories about a voyage to the West Indies. He was spellbound when he boarded the slaver Lady Neilson in 1801.

#8

The author reflects on his original motivations for going to sea, which were to escape the brutality of his uncle and the poor quality of food and water. He ends up questioning his future prospects after two slaving voyages.

#9

Bartholomew Roberts was a young Welshman who sailed as second mate on the Princess, a slave ship, out of London for Sierra Leone. He was elected captain of his ship and became the most successful sea robber of his time. He terrorized the African coast, sending the traders there into a panic.

#10

Nicholas Owen was a real-life Robinson Crusoe, a sailor who went to sea after his father squandered the family fortune. He crossed the Atlantic five times, three times on slavers. He died of a fever in 1759, penniless and alone.

#11

The golden rule of to do to others as we would be done by was used to resolve the conflict between the European captain and the African king. The captain bought the child, and he and his crew decided to pitch on some motherly woman to take care of the child.

#12

Captain Snelgrave was a redeemer, a Christian hero who went out of his way to save the lives of Africans and their children.

#13

In the late 1760s, a group of slaves on an English ship attempted to revolt and escape their captors by breaking out the chains they were tied with. They were quickly suppressed.

#14

When the Africa gathered its cargo of 310 slaves, Captain Watkins decided that the cook’s punishment should continue, so he made arrangements with Captain Joseph Carter to send him to the Nightingale, where he was once again chained to the main top and given the same meager allowance of food and water.

#15

Captain James Fraser of Bristol, England, was an example of a slave trader who did not mistreat his slaves. He ran an orderly ship with a minimum of coercion.

#16

The testimony of Falconbridge, the captain of the slave ship, contradicted that of Captain Fraser, the owner of the enslaved people. Falconbridge claimed that a greater proportion of the enslaved were kidnapped than Fraser was willing to admit, and that he would buy the kidnapped without asking questions.

#17

The Liverpool interest in the parliamentary hearings held between 1788 and 1791 was represented by Norris, a man of many talents. He was one of the slave trade’s best public defenders.

#18

The one surviving document written by Norris that was not intended for publication tells a different story. While he noted that the slaves made an insurrection, he also noted that they were quickly quelled with the loss of two women.

#19

The Katherine was one of a small fleet of slave ships owned by Morice and named for his wife and daughters. They made sixty-two voyages and transported almost twenty thousand people to New World plantations.

#20

Morice was an engaged merchant and shipowner. He made it his business to learn the details of the trade, which he expressed in careful instructions to his captains. He knew that trading practices varied from one African port to the next.

#21

The death of Morice was a horrible event, but it was also a symbol of the end of the slave trade. He had been defrauding the Bank of England by making up false bills of foreign exchange, and when he died in disgrace on November 16, 1731, he was in a far different situation than those who died aboard the Katherine.

#22

Henry Laurens, one of the wealthiest merchants in early America, wrote to Captain Hinson Todd, who was seeking a cargo in Jamaica to carry to Charleston, South Carolina. He cautioned the captain to treat with great humanity the very people who would, given a split second, annihilate him and his crew.

#23

Laurens, who was a merchant, made a conscious decision to stop the slave trade around 1763. He turned his economic power into political power, and was elected to office seventeen times. He was selected to represent South Carolina in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, but declined to serve.

#24

The sight of a shark slowly circling a ship, its black fin two feet above the water, its small eyes and snout, was enough to make even the most hardened sailor shiver in terror.

#25

Slaving captains consciously used sharks to create terror throughout the voyage. They counted on sharks to prevent the desertion of their seamen and the escape of their slaves.

#26

A second case was even more gruesome. Another captain facing a rage for suicide seized upon a woman as a proper example to the rest. He ordered the woman tied with a rope under her armpits and lowered into the water: When the poor creature was thus plunged in, and about half way down, she was heard to give a terrible shriek, which at first was ascribed to her fears of drowning.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The slave ship was a variant of the European deep-sea sailing ship, which was the forerunner of the vessels that would eventually carry Europeans to all parts of the earth. It was a marvel if not a terror.

#2

The slave ship was an essential part of the plantation complex, which was a system of economic organization that began in the medieval Mediterranean and spread to the eastern Atlantic islands, and then to the New World during the seventeenth century.

#3

The slave ship was a powerful sailing machine, but it was also a factory and a prison. It was a merchant’s trading station and a mobile prison, at the same time.

#4

The centrality of the slave trade to the British Empire was argued by British merchant and lobbyist Malachy Postlethwayt in the 1740s. He knew that the plantation revolution had transformed the empire, and that both depended on the shipment of labor power.