On the Plantation...
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Welcome to Sociology Level 1, Lesson 2: On the Plantation...
In this lesson, you will learn about:
The treatment of Africans on slave ships and plantations
The journey from Africa to the Americas
The forms of torture and medical experimentation used on Africans
Objectives
By the end of this lesson you will understand:
How Trans-Atlantic slavery differed from other forms of force servitude
How African captives were acquired
What “seasoning” was
That the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was the worst period in human history for African people
That the white-washed version of the Slave Trade is a way to relieve white people of their guilt
Additional objective for those that have studied Racism and Trauma
By the end of this lesson you may understand:
How this treatment of Africans caused trauma
Caution: this lesson contains references to torture and sexual violence
Plantation slavery was incredibly horrific. Unlike previous forms of forced labour, plantation slavery was industrial in scale and led to the development of an explicit racial hierarchy. Never before had an entire economy been established on race-based chattel slavery, relegating the enslaved to subhumans.
As such, the treatment of Africans was incredibly brutal and disgusting. For those not born into slavery, it would begin with their capture in Africa. Prisoners of war, criminals and conquered peoples would be sold to European slave dealers by African kingdoms and enslavers. Sometimes rival kingdoms would attempt to weaken one another by sanctioning the sale of their rival’s citizens. However, often Europeans would take captives without any African involvement whatsoever.
Engineers, architects, warriors, doctors, scientists, agricultural experts, artists, metalworkers, miners, griots, spiritual leaders and royalty were all captured and enslaved. Upon their capture, Africans would be beaten into submission before being placed in chains. They would then be forced to march as a group to the coast of West Africa. Here, European powers had slave forts where they would dump slaves before their journey to the Americas.
Often the captured men, women and children would have to walk over a hundred miles. They would be forced to march by European enslavers and sometimes African soldiers that had been coerced into collaborating with Europeans. They were barely fed during this journey, which served as the first of many spirit-breaking ordeals. Men, women and children would sometimes collapse due to exhaustion, and rather than feed them, enslavers would leave them to die.
At the end of this journey, the captives would arrive at a European slave fort. Some forts were built on the West Coast of Africa, and some on islands among West African rivers. Elmina Castle was built by the Portuguese in what today is Ghana, and the British built a fort on Bunce Island, about 20 miles up-river from Freetown in Sierra Leone.
Here, the captive Africans would experience “seasoning”, a process that was designed to further break their spirits and prepare them for plantation slavery. Seasoning consisted of physical abuses such as beatings, rape and starvation, as well as traumatic psychological abuses such as preventing a captive from speaking their native language. The seasoning period could last up to an entire year for some captives.
Africans were then forced onto slave ships destined for the Americas. The conditions of these ships were horrible, as Africans were kept below deck in extremely cramped conditions. Often enslavers would cramp as many captives together as possible, leading to massive overcrowding.
It is said that the average captive had a space of just 4 feet by 2 feet when on a ship. Many captives were crushed to death as a result. Disease was rife as dysentery and what were known as “tropical diseases” were contracted by many captives. The diseases easily spread due to the conditions of the ships. Toilets were nowhere to be found. Approximately 33% of captives died during the journey from Africa to the Americas, known as the “Middle Passage.”
Upon arrival in the Americas, Africans would experience a second form of seasoning. They were prepared for sale as enslavers tore off their clothing, shaved them and rubbed palm oil all over their bodies. Any marks or blemishes from beatings were covered in order to increase the sale price of a captive. The average life expectancy of a captive was 7 years from arrival.
They were examined from head to toe by plantation owners before purchase. Planters would look at their teeth, pinch their skin, and even sometimes lick their sweat to examine all aspects of their health. Women would have their vaginas forcefully examined before being sold.
Once sold, they were taken to the plantation where they were branded. A plantation owner’s initials would be burnt onto a captive’s flesh before they were forced into hard labour. European names were also forced onto Africans, labelling them as a plantation owner’s property.
On the plantation, the scale of torture and genocide was incomprehensible. Not only were conditions inhospitable, the abuses suffered were truly horrific. These abuses were sanctioned by “Black/Slave Codes” throughout the colonies of the Americas; laws and codes of conduct that permitted Black torture.
Black people were not simply beaten and whipped. Enslaved women were raped daily from as young as 10 years old. Captives were tied to posts and burnt with flames. Others were spit-roasted on open fires as if they were a leg of lamb. The genitals of men and women were splashed with burning wax and hot coals, with men’s penises and women’s breasts often sliced off and kept as souvenirs. Boiling sugarcane juice was routinely poured over captives heads, and others were buried alive if caught “misbehaving.”
Enslavers would sometimes force captives into cannibalism. A practice existed where an enslaver would kill a captive, divide their organs into separate pieces, and make the other slaves of the plantation eat a piece. Those that refused were threatened with the same torture. One enslaver even used to bite his captives when angry, eating their flesh.
In Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), a captive would be buried in the middle of the day with their face just above ground. Their face would then be covered with sugar and molasses, and wasps and bees would bite and sting them to death. Another punishment in Saint-Domingue was known as “to burn a little powder in the arse of a nigger.” This consisted of a plantation owner placing gunpowder in the anus of a captive before lighting it, causing them to explode.
A punishment on the plantations of Jamaica that was begun by Thomas Thistlewood involved the beating of a captive half to death, before rubbing salt, pickle, lime juice and bird pepper into their wounds. Another slave would then be forced to defecate into the mouth of the punished captive, who would then be gagged for 4 to 5 hours. This was known as the Derby Dose.
Medical experimentation was also rife on plantations, as owners would often sell captives to physicians. These physicians would then perform horrible tortures on the enslaved, such as smashing a newborn’s skull with a sickle.
In the Southern United States, enslavers would often feed newborns to alligators and dogs. Pregnant women would be stripped naked and covered in raw meat before being placed in the main square of the plantation. Dogs would then be unleashed, devouring the meat and the pregnant woman. All other captives on the plantation were forced to watch, and if any made a sound, they would also be killed.
White women would regularly beat Black children to death. It is estimated that in mainland North America, white women murdered more Black people than white men due to how often they would kill children. Children were strangled, whipped, viciously scratched, beaten with wooden and metal objects, and had their eyes gouged out by white women enslavers.
These punishments were daily occurrences across the plantations of the Americas. The level of brutality was something not seen before in other societies that practiced slavery. African kingdoms and traders who sold captives could not have imagined the horrors themselves, as their forms of forced servitude were far more humane. Slavery has been sanitised in the collective memory of white society, but the unspeakable abuses that occurred must be understood and confronted.