The essays and data presented on the website Slave Voyages show the history of the slave trade and reveal interesting patterns and past events that explained individual decisions surrounding enslavement. The data contributes to one’s understanding of the harsh conditions enslaved people had to endure and the cruelty of the trade. However, it also depicts the astonishing normalcy with which the slave trade was treated by both Europeans and Africans at the time.
A prominent theme in essays and statistics describing trade was the pattern of increasing or decreasing the number of enslaved people and their routes. According to Eltis (2007), the ocean currents and winds implicitly shaped two separate systems that included a list of locations in Africa and ports in the Americas for slave-trade voyages. The map of the currents and the traveling routes supports this finding. North East trades included Europe, North America, and the Northern part of Africa, while South East Trades engaged South American countries and Center and Southern nations on the African continent (Slave Voyagers, 2010). For instance, about 80 percent of slaves who went to Brazil were taken from West-Central Africa (Eltis, 2007). The patterns also show higher rates of slave trade connected to major events and crop harvest seasons (Behrendt, 2008).
This picture of trade demonstrates the business-like way people treated slavery. Human beings were seen as commodities necessary to support the economy of the trading countries. It also shows that people’s voyages were determined by the weather and the diplomatic relationships between European and American countries. The separation of the African continent into zones of interest is staggering and terrifying, as well as the reports of some rules in Africa supporting slavery to get access to rare resources. Such normalization of treating people as commodities explains why the issues surrounding inequality are still prevalent in the world’s systems.
The story of Dobo, a young man who was enslaved as a little boy and emancipated in Cuba, continues the narrative of the resistance to change. His ship was detained in 1826, decades after the largest former slave-trading nations made trade illegal (Moraguez, n.d.). Thus, one would think that former slaves could integrate into society and live as free men and women or return to their place of birth to regain their position in a familiar community. Sadly, the slave trade was still profitable, and it continued illegally for many years. More than that, people who were freed on the captured ships also could not find their place and were exploited under the guise of paid labor.
Dobo, later renamed Gabino by the state, lost his name, identity, culture, home, and freedom as a young man (Moraguez, n.d.). Even after fighting for and regaining his independence, the man could not live a free life. Many people suffered the same fate as Gabino after the slave trade was made illegal. In fact, countries such as the United States still experience the impact of the slave trade. Gabino’s tense relationship with the colonial government reveals how resistant the system is to change, and how some people are prepared to uphold the outdated values through ways that are not always explicitly covered by the law. The present-day issues with racism are the outcomes of centuries of cultural erasure and color-based inequality as well as people’s acceptance of the slave trade as a normal part of the economy.
References
Behrendt, S. D. (2008). Seasonality in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Slave Voyagers. Web.
Eltis, D. (2007).A brief overview of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Slave Voyagers. Web.
Moraguez, O. G. (n.d.). Dobo: A liberated African in nineteenth-century Havana. Slave Voyagers. Web.
Slave Voyagers. (2010). Introductory maps. Web.