Slave Trade- 3. Punishment
Telling the whole story
When indigenous peoples have been freed from
European oppression, European historians tend to depict the natives as
helpless victims who needed other Europeans to liberate them. Thus official
& mainstream accounts on the slave trade prefer not to dwell on the
attitudes and atrocities of the slavers, nor on slave resistance nor the question of
reparations. Instead there is much focus on English abolitionists like Clarkson
and Wilberforce.
And as for slavery today, shameful slave practices no doubt persist in
certain Third World countries but let us not play down the economic slavery
imposed by the West (through its multinationals and institutions like the World Bank, IMF and WTO)
on poor countries, soon after they had shaken off their enslavement from
colonialism.
The story of slavery should include
a whole spectrum of issues like the following:
- how the slavers exploited, punished and dehumanised their slaves,
- the resistance put up by the slaves,
- the part played by slave resistance in the abolition of slavery,
- the involvement of the church,
- how British traders, shippers, insurers etc circumvented the 1807 Act
abolishing the slave trade,
- apology and reparations.
Sugar and violence
Sugar exports were at the heart of the profit
system in the British
Caribbean empire. In Barbados, where the plantation system was first established,
there were some 6000 slaves in the 1640s. By 1680, slave numbers had
risen to 38,000 and by the end of the century to over 50,000. This economic
model spread to other Caribbean possessions. especially Jamaica. By 1748,
Jamaica exported 17,400 tons of sugar and by 1815, 73,850 tons. This was producing more sugar than all the other British islands put
together.
By mid-1700s, Britain was shipping over 60,000
slaves and in the period 1690-1800, it was nearly 3 million slaves.
Historian James Walvin explains the conditions of the slaves:
"We need to recall that every African shipped across the Atlantic had
been subject to violence - held in chains, often branded, left for weeks in
the most wretched of conditions and under constant threats from the white
crew. The whole system was violent in its essence." In addition, for
women, there was sexual harassment and rape.
Work conditions & punishment
It is instructive to proceed
by specific examples:
consider what happened on the slave ship Zong, a Liverpool-owned
slave ship. In 1781, Captain Luke Collingwood was carrying some 450 slaves from West
Africa to Jamaica. In order to claim insurance for sick slaves, he decided
to throw 122 slaves overboard in three batches. 10 more slaves threw
themselves overboard in desperation.
Collingwood ended up in court - not to answer charges of mass murder but for
making a false insurance claim. At the trial in May 1783, the presiding
judge concluded that the "the case of the slaves was the same as if horses
had been thrown overboard."
Near the end of the 18th century, the work
routine started at dawn and went on until 9 am when the slaves had breakfast;
they then work except for a
noon meal break. The afternoon shift went on until half an hour before
sunset. The whip was the main disciplining tool.
According to missionary William Knibb, "flogging on the estates is as common
as eating almost." Scores of lashes were given for trivial offences.
For example, two slaves boys in St Nevis received 1000 lashes each for
stealing a pair of stockings and their sister 30 lashes "for shedding tears
to see them beaten". In Jamaica in 1790, the master was seen nailing a house
slave by her ear for breaking a plate. She pulled herself free and ran away.
when she was caught next morning, "she was severely flogged".
Force-feeding with excreta
A particularly revolting form of punishment was to get someone to
shit into the mouth of the offending slave. It was called Derby's
dose and administered regularly. In addition, there was random violence. In 1811, a planter, Arthur Hodge, was hanged
for torturing and murdering as many as 60 of his slaves - men, women and
children in the Virgin Islands. The white community rallied to his support
and troops had to be called and martial law declared to ensure that the
sentence was carried out.
The life expectancy of an African who survived
the Atlantic crossing was only some 7 to 10 years. The pursued of profits
over so many corpses was justified by racist ideology. The key figure in its
creation was Edward Long who had lived through the slave revolt of 1760 in
Jamaica. In his History of Jamaica, published in 1774, he argued that
the blacks were in effect a sub-human species, closer to he apes. They were
only fit for regimented labour which performed "perhaps no better than an
orang-utan..."
Slave ship ZONG recreated on Thames In
March 2007
In the same week the Prime Minister
and Monarch attended a commemoration service at Westminster Abbey
(interrupted by lone protestor Toyin Agbetu inside the church), the Zong
slave ship had been recreated in memory of 133 slaves that were tossed
overboard after Captain Luke Collingwood in 1781 after he calculated he
would profit more from insurance claims for lost 'cargo' than by sailing the
captured Africans to the New World.
Pastor Nims Obunge, head of the Peace Alliance, said: 'This surpasses the
[Westminster] service for me. I would recommend that the Prime Minister and
the Queen come onto this ship. It's great that they did Westminster Abbey,
but it really needs to be felt.' [Ref 2]
The
slavery exhibition, set in the cramped hold of the slave ship ZONG, features
graphic illustrations of the brutality of the Middle Passage. Layers of
shelves showed how transported slaves were packed next to each other like
cattle. Drawings recreate the violence meted out to Africans. The
exhibition, launched by Mayor Ken Livingstone on 30 Mar 70, opened
with a prayer, as pastors from Glory House Ministries and other churches
said the only way to deal with anger and forgive the slave traders was
through the grace of the Almighty.
Pastor Obunge told Black Info Network
Blink: 'No apology, no money, can heel the hurt and pain that
African and Caribbean communities feel.
'It's a heeling of the heart and of the soul,
and that can't come from money or an apology. That can only come from God.'
The
Zong, like many slave ships, was a compact vessel. 442 captured Africans
were crammed into its holds. The overloaded ship did not have enough
supplies and midway across the Atlantic 133 slaves were tossed overboard.
The captain later won insurance compensation of £30 per dead slave.
Livingstone told Blink: "You need to read the human accounts
to understand the horrors. No twenty minute lesson is going to convey this
horror, and I hope as many people as possible will come and see this
exhibition. The lesson out of this is how easily we can ignore other
people's humanity. He added: 'There is hardly a financial institution in
this city that didn't in some way have some origin to the slave trade, and
you can repeat that story up and down the length of this country. The great
cotton industry - based on the labour of slaves. the legacy of slavery is
still with us today in the trade system rigged for our benefit."
Reference
John Newsinger
The Blood Never Dried: a People's History of the British Empire
(Bookmarks 2006)
Blink (Black Info Network),
Exhibition on slave ship Zong
(recreated) on Thames,
30 March 2007