The Slave Ship

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The Slave Ship
Marcus Rediker’s The Slave Ship: A Human History gives the accounts of human suffering and terror underwent by African captives and seamen as they navigated to the New World on slave ships during the eighteenth century. Rediker incorporates naval records, chronicles, and references to recreate and explicate in detail the account of the British slave ships during the slave trade. Rediker gives a different perspective distinct from most studies on slavery by focusing specifically on the ship as another site of terror and violence. He offers four different encounters or ‘human dramas’ on the ships that include the interactions between the crew and the captain; encounters between slaves and the mariners; the relationships among the slave captives and lastly the encounters between abolitionists and slave trade merchants. The dramas unfold the multifaceted and extremely cruel interactions between the ship captains, the seamen and the captives in all phases of the voyages. In their encounters with the merchants, the abolitionists use the slave ships as emblems to show the ruthless pursuits of capitalism. Rediker manages to reconstruct the unsettling truth and realities of slavery through the experiences of the individuals whose struggles have gone unvalued through history. Rediker asserts the unjustifiable violence and horror on ships during slavery that was obscured have always been central to the cultivation of modern capitalism CITATION Red07 p 13 n y t l 1033 (13).

Serving to the thesis of the book The Slave Ship is another seminal institution of slavery that cultivated brutal violence, the concept of ‘race,’ and classism in facilitating modern capitalism. Rediker develops his thesis through the human dramas and the distinct perspectives from personal accounts.
Rediker’s explores the extent to which intolerable cruelty and violence were inflicted on African slaves and also the deckhands on the slave ships. Through the ship dramas, he highlights the extreme brutality imposed on the captives by encounters between them and the crew. The captain of the vessels unleashed violence and death upon slaves who rebelled as they viewed that “it was in their economic interest” CITATION Red07 p 16 l 1033 (Rediker 16). The crew on the ships had the responsibility to overlook, control and force feed the enslaved which was set in motion with grave violence. Rediker provides a series of horrid details and disturbing accounts in order to undermine the inclination to reduce the events into statistics or theoretical examination. The enslaved Africans were subjected to chains below decks majority of the time “so that they could not see how they managed the vessel” CITATION Red07 p 120 l 1033 (Rediker 120). Even though the enslaved women had more liberty to move they were vulnerable to sexual violence from the captain and mariners. Furthermore, the unruly captives had they fingers mutilated by a vise apparatus and their necklines locked with metal collars to force compliance CITATION Red07 p 72 l 1033 (Rediker 72). However, the brutality was not only imposed on the African captives but also the workers and seamen on the slave ships.
Through the captain-sailor dramas, Rediker portrays sailors also as victims of the ‘floating dungeon’ as they were a part of a hierarchical and classist construct that existed on the ships. He explores the bizarre experience of the seamen as they were exploited as much as they victimized the slaves. The merchants and captains would conspire to force the seamen into debt subsequently being sold to the slave ships to repay (Rediker 45). Even though some sailors were employed in service of the ships as the rest of the crew and the captain they were subject to the hierarchical power and punitive discipline CITATION Red07 p 230 l 1033 (Rediker 230). Similar to the enslaved captives, the seamen faced brutality and death in magnitudes equivalent to or more than the slaves CITATION Red07 p 244 l 1033 (Rediker 244). Captains inflicted suffering upon sailors through hard labor, inadequate diet and relied on sharks to craft terror to inhibit desertion. The hierarchy, however, transformed every time African slaves came aboard the ship as the entire crew was considered as ‘white’ and captives as ‘negro race’ regardless of their color or ethnicity. This dynamic created the construct of ‘race’ which ultimately became a means to disregard ruthless exercises even beyond the slave ships. Rediker approach reveals how terror was inflicted on a constant basis as it became a central functioning code of the vessel for capital gains.
The violence on slave ships and the negative constructs of race and class were no accident but were principal to the upsurge of global capitalism. Rediker illuminates that the New World depended greatly on the slave trade in acquiring its immense wealth and political power. The book illustrates the triangular trade between British merchants and African leaders; finished commodities were shipped from England to Western Africa and traded them for slaves into the ships. External forces structured the dynamic between the occupant son the slave ships. Rediker states that it was influenced by individuals of power and wealth as the system was a part of the rising movement of capitalism CITATION Red07 p 352 n y t l 1033 (352). Traders came to be prosperous through controlling prices, taxes, and slave trading as the transatlantic slave trade expanded CITATION Red07 p 77 l 1033 (Rediker 77). In the last drama, the abolitionists criticize and point out the capitalist greed of merchants through the obscured truths behind the slave ships. The captains make an effort to justify their brutality as a means of inhibiting revolts in an attempt to protect the crews. However, Rediker asserts that the institution of slavery was a system built on the concepts of capitalism despite widespread belief that it is non-capitalist or pre-capitalist. He further concludes that despite its abolition slavery became crucial to the creation and growth of capitalism and still haunts today’s society as is the racism that it cultivated.
In conclusion, the ships as sites of the slave trade and slavery established brutal violence, racial and classist constructs to facilitate the emerging capitalism. Through the human dramas that take place on the slave ships from different perspectives, Rediker manages to illustrate an accurate depiction of the slave trade. From this vantage point, Rediker offers gripping and unsettling truths behind the economic and political prosperity of the New World. The realities of these inhumane practices were obscured from the general public to cover the truth behind the making of the modern capitalist society. Rediker highlights the facts behind the ‘floating dungeon’ from the cruelty to the major players of the system whose contributions have gone unrecognized. He further displays the extent of animosity that went into making profits in the name of capitalism. The book reinstates the struggles of slavery on slave ships in its entirety without reducing the facts to theoretical analysis or statistics. It offers actual accounts that illustrate imageries that are not generalized but personal to grip the reader into understanding the struggles. The Slave Ship offers veneration to those who suffered cruelty in the belief that we conjure that such animosities have been central to the creation of capitalism (13). Rediker prompts us to look at the ‘magnificent drama’ through different lenses and recognize to whom the adoration should lie.
Work Cited
BIBLIOGRAPHY Rediker, Marcus. The Slave Ship: A Human History. New York: Viking/Penguin Group, 2007. Print. 17 January 2018.