Slides week 5

Please read Eltis; then choose ONE of the other core readings.

Content warning: potentially upsetting content in the Dorsey and Rediker readings (though the context for all the readings is painful).

Seminar Questions

• Who/what shaped the volume and nature of the transatlantic slave trade?
• How was the trade shaped by gendered power and reproductive labour?
• What were the functions of the slave ship, according to Rediker?
• What are the advantages or disadvantages of qualitative and quantitative approaches?
• Does our view of the trade look different if we "start" with African histories of slavery (how)?

Core reading:

Eltis, David. “The Volume and Structure of the Transatlantic Trade: A Reassessment.” William and Mary Quarterly, 58: 1 (2001): 17-47.

Lovejoy, Paul. Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa. Chapter 1: “Africa and Slavery.” CUP 2012 (third edition).

Paton, Diana. "Gender History, Global History, and Atlantic Slavery: On Racial Capitalism and Social Reproduction." American Historical Review, 127:2 (June 2022): 726-754

Dorsey, Joseph. Dorsey, Joseph C. “It Hurt Very Much at the Time: Rape Culture, Patriarchy, and the Slave Body-Semiotic.” In The Culture of Gender and Sexuality in the Caribbean, ed. Linden Lewis, 294-322. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003

Rediker, Marcus, The Slave Ship: A Human History. London: John Murray, 2007.

• • “Introduction,” pp. 1-13.

Further reading:

Primary sources:

Explore the maps, data and essays in Voyages: The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database

Primary sources on Brazil: Robert Conrad, Children of God's Fire: A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil, ch 1

Rediker, The Slave Ship:

• Chapter 3: “African Paths to the Middle Passage,” pp. 73-107.

Law, Robin, and Kristin Mann, “West Africa in the Atlantic Community: the Case of the Slave Coast.” William & Mary Quarterly, 56:2 (April 1999): 307-334.

Eltis, David. “Free and Coerced Migrations: the Atlantic in Global Perspective,” European Review, 12 (2004): 313-28.

• Jennifer Nelson, "The Mixed Commission and Emancipated Slaves in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro" (MA dissertation, University of Leeds, 2011), chapter 1: "Case study of the slave ship the Brilhante," pp 24-52.

* Joseph Miller Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730-1830. University of Wisconsin Press, 1988

* Paul E Lovejoy Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa. 2012, intro and chapter on the nineteenth century