From Numbers to Life Histories: The Transatlantic Trade

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

Please note potentially upsetting content in the Rediker, Dorsey, Mustakeem readings (though the context for all the readings is painful).

Seminar slides

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?
• 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)?
• What new perspectives on the Atlantic trade does Hicks' examination of Black sailors in the South Atlantic offer?

Core reading (Eltis and choose 1 other):

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

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

• • “Introduction,” pp. 1-13.
  • Ch. 3, "African Paths to the Middle Passage," pp. 73-107.

Mary Hicks, Captive Cosmopolitans: Black Mariners and the World of South Atlantic Slavery. Omohundro Institute, 2024. Introduction

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

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 [distressing content]

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

* Stephanie Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007.

Mustakeem, Sowande’. Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage. Urbana and Springfield: University of Illinoi Press, 2016. [distressing content]