Book Report On Stand The Storm

: A History Of The Atlantic Slave Trade. Essay, Research Paper

Reynolds, Edward. , Stand the Storm: A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade.

Longman. 1985.

My Responses from Reading Stand the Storm

With my sallow understanding of slavery, I imagined slavery only happening in the New World, where they obtained a better treatment than the book recorded; at least, slaves would have enough nutritious food on their trip to North and South America. After reading this book, Stand the Storm, the pains of African slaves conjured up on my mind, and I thought their suffering and humiliation was difficult to compensate with any amount of money. This book portrays thorough history and impacts of how African slaves were captured and sent to North and South America. One thing was true that slave trade favored the economic development of Americas to expand in a fast pace. However, it was absolutely an evil economic activity that brought great suffering and incredible distress to many thousands of the Africans. In this paper, I would like to probe deeply on how the Africans slaves were treated in their tribes. Also, in that sense they were captured to serve as slave on their own continent of Africa. Comparing with North and South America, I will find out the differences of practicing slavery between both places, and the ways of the African salves adapted to the new environment and conditions in the New World.

Slavery was common in many African tribal societies long ago before the Europeans introduced slavery to the New World. In Africa, a slave was generally known as servant or property of his host whose social status was lower than the other society members’. In the most inferior case, especially in Eastern Nigeria, they could be pawned by their masters, or even acted as a medium of exchange. Their lives were worth nothing that could be completely controlled by their masters; it meant he could take it or leave it. Once slaves were captured or traded to another kinship society, they would probably be treated as outsiders who had no social status and identity. Even worse, they no longer obtained any social rights and obligations. Still, they would probably be assimilated to be a new kin that depended on whether they were utilized or not. However, in some cases, like the tribes in Gold Coast and Kongo, the life of slavery was as ordinary as the rest of society. Sometimes, they could have their spouse and children sharing equality of identity with their masters. For instance, ..he eats with him from the same dish, and has an equal share of all his simple enjoyment.. (Reynolds 13) The social status and identity of slaves were varied in different parts of Africa.

The variety forms of utilization of slavery were available in different tribal societies. In fact, some of the usages were beyond my imagination. For example, it was common for the tribes in Western Sudan to employ slaves as its warriors and military officers to deal with military affairs because their original kinship tie was not available, and as an outsider, they could only contribute their loyalty to the new kinship master. Besides, for religion purpose, slaves were used as offerings in the ritual of human sacrifice among the tribes in Nigeria, such as Igbo. In order to increase the productivity, agricultural and gold mining were extremely popular throughout Africa. To reflect one.s ascendancy and high social status, domestic slaves were employed to serve as a mean of property. Particularly, females worked as domestic slaves who usually married to her master or became his concubine. In a certain extent, slaves could be used as bank notes. Their indifferent hosts or masters exchanged goods or paid debts with them. Actually, whatever the purpose, any forms of slavery finally revealed the exploitation of human beings. body and soul.

Inasmuch many purposes that a slave could perform, a large number of the Africans was recruited or kidnapped to become slaves. Most of the slaves were grabbed during wartime, and they were sold to a distant place as soon as possible since they were the prisoners of war who thirsted for escaping from their enemies. Hence, it was common for the slavers to sell prisoners among many tribal societies. Moreover, over border kidnapping often happened between strong and weak tribal groups. To have more slaves working for them or for sale, the strong groups would bombard the weak ones and raid their kin. Another reason that made a host of the Africans being slaves was natural disasters, such as famine, drought, massive spreading of diseases and attack of locust. They were willing to become a victim of slavery because they yearned for finding a shelter to fend for themselves and their children; at least, their masters would provide them food and place to rest. No matter how people were reluctant or willing to become slaves, it is sad to know they were joining the cruel enslavement indeed.

The most apparent difference between the Africans and the Europeans on practicing slavery were kinship assimilation and conversion to Christianity. As I mentioned before, the alien slaves would have an opportunity to gain a new kinship identity within some African tribal societies. However, in the eyes of the Europeans with a strong sense of social class, the African slaves were slaves whose identity and social status absolutely could not be the same as them. In this sense, th