African New World Slavery

 
African, New World Slavery
“Is it not enough that we are torn from our country and friends ?” – Olaudah Equiano
It is a fact that slavery has but one definition. While this is true the experience of those bound at home and those who were wrenched away to the “New World” cannot easily be likened to one another. I believe that while exploring this dichotomy you too will come to understand and believe that slavery is far more easily defined than understood due to the systems and motivations that draw open an expanse of contrasts.
Prior to the Europeans entering into African slave trading, sub-saharan Africans were actively involved in various forms of slavery that were indistinguishable to Greek, Roman, and Hebrew slavery. In Africa slavery was based on the outcome of wars, personal debt, criminal punishment and pawn-ship. As a slave of war or in cases of criminal punishment in the sub saharan the threat of being sold to either Arab or North African traders was very real. If this occurred you would likely be removed to a distant land. This removal would be the worst degree of punishment as a slave in Africa. In pawn-ship slavery either woman (or child) who volunteered, worked to satisfy debts that were owed. West African slavery wasn’t a lifetime or permanent condition as New World slavery was. New World slavery was not only a permanent condition but, it was passed on from generation to generation, parent to child. When women were enslaved they had the opportunity to escape slavery by birthing a child of a freeman. The other option for a woman to be released from slavery was joining the enslavers family by marriage as a concubine. Manumission was another option that allowed a non-permanent condition of slavery in West Africa. Slavery Debtors were also given the opportunity to end their slavery if a friend was able to redeem their debt. Slavery was usually a temporary means to promote wealth.
Slavery in the New World began with what is referred to as the Middle Passage, europeans capturing, kidnapping and transporting slaves to the New World from Africa. In the New World, the enslaved would be used for hard labor working on tobacco, sugar, cotton or other types of farms and plantations. The work and general living conditions were deplorable. Left without proper clothing, rest, equipment, working regardless of the weather conditions, working regardless of illness, working from severe beatings for not bringing in the proper amount of quota. This was the brutal future that lay upon Africans. Some learned of their, impending future while on the middle passage from other captives. This seafaring voyage can be described in three word;. devastating, heinous and unforgettable to the man, woman or child unjustly taken from their country, and family. The new perpetual state of being for these countrymen and women of Africa abducted by force into a chattel system of injustice. The Middle Passage to the Americas riddled the Africans with severe pain, illness, disease, flogging, physical mutilation, suicide, death, mental and emotional depression, trauma. Once taken from their homelands the inhabitants of the motherland of Africa would journey into the next step of the greed filled, race based chattel system. This system of slavery aimed to strip a slaves identify as a human-being and conditioned them to see themselves as property, likened and valued as compared to a mule or piece of furniture. Slave revolts were a concern of Europeans especially during The Middle Passage. Enslaving someone in a practice of caging them in physical and mental bondage, the enslaved resisted that condition in most regards.
Slavery in the New World was a permanent condition lasting to death, sadly inherited
from parent to child, lasting over 300 years. Though initially it took a myriad of time for slavery to develop it would again prove to be a devastating blow to the Africans snatched from their cultures and identity. In the New World, even though the condition of slavery was permeant it didn’t prevent Africans from resisting the practice of the institution. In the book, Incidents in the life of a slave girl, the author Harriet, with her family, says” He that is willing to be a slave, let him be a slave.” As the quote indicates, most accepted their fate internally and complied while others rebelled outwardly and were severely punished or worse, death. Internally, every slave resisted this institution. Wether rebelling by outward action or internal thought resisting the institution always was a way to internally rebel it. Perhaps slaves by body but not slaves by mind.