Chattel Slavery Essay

The Transatlantic slave trade can be said to one of the darkest moments in the history of the world. This dark moment went against everything the Universal Declaration of Human rights stands for in today’s society. Human Rights is defined as a set of principles, which describes standards of human behaviour that are protected as legal rights in municipal and international law. ((UN General Assembly, 1948). The enslavement done by the Europeans was a crime against humanity. Millions of Africans were treated as objects and this form of slavery is called chattel slavery. Chattel slavery involves possession of something or in this case, someone. When one hears, the horrific stories that unfolded during the 15th century, after the Portuguese began

The slaves were starved from their basic vitamin intake. Below the deck was extremely unsanitary. There was a constant smell below as there was no toilet provided. Slaves were often beaten with whips, woman were raped. Again, we see how the slaves were treated merely as animals while the captain and other members of the crew were living much more comfortably than the slaves on board.

Through my research, I found it quite difficult to find first hand primary sources from individuals who had been enslaved. Many records were found written by the captains of the ships. Recording many different things like, the weather throughout the day, where the ship was setting course, punishment that was handed out either to the crew or slaves that were enslaved, the amount of rations given to the slaves on the ship and finally the amount of deaths or any illness that took place on the ship. This had to be written in the captain’s logbook

There was however, two famous African slaves called Olaudah Equiano and Ottobah Cuguano who had written down the experience aboard the ships. Qlaudah Ewuiano was sold at a young age, he was the first ever slave to have an autobiography, giving first hand evidence into a life of a slave.Very few of the slaves had been given the opportunity to be taught how to read and write. It is very rare to hear first-hand accounts from a slave themselves due to the lack of education. There is however so much information on the slave TransAtlantic slave trade that can be found on the internet, articles, books and many other sources but all told from second hand accounts and not hard primary sources from the slaves that were living in that time. All the above mentioned went lived through this horrible time in history. Without these few sources, we would not be able to remember what people were cable of doing in the