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The Slave Ship Marcus Rediker Summary

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To be sold into slavery or to be eaten by a shark: The Slave Ship begins with the story of a woman who must make this fateful decision. The author tricks the reader twice, first by making us think that this woman fated to death by a shark or the slave trade will be the focus of the novel, and then again by making us think that nothing could be worse than that. We learn as the book progresses that slaves faced insurmountable obstacles, pain, fear, and humiliation, and that for many the choice to eaten by a shark was one they could only dream of. In his novel he weaves a narrative of many, one with diverse perspectives and experiences that as a finished product reveal the slave ship in its truth. Rediker shows us that the trauma millions faced on the voyage from Africa to the Americas was in service of something of indescribable magnitude. The slave ship built the Western world. In his novel The Slave Ship, Marcus Rediker asserts that the slave ship not only imported African slaves but also carried with it class systems, race, and capitalism; these monumental institutions were birthed on the ship and made possible by unimaginable violence. Class systems on the slave ship were the byproduct of differences in power and condition. Unlike in our current class system, those in the middle saw little to no benefits of being superior …show more content…

In an effort to discourage allyship, captains encouraged sailors to use force to control slaves which later bred the invention of race. All the while captains reaped the enormous benefits of the capitalist system that was the slave trade. While it’s history may be still be a bit of a mystery, Marcus Rediker shows us the massive social and economic aftermath of the slave

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Slave trade has a great impact on American history. The book “slave nation” by Alfred W. Blumrosen gives an insight of slave labor during the civil war. This book also shows how slavery united the colonies and sparked the American Revolution. The book begins with the explanation of the founding of the republic and Somerset case impact on the republic. This book also explains how and the reasons Thomas Jefferson made few changes in the declaration of the independence.

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The Slave Ship, by Marcus Rediker was wrote in 2007 about the cruel and brutal actions the slaves endured on their journey across the Atlantic Ocean. He states, “this has been a painful book to write, if I have done any justice to the subject, it will be a painful book to read.” Marcus Rediker accomplished exactly that. This book was not only compelling but emotional, heartbreaking, and makes a reader think, how could someone be so cruel to another living being. Within the first couple pages, the book brought me to tears.

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Slaves played a huge role in the early American colonies because “communities were designed around slavery”. Slaves were commonly seen and worked throughout all colonies but were heavily used in the South. The Southern slaves were “forced to work under harsh conditions for long hours”. The majority of the men worked on plantations doing manual labor and the often times women were house servants. Their punishments could included being beaten, starved, tortured and or killed.

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During the Reconstruction Era from 1865 to 1877, Southern white people were segregated to a large extent between wealthy plantation owners and poor white farmers. Both E. B. Seabrook and a New York Times’ writer compare poor white farmers’ horrid lifestyles to freed slaves because there was an extreme similarity between the two. Although the slaves were emancipated as a result of the Civil War, they underwent economic hardships similar to poor white farmers in the South. In fact, the New York Times author makes the argument that the poor whites lived in a worse condition than freed blacks. - “The use of slave labor… tended to create a monopoly in the hands of the capitalists, and increased, in an almost insuperable degree, the difficulty of a poor man’s rising, but making nearly impossible the enlarging of his sphere of operations” (Seabrook).

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The detailed descriptions included in primary sources, along with the descriptive and emotional illustrations included in graphic history are crucial elements in studying and understanding the process and history of the transatlantic slave trade. Rafe Blaufarb and Liz Clarke tie both of these together to help readers truly understand this historic tragedy in the book, Inhuman Traffick: The International Struggle Against the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Although different than the standard book that may be used, that simply spews information out in an uncreative and somewhat boring way, this book is a tool that can be chosen in classrooms to teach different aspects of the slave trade. Working together, the primary sources and graphic history

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The use of slaves has always been present in the world since the beginning of civilization, although the use and treatment of those slaves has differed widely through time and geographic location. Different geographies call for different types of work ranging from labor-intensive sugar cultivation and production in the tropics to household help in less agriculturally intensive areas. In addition to time and space, the mindsets and beliefs of the people in those areas affect how the slaves will be treated and how “human” those slaves will be perceived to be. In the Early Modern Era, the two main locations where slaves were used most extensively were the European dominated Americas and the Muslim Empires. The American slavery system and the

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During the slave trade it was inhumane and violence, million of African people and children were taken away from their home to work in the new world. The slave trade took away many productive workers from Africa which they are skilled in farming and other establishment. The captain of the ship would try to enlarge their profit by trying to fit as many slaves as possible in the new world. Sometime slaves are captured and placed into dungeon with other captives. People would protests to be released but the two kings was corrupted and demanding

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Introduction In Ronald Takaki’s book, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, Takaki argues that despite the first slave codes emerged in the 1660’s, de facto slavery had already existed and provides evidence to support this claim. While he provides a range of data, these facts can be categorized in three groups: racial, economic, and historical. These groups served as precursors to what eventually led to slavery codes to be enacted and the beginning of one of the darkest chapters in American History. Racial

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Labor systems have been the foundation for civilizations since the beginning of time. Who did what and how they benefited each other, in other words, specialization of labor, came to be a defining factor in whether a society was truly a civilization or not. Most great civilizations were founded on agricultural labor systems, and societies with no systematic format on their workforce were seldom able to take the main stage in world history. Between 1450 and 1750, the Americas began to mark their place in the world, proving they were just as relevant as Europe, Africa, or Asia. The labor systems established during 1450-1750 were key factors in how they were able to do so.

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The Slave Dancer: Research Paper “When we were two days on our western course, I heard once again that cry from one of the holds, a woman hair-raising, heart squeezing scream. I had been dancing a group of slaves, and at that terrible sound, Spark signaled me to stop my tune. Not a minute later, a black woman was tossed upon the deck like a doll of rags,” (Fox 51). In the book The Slave Dancer by Paula Fox, a thirteen-year-old boy, Jessie is captured and taken on a slave ship.

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From this, derives a bond with the reader that pushes their understanding of the evil nature of slavery that society deemed appropriate therefore enhancing their understanding of history. While only glossed over in most classroom settings of the twenty-first century, students often neglect the sad but true reality that the backbone of slavery, was the dehumanization of an entire race of people. To create a group of individuals known for their extreme oppression derived from slavery, required plantation owner’s of the South to constantly embedded certain values into the lives of their slaves. To talk back means to be whipped.

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The introduction of slaves shaped the culture in the colonies because people did not grasp any moral implications of slavery. At the time, there were no set concepts of race and racism, the people merely saw the Africans as alien in their color, religion, and social practices (Foner, pg. 99). As slavery developed, people continued to enjoy the benefits of slavery, like how it was profitable. The expense of the slaves’ housing, clothing, and food was considerably

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In Chapter 3 of A Different Mirror by Ronald Takaki, he attempts to understand the hidden origins of slavery. In this essay, I will describe and analyze how Takaki uses race, ethnicity, historical events, and famous people to have a better understanding of slavery. We know that slavery itself is a system where an individual owns, buys, or sells another individual. The Irish served as indentured servants, not just blacks, but as time passed slavery consisted of just African Americans.

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The people from Africa were generally part of early American history; however, Africans had experience slavery under better conditions compared to the conditions imposed by other civilized society. From the Egyptian Empire to the Empire of Songhai, slavery was practice for the betterment of their society, however, foreigners invaded these regions and took their slave, their ports and impose these people to a life of servitude in the Caribbean islands and in the English’s colonies. Furthermore, the African American slaves were an active agent of society in the earliest period of American history; they have brought new religious practices to their community; for instance, they constructed networks of communities; they had fought in war alongside

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By using this reference, it illustrated the severity of the alienation of blacks in the Southern United States. In 1619, a Dutch ship “introduced the first captured Africans to America, planting the seeds of a slavery system that evolved into a nightmare of abuse and cruelty that would ultimately divide the nation”. The Africans were not treated humanely, but were treated as workers with no rights. Originally, they were to work for poor white families for seven years and receive land and freedom in return. As the colonies prospered, the colonists did not want to give up their workers and in 1641, slavery was legalized.

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