Middle Passage

Middle Passage, which won the 1990 National Book Award for Fiction, marks the culmination of Charles R. Johnson's philosophical exploration and formal innovation to date. Taking the form of ship's log entries, the novel recounts the adventures of Rutherford Calhoun, a freed slave from Illinois who relocates to New Orleans and leads a hedonistic life financed by petty thievery. While there, Rutherford becomes involved with two powerful figures: Isadora Duncan, the proper schoolmistress who treats Rutherford much like her adopted stray animals, and Philippe “Papa” Zeringue, a Creole gangster to whom Rutherford becomes indebted. Isadora learns of and buys Rutherford's debts; in return Zeringue helps her attempt to force Calhoun into marriage. Desperate to escape both oppressors, Rutherford stows away aboard the Republic, unwittingly choosing a slave ship in which Zeringue holds a partial interest.

Aboard the Republic, Rutherford is torn between the disparate influences of evil captain Ebenezer Falcon, a man literally and figuratively twisted and dissolute who seeks both to bed and subordinate him, and the example of the Allmuseri, the tribe of African wizards who, along with their god, make up the cargo of the Republic on her return voyage. Led by the wise and inscrutable Ngonyama, the Allmuseri present an entirely different picture of existence to Rutherford. Living a life characterized by complete harmony and speaking a language that cannot be subdivided into any discrete pieces, the Allmuseri contradict Falcon's rabid individualism. Convinced of the captain's insanity, the crew decides to mutiny and enlists Calhoun's aid, a plot that he reveals to Falcon under duress. His attempts to stop the mutineers are thwarted by the Allmuseri's rebellion, an event that forces Rutherford, one of the few crew members who understands Ngonyama's people, into the position of mediator between rebellious cargo and surviving crew. Enduring a number of painful adventures, Rutherford ultimately returns home in time to prevent Isadora's marriage to Zeringue. He reveals Zeringue's treachery, frees himself from debt, and weds Isadora, settling down to a life he had not previously valued.

The linear plot masks philosophical twists that make the novel quite challenging. Drawing on sources including The Odyssey, Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick and “Benito Cereno,” principles of phenomenology, and the Hegelian slave-master paradigm, Johnson creates a world in which conventional notions of time, language, freedom, and loyalty are tested. Calhoun serves as mediator, both within the text and between audience and text, offering a model for the type of reading necessary to a full comprehension of the fictional landscape's significance.

This novel reinforces many points Johnson makes in Oxherding Tale (1982); however, where the philosophical substructure of the former novel is glaringly obvious, Middle Passage manages to submerge many of the same concerns in a narrative that easily entertains while offering challenging ideas. As a result, the work has attracted a variety of readers and exposed a large portion of the general public to Johnson's aesthetics, thereby firmly establishing him as an important contemporary author.

Bibliography

• Charles Johnson and Ron Chernow, In Search of a Voice, 1991, pp. 1–18.
• Ashraf H. A. Rushdy, “The Phenomenology of the Allmuseri: Charles Johnson and the Subject of the Narrative of Slavery,” African American Review 26.3 (Winter 1992): 373–394.
• Charles Johnson, “An Interview with Charles Johnson,” interview by Jonathan Little, Contemporary Literature 34.2 (Summer 1993): 159–181

William R. Nash

Even before African slaves arrived on the shores of Virginia in 1619, the slave trade figured significantly in the economy of the Atlantic nations.

Established primarily by sea captains from England and New England, a system of trading routes developed among Europe, Africa, and North America and became known collectively as the triangular trade. Ships in these triangular lanes carried goods among the three continents, taking advantage of the fact that none of these regions was economically self-sufficient; each depended on the other two for goods they could not provide themselves. The so-called Middle Passage consisted of the leg across the Atlantic that connected Africa to the Americas.

The economics of such trafficking went something like this: England produced textiles and other manufactured goods like firearms and gunpowder, unavailable in either North America or Africa. This cargo made the voyage from England to the African "Slave Coast" to be traded for slaves and other riches such as gold and silver. The next leg sent these slaves and domestic goods to the West Indies and North American coast, where shippers traded their cargo for tobacco, fish, lumber, flour, foodstuffs, and rum distilled in New England before returning with these goods to England.

The inhabitants along the west coast of Africa had long recognized the practice of slavery; however, trafficking existed mainly to supply domestic slaves. Local kings would often sell surplus slaves, in addition to criminals, debtors, and prisoners of war, to European traders. However, the exportation of African slaves had its real origins in 1419, when Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal began to send expeditions to explore the West African coast. By 1444, Europe began to buy African slaves, and the first leg of the slave trade triangle became established. Demand for slaves proved to be greater than the usual practices could provide, and coastal tribes resorted to slave-catching raids to supply Europeans' demands, using firearms supplied by slavers.

Renaissance Europeans discovered the existence of the Americas in 1492 when Christopher Columbus stumbled upon the New World during an attempt to find a sea-trading route to the Far East. The subsequent conquest of the New World encouraged transatlantic slave trading as early as 1502 in support of plantations instituted in the Americas. Bartolomé de Las Casas, later the bishop of Chiapas, Mexico, proposed in 1517 the large-scale importation of African slaves to replace the local Indian slaves, whom he deemed unsuitable. The following year, the Spanish Crown authorized the first direct shipment of slaves from Africa to the Americas and, by 1595, began to grant the asiento, permits providing for slave-trading monopolies to Spanish dominions. The year 1619 saw the first African slaves in North American colonies.

Initially, Portuguese and Spanish colonies in South America and Central America bought slaves to work on sugar cane plantations, facilities known as the "seasoning stations" by the northern plantations because of the brutal conditioning that took place there. Although Portugal retained control of the southern transatlantic slave trade, several nations, especially England, challenged the Spanish for the northern Atlantic. In 1562, Sir John Hawkins became the first Englishman to carry a cargo of African slaves to the New World. His voyage netted such gains that Queen Elizabeth, who had publicly denounced slave-trading voyages, secretly invested heavily in Hawkins's subsequent slaving expeditions. Sir Francis Drake, Hawkins's cousin, commanded one of these ships.

In the late 1560s, Hawkins sailed his ships into the port of Veracruz on the Mexican coast, where he encountered a large and heavily armed Spanish fleet, which attacked and defeated the English vessels as part of their attempt to retain the monopoly over the northern transatlantic slave trade. British interest in the slave trade did not resume for a century, until after the English Civil War, when in 1672 Charles II chartered the Royal African Company, which quickly established England as the world's greatest slave trader. By the 1700s, due to increasing demand for African slaves, slave traders began to ship their cargo of Africans directly from Africa to North America.

The Middle Passage may have served to enrich many Europeans and Americans, but the enslaved Africans suffered extraordinary atrocities and inhuman conditions during these voyages. Estimates for the total number of Africans imported to the New World by the slave trade range from 25 million to 50 million; of these, perhaps as many as half died at sea during the Middle Passage experience. The journey from Africa to North America could take between thirty and ninety days. The vessels were called "loose packers" or "tight packers," where captives were laid side by side, coffin like, beneath the deck. The ships carried the stench of diseased and decaying bodies, and slavers often threw unruly Africans overboard, which lured sharks along these shipping lanes.

Olaudah Equiano, of the Ibo tribe in what is now modern Nigeria, wrote an account of the horrors of the Middle Passage. Kidnapped and sold into slavery at the age of eleven, Equiano recounted the shock of seeing white people purchase slaves in Africa and the fear aroused by the claim that whites ate Africans or drank their blood. The few first-hand accounts that exist consistently report that the unsanitary conditions aboard ship on the longer journeys created high mortality rates, encouraged by the incidence of smallpox, eye infections, gastrointestinal disorders, and body sores. "Fever" and "flux" were the terms used to describe common causes of death during the ocean crossing, and some slaves committed suicide by refusing to eat or throwing themselves overboard. Ships sometimes reported slave rebellions, and the result became a maritime standard of even harsher and more brutal handling.

Slave-ship captains were given incentives for delivering only healthy, salable men and women to American slave markets. As a result, certain circumstances could lead to the mass murder of their African cargo at sea. When captives seemed too sick to survive the journey, slavers were known to hurl the weak and infirm into the sea. At other times, storms at sea or shortages of drinking water might lead to the mass execution of captives as well. In fact, records show that captains who ordered Africans overboard at sea often sought reimbursement from insurance companies for their losses.

In 1807, England became the first nation to abolish the African slave trade, but not even the mutiny aboard the slave ship Amistad in 1839 could put an end to the Middle Passage until the American Civil War came to a close in 1865. Only then did the United States outlaw slavery and end 300 years of Middle Passage horror and inhumanity.

Bibliography

Alderman, Clifford L. Rum, Slaves, and Molasses: The Story of New England's Triangular Trade. New York: Crowell-Collier, 1972.

Dow, George Francis. Slave Ships and Slaving. New York: Dover, 1970.

Equiano, Olaudah. Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969.

Howard, Thomas, ed. Black Voyage: Eyewitness Accounts of the Atlantic Slave Trade. Boston: Little, Brown, 1971.

Klein, Herbert S. The Middle Passage: Comparative Studies in the Atlantic Slave Trade. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978.

Plimmer, Charlotte, and Denis Plimmer. Slavery: The Anglo-American Involvement. New York: Harper and Row, 1973.

Rawley, James A. The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History. New York: Norton, 1981.

Thomas, Hugh. The Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440–1870. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.

This article is about the slave trade route. For the novel by Charles R. Johnson, see Middle Passage (novel). For the travelogue by V.S. Naipaul, see The Middle Passage (book).

Commercial goods from Europe were shipped to Africa for sale and trade for enslaved Africans. Africans were in turn brought to the regions depicted in blue, in what became known as the "Middle Passage". African slaves were thereafter traded for raw materials, which were returned to Europe to complete the "Triangular Trade".

The Middle Passage refers to the forcible passage of African people from Africa to the New World, as part of the Atlantic slave trade. Ships departed Europe for African markets with commercial goods, which were in turn traded for kidnapped Africans who were transported across the Atlantic as slaves; the enslaved Africans were then sold or traded as commodities for raw materials,^[1] which would be transported back to Europe to complete the "triangular trade". The term "Middle Passage" refers to that middle leg of the transatlantic trade triangle in which millions^[2] of Africans were imprisoned, enslaved, and removed from their homelands.

Traders from the Americas and Caribbean received the enslaved Africans. European powers such as Portugal, England, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and Brandenburg, as well as traders from Brazil and North America, all took part in this trade. An estimated 15% of the Africans died at sea, with mortality rates considerably higher in Africa itself in the process of capturing and transporting indigenous peoples to the ships.^[3] The total number of African deaths directly attributable to the Middle Passage voyage is estimated at up to two million; a broader look at African deaths directly attributable to the institution of slavery from 1500 to 1900 suggests up to four million African deaths.^[4]

In addition to markedly influencing the cultural and demographic landscapes of both Africa and the Americas, the Middle Passage has also been said to mark the origin of a distinct African, or "black", social identity.^[1]

Contents 1 Journey 2 See also 3 References 4 Notes

Journey

The duration of the transatlantic voyage varied widely,^[1] from one to six months depending on weather conditions. The journey became more efficient over the centuries; while an average transatlantic journey of the early 16th century lasted several months, by the 19th century the crossing often required fewer than six weeks.^[5]

African kings, warlords and private kidnappers sold captives to Europeans who held several coastal forts. The captives were usually force-marched to these ports along the western coast of Africa, where they were held for sale to the European or American slave traders in the barracoons. Typical slave ships contained several hundred slaves with about thirty crew members. The male captives were normally chained together in pairs to save space; right leg to the next man's left leg — while the women and children may have had somewhat more room. The captives were fed beans, corn, yams, rice, and palm oil. Slaves were fed one meal a day with water, but if food was scarce, slaveholders would get priority over the slaves. Sometimes captives were allowed to move around during the day, but many ships kept the shackles on throughout the arduous journey.

Most contemporary historians estimate that between 9.4 and 12 million Africans arrived in the New World.^[6][7] Disease and starvation due to the length of the passage were the main contributors to the death toll with amoebic dysentery and scurvy causing the majority of deaths. Additionally, outbreaks of smallpox, syphilis, measles, and other diseases spread rapidly in the close-quarter compartments. The number of dead increased with the length of the voyage, since the incidence of dysentery and of scurvy increased with longer stints at sea as the quality and amount of food and water diminished with every passing day. In addition to physical sickness, many slaves became too depressed to eat or function efficiently because of the loss of freedom, family, security, and their own humanity. This often led to worse treatment, like force-feeding or lashings.

Suicide was a frequent occurrence, often by refusal of food or medicine or throwing oneself overboard, as well as by a variety of other opportunistic means.^[8] The regularity of suicide was such that slavers devised various instruments and methods of force-feeding their human cargo, whom they kept chained at almost all times. Over the centuries, some particular African peoples, such as the Kru, came to be understood as holding substandard value as slaves, because they developed a reputation for being too proud for slavery, and for attempting suicide immediately upon losing their freedom.^[9] Resistance in the form of insurrection was also a method of attempting suicide, according to some slaves:

When we found ourselves at last taken away, death was more preferable than life, and a plan was concerted amongst us, that we might burn and blow up the ship, and to perish all together in the flames.^[10]

For two hundred years, 1440–1640, Portugal had a quasi-monopoly on the export of slaves from Africa. During the eighteenth century however, when the slave trade accounted for the transport of about 6 million Africans, Britain was responsible for almost 2.5 million of them.^[11]

See also

• Abolitionism
• Atlantic slave trade
• European colonization of the Americas
• History of Africa
• Maafa
• Slave ship
• Triangular trade

References

• Faragher, John Mack. Out of many. Pearson Prentice Hall. 2006: New Jersey.

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b c} Walker, Theodore. Mothership Connections. 2004, page 10.
2. ^ McKissack, Patricia C. and McKissack, Frederick. The Royal Kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhay. 1995, page 109.
3. ^ Mancke, Elizabeth and Shammas, Carole. The Creation of the British Atlantic World. 2005, page 30-1
4. ^ Rosenbaum, Alan S. and Charny, Israel W. Is the Holocaust Unique? 2001, page 98-9
5. ^ Eltis, David. The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas. 2000, page 156-7
6. ^ Eltis, David and Richardson, David. The Numbers Game. In: Northrup, David: The Atlantic Slave Trade, 2nd edition, Houghton Mifflin Co., 2002.
7. ^ p. 95. Basil Davidson. The African Slave Trade.
8. ^ Taylor, Eric Robert. If We Must Die. 2006, page 37-8
9. ^ Johnston, Harry, and Johnston, Harry Hamilton and Stapf, Otto. Liberia. 1906, page 110
10. ^ Taylor, Eric Robert. If We Must Die. 2006, page 39
11. ^ About.com: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

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