Survival of African Culture through Slavery - Term Paper Example

Survival of African Culture through Slavery Introduction Thousands of Africans traveled involuntarily to various parts of the world to work in plantations, workshops, and mines. Most of the Africans emanated from present-day Gambia and Senegal, a region that the Whites referred to as Senegambia. The Ivory Coast, Congo, and Angola also served as major centers for slave trade. The Portuguese, the British, the French and the Spanish became engaged in slave trade in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and they transported thousands to South America where they used them to provide free labor for their novel empire. Most of the present-day Africans in Brazil and the Caribbean emanated from the West Coast of Africa. From the same regions, many others were taken to North America where they served as slaves. In both South and North America, the Africans underwent a host of challenges. However, most of the slaves from Africa never succumbed their African ways and carried their rich legacy through generations in the New World.1 Today, the legacy is still present in some parts of North America and the Caribbean. Slave trade dynamics in the two regions were different. Colonialists in the Caribbean set an environment that supported propagation of the African culture opposed to the post slavery period of America, which were severe. Due to the post slavery environment in the Caribbean, today, the African culture is more ingrained in the area as compared to the United States.2 This paper elucidates the experiences of slaves and conditions that led to the perpetuation and waning of the African culture in the Caribbean and the US. Background of Slave Trade The history of slavery and slave trade goes back to 1444, when sailors from Portugal started transporting slaves from the coasts of Africa to the shores of Europe. In 1492, slave trade took a different route when Columbus and other sailors discovered the Americas. Starting from the 1550s, European shops transported many slaves from the shores of Africa to the banks of North America, Brazil, and the Caribbean region. This illegal trade soared, as Britain and powers such as the Dutch, the French, Spanish, and Portuguese steered the trade. Brace (2005) refers to these five powers as the rare travelers who stormed Africa, penetrated to its interiors, and stole from it strong men and women to advance their own interests. The author documents first hand narrations of slaves who were taken from the terrains of Africa when they were just fifteen or sixteen. 3 Many enslaved people ended up in Brazilian and British West Indies sugar plantations. Scores others found themselves offering their services for free on tobacco farms in the United States. British owned Caribbean region also served as a desirable destination for slaves.4 A triangular trade had taken shape where numerous ships took manufactured products to Africa while exchanging the products for labor in terms of slaves. The businessmen would then take the slaves to the Americas and other regions through ships that sailed across the Atlantic Ocean. More than twelve million Africans became slaves in various parts of the world working themselves tirelessly on plantations, factories, and private homes. Ships got new jobs, transporting slaves, as ship designing and fitting out became a lucrative business. Merchants invested in voyages heavily knowing that they would make huge profits transporting slaves from the coasts of Africa. Merchants would also buy large quantities of products such as blanket, knives, salt, cloth, beads, brass pots, and bear to facilitate the salve trade. Traders shipped more and more slaves as the business became more and more profitable. By the end of the entire trade and trade period, slaves of varying ethnic backgrounds had been transported to novel land. The most common ethnicities traded included Africans from the Wolof, Fula, Mandinka, Upper Gambia, Kissi, Mende, Temne, Grebo, Vai, and Bassa areas. Shillington (2004) claims that some of the Africans collaborated with the White traders to enslave the Gola, Loma, Sape, Mende, and Kono. Different regions of Africa where many of the slaves came from included West Central, Bight of Benin, Bight of Biafra, Senegambia, South East, and the Windward Coast in that order.5 The Transatlantic Slave Database offers a very comprehensive analysis of the slave trade giving figures that shed more light on the number of slaves who ended up in various destinations. Ten million of the twelve million slaves shipped out of Africa survived the terrifying Middle Passage and ending up various parts in the Americas. Of the almost ten million slaves who survive this horrifying period, 388,000 thousand served various masters in North America, which is a small percentage of the total number of slaves. Many of the Africans worked in plantations and other regions in the Caribbean and Brazil. Brazil accommodated more than 4.86 million slaves from Africa. The Caribbean received more than fifty percent of the slaves from Africa.6 Some sources cite that around 70,000 slaves landed into America after passing through the Caribbean region raising the total number of slaves that America accommodated to around 450,000. Surprisingly, most of the forty million African Americans in the United States emanated from this tiny population.7 Slavery Conditions Caribbean Most of the laborers in the Caribbean were indentured servants and White transporters. However, these laborers were weak and could not carry out hard labor due to myriad diseases that had weakened their systems. In addition, once the indentureship terms came to an end, the British colonialists would let the laborers free. The Portuguese and the Spanish stepped in and introduced the idea of bringing in laborers from Africa, as they considered them to be more reliable than the European men were. The Africans appeared to be more resistant to diseases and deplorable working conditions compared to the indentured workers. Moreover, they appeared to be stronger than the previous laborers.8 The plantations of the Caribbean were often contrasted to those of the North, with reference to the diseases coming out clear, says Higman. For these reasons, the colonialists ensured that swarms of African slaves came into the Caribbean. The mainland and island territories of the Caribbean area were home to many indigenous people who farmed, fished, and hunted to sustain themselves. After the invasion of the region by the Europeans, most of the natives passed away due to the diseases that the Europeans spread that proved heavy on their weak immunity. Indigenous people in the mainland regions had better opportunities to retreat as compared to those in the islands and the number of survivors in those regions was slightly higher. However, in one way or another, as commercial farming and production of sugar commenced, there were few or no local laborers present in the farms.9 Given this scenario, one can see that African slaves were like Gold to the European settlers. When the Africans arrived in the Caribbean, most of them went straight to the farms to work. This was a new experience, and not an easy one for that matter. The seasons were tough, and the slaves worked from sunrise to dusk. Almost all were barefoot exposing their ankles as well as calves to stings, slashes, and other hazards from the canes and the plantations in general. Working conditions were deplorable, and colonialists only gave the slaves one day in a week to rest. Food was insufficient, and most of the African slaves survived on just flour, peas, and salt herring. Around one third of the slaves succumbed to death within a few years of working in West Indies. To manage the sugar plantations and other commercial farming activities in the Caribbean, the Europeans brought in more than one hundred thousand slaves every year. Rodriguez, in a quote, says: “The large importation of Africans as slaves to the Caribbean paralleled the ‘sugar revolution’ that took place in the 17th century. Sugar farming spread Brazil, which was colonized by the Portuguese, to Cuba, and to Barbados.” This implied that the African slaves often outnumbered their colonizers ten times over. Rebellions were commonplace, but the punitive measures employed by the European settles crushed most of the slaves. The only revolt that managed to overpower the Europeans was the French St. Dominguez that occurred in the 1790s. Toussaint LOuverture managed to overthrow some European settlers forming the first nation of Blacks, Haiti.10 Slavery practices endured leading to the development of intricate organizations of social status on the plantations. The slaves who were on the lowest ranks served as the plantations’ backbone or field slaves. The White settlers divided the field slaves into ‘gangs’ depending on their physical ability and strength, with the fittest and strongest men and women forming the first gang. The highest slaves’ ranking was those that served in homes. Field workers, on the other hand, were lowly ranked and their work was plenty and strenuous. They were actively involved in preparing the land for sugar plantations and performing other tasks such as cutting of sugar canes. Amid this struggle, Europeans accorded privileges to some slaves to encourage the Africans to work hard. Supervisory positions accorded to the slaves made others work extra hard to gain such noble titles. Though, the hard labor and conditions of the laborers shortened their lives.11 Plantations all through the farms in the Caribbean were more or less the same, although some had some small differences. For example, the Spanish Europeans in Puerto Rico came up with slave codes that offered slaves more rights as compared to Blacks from other areas. These slave codes permitted Africans to grow food, own land, and stay together in families. The state of stability that resulted from allowing the Blacks to have small privileges such as ownership of land reduced the dire need of importing more slaves every year. Cuba, on the other hand, stood as one of the richest colonies of slaves, and wealthy owners of plantations could manage to import African slaves every year. The island used Spanish armies to maintain the stability in the region. As more Blacks arrived in the region, the soldiers kept vigil defending the island from any attack and revolt. As a result, the Whites and the Cuban Creoles stayed on the Island without ant unrest caused by revolts. In the 1800’s, the mestizos and the mulattos in the region enjoyed life and had a lot of wealth compared to the slaves who worked in the fields. In Barbados, things were a bit different. Women conducted most of the hard labor, while skilled men did more prestigious jobs. Enslaved Africans had a hard time living with the harsh conditions that existed during the outburst of business in the sugar plantations. Unlike life in Puerto Rico, slaves in this region could not stay together as families. In as much as the different categories and statuses spurred divisions, they also proved beneficial in propagating the African culture and relations. 12 North American Plantations Solomon Northrop, a slave who worked in one of the farms in North America, described working conditions in the farms lucidly. He said, "There was nothing like having rest, slaves woke up and started working on the farms as soon as the sun’s rays touched the earth, and there was little time to rest until darkness covered the earth."13 The work for the slaves varied depending on the crops under cultivation. In Maryland and Virginia, where tobacco was the main crop, slaves worked in medium sized to small field. Planters, who had several acres of land, often demarcated the land into small pieces to facilitate supervision. In addition to that, the masters made their houses be close to each other so that they could oversee the slaves with ease. In Georgia and Carolina, the main cash crop planted on the farms was rice. Rice needed a lot of care such as continued irrigation a huge coordinated workforce. This made the planters to put the workers together in huge groups. Owners of plantations often stayed in towns and gave white overseer the task of managing their estates. The working conditions in North America were much more deplorable than in the Caribbean. There were frequent punctuations of brutal force as compared to slavery in the Caribbean and violations of human rights were commonplace in North America.14 Over the years, activists sprout in North America, while Caribbean slavery life was calm. Due to the awareness over the violation of human rights, paternalism tenets in the Southern regions of the United States sprouted. The paternalism doctrines were an expression of the Great Awakening, which contributed to the spread of Christianity in various places of the nation. North American plantation owners attempted to justify slavery by stating that it was not an institution that instilled brute force, but one that was responsible for leading the less fortunate people in the society. One plantation owner stated that if one inspired a Negro and supported him, the Negro would look up to him. Of course, the well documented use of brutal force among the slaves negated the nice doctrines that the North American slave owners often paraded. Moreover, the ill treatment that the slaves received from their masters was a clear indication that the masters did not adhere to their very own principles and doctrines. Therefore, paternalism appeared to be more of a justification rather than a doctrine of orientation for slavery.15 Feeding, clothing, and general life conditions in North America illustrate even more differences in the working conditions in the two regions. In the United States, slave owners fed and clothed slaves only minimally so that they could merely survive and have the strength to work in the farms or homes. Geographic location, rural or urban, led to detrimental effects on the lives of the slaves. However, slaves who stayed in urban locations experienced conditions that were more humane as compared to those who worked in rural farms. But the numbers of slaves in urban centers constituted to only six percent of the total slave population. The situation of slaves in urban and rural areas led Fredrick Douglass to state that slaves in cities were almost like free slaves. He stated this referring to the variations in the amount of food, clothing, and other privileges that city slaves received as compared to the slaves in rural areas. Scholars argue that the proximity that the slaves in urban areas had to each other made life more bearable as opposed to slavery situations in rural areas. Further, the closeness in cities also deterred slave owners from instilling so much brutality.16 As with other facets of the slavery history in the United States, the dynamics in urban slavery shifted from one place to another and between different times in history. Whereas situations in Carolinas or the low country tended to involve frequent migration from the towns to the rural areas, becoming more focused on farming, in the Mississippi valley, the situation was the opposite. For example, by 1763, a quarter of the Africans in Louisiana lived on small sections in districts all over the New Orleans city. This situation was to shit in the years that followed. In 1860, more than 140,000 Africans stayed in cities in the south. For instance, In South Carolina’s Charleston, alone, over 40,000 slaves lived there accounting for one third of the city’s population. The jobs that slaves in towns and cities engaged in were less arduous as compared to the slaves who lived in rural areas. However, in instances where slaves in cities took part in huge construction projects, the conditions were also as deplorable as those in plantations.17 While slave life in the United States varied from one place to another, slave codes deprived all Africans in the country of their fundamental human rights and shoveled all the power to slave masters. Slave masters in turn treated slaves ruthlessly and exploited them at their own profitability. Amid all the oppression and exploitation, Africans, as portrayed in their narratives and slave stories, always sought for freedom. Movements against slavery often took different forms; some were large scale while others were small scale resistance, but Africans always sought for means to end their deplorable conditions. Northup spoke about the desire among the Blacks to be free: “Most of the slaves I met from the South at the United States Hotel expressed their ardent desire to escape and be free. Some of the slaves consulted me on the best technique to escape. The fear of the punitive measures, however, that they knew they would receive once their masters caught them kept them from attempting the experiment.” The fear that was evident among slaves in North America was absent among the slaves in the Caribbean – perhaps a reason as to why the former lost their culture quicker than the latter. Factors that Impacted African Culture From the above accounts, it is easy to note that conditions in both the Caribbean and the United State for slaves were disgraceful. However, conditions in the Caribbean were more favorable than those in the United States. The stories of oppression and brutal enslavement were more common the United States than they were in the Caribbean. The accounts of the oppression of the Blacks form the darkest pages Americas early history. Blacks lost most of their cultural heritage while working and struggling in the new land. Most of the families lost contact with each other and traditions that were passed from one generation to another disappeared back in Africa. North America The social setting in the United States did not favor the perpetuation of the African culture. The territory was a White man’s region, and the slaves always remained a minute percentage of the entire population. Furthermore, the slavery situations in the United States varied from region to region. For instance, slavery towards the south involved severe use of brutal force as compared to the north. Slaves in these regions were discombobulated to the extent that their African culture ceased to be their core concern. Most of the slaves were concerned with freeing themselves from the scourge of slavery. What made the social setting even more peculiar was the absence of strong constitution, and every region applied its own rules and regulations regarding slaves.18 North America’s conditions for slavery in the plantations caused the African culture to fade. In the cotton plantations, the Whites put thousands of slaves to harsh conditions forcing them to work while treating them brutally and ruthlessly. There was an urgent need to force Africans to work, to preserve the cotton plantations, and to avert revolts. This became the biggest consideration of the Whites who, in turn, made set multiple restrictions on the Blacks. These restrictions and negative influences caused the African culture to wane. The impact of the conditions in the cotton plantations on the African culture is made more manifest by the accounts of slaves. Most of them were beaten indiscriminately and trained rigorously such that the only lifestyle they knew was that of growing cotton. Tilling, preparing the land, and plucking cotton became ingrained in the blood of the Blacks. Some, after emancipation, turned to growing coffee themselves, an illustration that the traditional life they knew back in Africa had waned.19 Still, the slaves who enjoyed a more comfortable life working in private homes had their culture disappear over the years. Slaves in such settings got an opportunity to read and write, and this opened them up to religious activities. The learning opportunities led to the formation of an elite group of slaves. However, this groups was commonly divided between loyalty to their masters and loyalty to their African culture. The mulattoes, particularly the free slaves in the north, therefore, became the political and intellectual elite of the African-Americans. Despite the racist attitudes directed towards them, the learned Blacks never relented. Instead, they became more and more inclined towards integration into North America and the society of the White men. They, thus, felt less drawn to their original culture and homeland, Africa, and it was only after the discrimination and segregation got to its worst with no hopes of speedy recovery or redress that the Africans became willing to think about emigration to Africa.20 The diverse background of slaves also contributed to the weakening of the African culture significantly. In instances where planters chose slaves according to their preferences, a fair level of cultural homogeneity was maintained, and the African culture ensued. Such was the case on the Sea Islands, but slaves arriving in North America were highly intermixed. Inland trade markets brought slaves from different parts of the African continent and combined them. The mixture of cultures and ethnicities made the United States a “melting pot” of cultures from Africa.21 Given that the slaves were from different backgrounds and they were meeting a completely new culture, that of the whites, most of the traditions became dissolved while a new way of life and culture slowly cropped up. The Caribbean In the Caribbean, the social settings and slave conditions were different, and they did not impact perpetuation of African cultures as much as the situations in the US did. The planters there were more concerned about making profits and maintaining social order rather than changing the lives of the slaves. However, the measures for maintaining social order got worse as the number of slaves increased and their awareness caused them to initiate resistance and insurrection. But even this did not deter the Africans from coming together and perpetuating their ingrained culture. Slaves in the Caribbean and Brazil, as a response measure to the uprising ill treatment, came together, merged their traditions such as voodoo and marronage, and developed an openly resistant, volatile, and insolent slave population.22 Ellingham (2000) notes that the Caribbean slaves often took to the streets shouting and chanting as they took part in the voodoo dance. Despite the hard times experienced at the farms, these slaves, the author notes, found pleasure in participating in the voodoo dance. 23Against this backdrop, African cultures survived the test of new lands and slavery in the Caribbean more than they did in the US. Europeans took so many slaves to the Caribbean that the new territories served as a place for the rebirth of the African culture. Africans re-bonded in the new soil and they devised ways to communicate while planning for revolts. The Caribbean soon became the focal point of a universal economic complex that oppressed Africans. It was in the Caribbean, an environment that was almost identical to the native homeland of the Africans in terms of terrains and climate, which the slaves made adjustments to as they anxiously waited for the right time to portray their mightiest form of opposition to servitude, which was rebelling. Moreover, the large tracts of land where plantations stood gave Africans in the Caribbean an opportunity to interact, advance their cultures, and revolt. The rebellions commenced towards end of the 16th century. There was a huge uprising in modern day Santo Domingo in 1522 and a similar one in Cuba around the same time. These two revolts spurred more revolts in and around the Caribbean. The revolts were so much of a success that the Africans in the foreign land forged their own ruling bodies. These slaves used these structures to ensure continuity in their cultures and reduce oppression from the European settlers.24 Rodriguez (1997) stated that: “In the Caribbean, the Europeans regarded the slavery of the Blacks as forced thing. However, as time went by, the slaves recreated their lives, and they began to claim their lives and past. Slaves in the Caribbean constructed the family units and drew attention to their roots, Black Consciousness and Black Culture.” Besides the revolts, the social structures in the Caribbean were much different from those of the United States, and this perpetuated the African culture. While slaveholders in North America tended to teach and assimilate the African slaves into their native culture, leading to the weakening of the African culture and identity, the European settlers encouraged them to maintain a collective identification. British slave owners portrayed this support of collective identification as they categorized the salved by their tribes. Further, the European settlers sought ways to reduce expenses, and as a result, they allowed the African slaves to maintain their own farms where they could get food from. This technique of maintaining slaves became commonplace in the Caribbean over the years, particularly in the volcanic and mountainous islands. In such places, there was little space for setting up sugar plantations and the settlers gave the salves the ridges and the slopes as their farms to grow their own food.25 Another vital difference between the slavery situation and condition in the United States and that in the Caribbean was the absence of overt, endorsed discrimination, Jim Crow regulations, and execution. Unburdened by a system of oppression such as was present in the United States, Caribbean slaves engendered a unified awareness that was branded by hope for emancipation and empowerment.26 It is easy to see that salves in the Caribbean did not live under extreme conditions with stringent rules meant to ostracize and quell them as their counterparts in the United States. It is also notable that slaves in the Caribbean were in much closer associations than those who labored in America. Conclusion Slavery was harsh, and African slaves went through extreme oppression. The Transatlantic Trade led to unimaginable suffering and around 2 million of the 12 million slaves being transported to various areas by traders succumbed to death. The rest, around 10 million slaves, ended up in various places among them the United States, Brazil, and the Caribbean region. Slaves who landed in inland regions, especially North America, experienced poor working conditions and high levels of oppression. Slave owners in America subjected Africans to harsh conditions in cotton farms and aggravated the situations through slave laws that varied from state to state. This caused the African culture to wane greatly. Further, the social settings in America discouraged association between slaves causing the Africans to forget about their homeland traditions. To make the situation worse, the few Africans who interacted came from different background causing their individual cultures to become weak over the years. The situation was quite different in the Caribbean. Europeans placed more attention to perpetuating their business rather than formulating lifestyles for the Africans. They gave them land to do their own farming and supported identification of ethnicities. Further, the climate and terrain in the Caribbean suited the Africans, and thus, they took it as an opportunity to rekindle their culture. Things were not all rosy and the slaves went through challenges as well, but the system allowed them to come together and plan for rebellions, which eventually became successful. The differences between the two regions accounted for the differences in culture trends that are still visible today. References Boston, Nicholas. “Living Conditions.” Slavery and The Making of America, 2004. http://www.pbs.org. Brace, Jeffrey. The Blind African Slave: Memoirs of Boyrereau Brinch, Nicknamed Jeffrey Brace. Univ of Wisconsin Press, 2005. Broughton, Simon, and Mark Ellingham. World Music: Latin and North America, Caribbean, India, Asia and Pacific. Rough Guides, 2000. Gates, Louis. “Slaves to America,” 2013. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/how-many-slaves-landed-in-the-us/. Higman, B. W. Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, 1807-1834. Press, University of the West Indies, 1995. Kadish, Doris Y. Slavery in the Caribbean Francophone World: Distant Voices, Forgotten Acts, Forged Identities. University of Georgia Press, 2000. Matthews, Gelien. Caribbean Slave Revolts and the British Abolitionist Movement. LSU Press, 2006. Northup, Solomon. Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New York, Kidnapped In Washington City in 1841 and Rescued in 1853, From a Cotton Plantation Near the Red River in Louisiana. Bybliotech (pub-2483830128368028), 2013. Rodriguez, Junius P. The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery. ABC-CLIO, 1997. Shillington, Kevin. Encyclopedia of African History 3-Volume Set. Routledge, 2004. Solow, Barbara Lewis, and Stanley L. Engerman. British Capitalism and Caribbean Slavery: The Legacy of Eric Williams. Cambridge University Press, 2004. Read More