Of the 12.5 million African people who were forced into enslavement between the 16th and 19th centuries, it is estimated that around 26% were children.

The young found themselves in enslavement in different ways. Often they were victims of capture following wars between nations. With one or both parents killed, children were vulnerable and taken by victorious armies to be traded with caravans of merchants who sat in wait. Children, especially in parts of West Africa, would also be kidnapped, whilst working or playing. Children would also sometimes be sold into enslavement by desperate parents, because the child was sickly or because they were believed to be harbouring evil spirits. 

Once they had been enslaved, children were potentially sold many times over before they reached the west coast of Africa. Some did not make it to the coast. They either remained enslaved on the African continent or did not survive the journey.

Within the castles or trading posts, children were prepared for transport with the rest of the enslaved. It was common for their heads to be shaved, they would be stripped and rubbed with palm oil and they were often branded with the mark of the trading company.

Though some enslavers opted for children because laws on transporting the enslaved were regulated by weight, generally they were an unattractive choice because of being susceptible to disease, they could not work as hard as men and were too young to reproduce. That is until the spectre of abolition generated concern amongst the plantocracy, who then saw children as a long-term investment that would help extend the longevity of their free workforce.

Olaudah Equiano was born in Igbo region of the Kingdom of Benin, now known as southern Nigeria. One day when he was 11 years old, he was in his house with his sister whilst his parents were out at work. Without their knowledge, two men had jumped over the wall to their yard. 

Before they knew what was happening, the men had grabbed the two children and covered their mouths, so they were unable to scream for help. They picked them up and ran into woods, where they tied up their hands and carried them as far as they could. 

At night, the captors stopped for food and allowed Olaudah and his sister to rest and eat. The next day the captors made the siblings walk for hours, through the woods. Eventually they came to a road, and Olaudah saw some people in the distance. He cried out to get their attention, but they went unheard. To stop them doing this again, the kidnappers tied their hands tighter, gagged them and bundled them into sacks. 

That night, terrified, Olaudah and his sister cried together until they fell asleep in each other’s arms. 

The next morning the unimaginable happened. The captors grabbed Olaudah sister from his arms. They tried to cling to each other, fought and pleaded with all their strength to fight away the captors, but it was no use. The captors tore her from him and immediately carried her away. 

Olaudah was then shipped to the Caribbean and sold into slavery to a Royal Navy officer. He was sold twice more before being bought by Robert King, who took great interest in him, teaching him English and to read and write.

Eventually, Olaudah purchased his freedom and settled in London where he became involved in the abolitionist movement. He wrote an autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, which detailed his life, which is why we know so much about his capture.  

Ottobah Cugoano was born in West Africa, in an area now known as Ghana. At age 13, he went to stay with his uncle and made friends with local children. One day a group of 18 or 20 of them went to play in the local fields and woods; he had been teased by one of the boys because he was nervous to venture far from his house. 

They hadn’t been gone more than two hours when a group of men appeared and told the young group that they had committed a sin against the lord and needed to follow them to repent. Some of the children tried to run away, which is when the men pulled out guns and cutlasses and told them if they didn’t obey, they would be killed on the spot. 

The group was divided and made to walk for days. Ottobah asked many times when they would be going home and where his friends had been taken. The captors refused to tell him, so Ottobah stopped eating and drinking out of fear. He was told that he needed to travel with them the next day to the seaside where he would be reunited with his family. 

When they reached the coast, Ottobah saw white people for the first time and was petrified, as he believed they would eat him. Arriving at a castle he saw his countrymen in chains and handcuffed together, and heard the sounds of people moaning in agony and being whipped. He was imprisoned in the castle for three days before being taken to a ship, sold into slavery, and forced to work on a plantation on Lesser Antilles. 

Not many first-hand accounts of enslaved peoples experiences exist. We only know of Ottobah’s story because he was one of the very few people who was able to secure his freedom and educate himself, whilst employed as a servant in London. He wrote of his experience in his book Narrative of the Enslavement of a Native of Africa which became instrumental in the abolitionist movement. 

In the women's dungeon of Elmina Castle, attic stairs lead to the castle administrator's quarters. Enslaved women who were selected by administrators would be escorted up these stairs, raped by the administrator before being chained back in the dungeons.

Ato Ashun, author of Elmina: The Castles & the Slave Trade and the curator for the 43 forts and castles along the Ghanaian coast explains, “Women and children were chained together for months with no other place to menstruate or use the toilet. In the life of a captive, life never got better.”

Despite their situation women did resist rape. Their refusal had them taken to the courtyard where, surrounded by the imposing structure of the castle – white walls opening into dark, dismal, haunting dungeons – women were chained to cannonballs and left in the sun. This was a way to make an example of female resistance against sexual abuse.

Women were repeatedly raped. Some fell pregnant. Their children were raised and educated in the castle, where they were taught to become interpreters. Eventually, stone houses were built for the mistresses of administrators and their children. 

Today, in Elmina, many Ghanaian families have surnames such as Vroom, DaCosta, Yankson, and Pieterson – names they inherited from their European administrator forefathers.

For centuries, the pineapple has been synonymous with exotic, tropical escapism, but there is much more to the history of one of the world’s most popular fruits.

Originally from South America, the pineapple was encountered by Christopher Columbus in Guadeloupe in 1493. The beauty and vibrancy of the fruit enchanted the European elite, who used it to show status and wealth. The pineapple became hugely expensive, and was even rented out, to be placed on mantelpieces, windows or outside houses. The pineapple became so revered that King Charles II commissioned his official portrait with a pineapple to celebrate his status as a worldly king. 

The pineapple was also used as a decorative piece to symbolise hospitality across the Americas, and as a marker to let the public know that goods from the Caribbean and South America had arrived for purchase. 

Despite these connotations of wealth and hospitality, the pineapple didn’t always signal good news to those who laid their eyes on it. In Assin Manso, one of Ghana’s largest slave migration points, captured Africans were made to walk hundreds of miles to this trading post; paths lined with pineapples. There, they would be washed, lathered in shea butter to make their skin look healthier and then bartered for by traders. 

The weak were left for dead, and the survivors had to walk a further 400 miles to get to the coast, to then be forced to travel the brutal Middle Passage across the Atlantic.

It’s not known how the pineapple made its way to Assin Manso but these miles and miles of pineapples marking the pathway to the trading port made it easier for the captors, and signalled a dark destiny to the enslaved people forced to walk the pineapple path.

Before being imprisoned in the enslavement castles along the west coast of Africa, many enslaved people were forced to undertake gruelling journeys on foot. Driven in coffles (a line of enslaved people bound together) across countless miles, in "neck-sticks" (a way of securing people to one another by a forked stick around the neck), some did not make the distance.

One account by Verney Lovett Cameron, around 1874, tells of a coffle of enslaved people, which was 'two or three score', which is about 40-60 people. In Cameron's words, describing the difficult conditions they endured, the 'wretched women [were] all tied together by knotted ropes, all heavily laden and driven on by the whip.' 

The image presented was developed from a sketch by David Livingstone (1813-1873). Livingstone, a Scottish physician, came upon a dead enslaved man, whilst on an exhibition. After exploring the area, more bodies were found. The men still living could barely speak from exhaustion and hunger. They had been abandoned. Considered better left for dead that to be taken on or even let go.

In further reports by Livingstone, it was not uncommon for those who could not keep up with the "slave gang" to be killed by enslavers. In recounting a particular incident, Livingstone tells us a woman was killed by Arab traders, who did not want her to be recaptured and sold if she managed to recuperate from the journey. She had not been able to keep pace with the rest of the party. 

Bunce Island was Britain’s largest enslavement castle in the traditional rice-growing region of West Africa. This region was known as the “Rice Coast” or “Windward Coast” and stretched from Senegal to Sierra Leone and Liberia. Britain's relationship with the island began in 1670 and lasted 138 years, ending in 1808 when the legal trafficking of Africans across the Atlantic Ocean ceased. The British leased the island from an African king named Bai Sama, who was paid rent and taxes from the profits of the trade of enslaved people.

Africans from this region had been growing and harvesting rice for hundreds of years. Rice became a much sought-after “commodity” when the rice industry began to boom in colonial America. Special brokers were allocated by the colonies to advertise for “rice slaves” at higher prices. These brokers would receive a percentage of the sale price for skilled Africans who knew how to sow, farm and gather rice. Their skills would be transferred to rice plantations in areas of North America, South America and in the Caribbean. 

Enslavement ships would wait for weeks or months until the kidnappers and traffickers arrived with their “catches” at Bunce Island. John Newton, who famously wrote the hymn "Amazing Grace", was one British trafficker who made several visits to Bunce. The Royal African Company – originally established by the British monarchy in 1660 – was deeply intertwined in the business of trafficking in Africans, and was one of the principal companies operating on Bunce. 

During its heyday in the late 1700s, Bunce Island employed more than 600 African workers and leased all the harbour islands for its commercial activities. In fact, Bunce Island became so lucrative for the British that it was a source of envy amongst other people-trafficking European countries – so much so that it was attacked by the French in 1779.

Until the 19th century, the chains which shackled more than 12.5 million enslaved people would have had to have been made by individual blacksmiths, since the process had not yet been mechanised. Along with the manacles and leg shackles, some of the contraptions blacksmiths were asked to craft had been designed specifically to capture, keep and torture enslaved people.

One of these devices, the weighty neck collar, was made with long spikes and hooks so that if an enslaved person tried to escape through the woods, they would be hindered by the protrusions. Enslavers were also wise to the benefits of it being very difficult to lie down in the collar, making it an ideal punishment for rebellious captors.

A second, the iron mask, had a flat piece of iron which stuck into the mouth of the enslaved person, not allowing them to swallow. Holes were made in the mask to let saliva drain. When worn for a long time, the mask would become so hot, that when it was removed, the skin went with it.

British blacksmiths would have produced a great deal of these chains. locks and devices of confinement. However, for many, being a blacksmith was not a prosperous profession. Even those who took an abolitionist stance would probably have had to think twice before turning down precious work.

In order to keep enslaved people under control, enslavers used a variety of deterrents and methods of capture. One strategy they would use, which achieved both objectives, was enlisting the use of dogs. The dogs would chase and savage any enslaved people who dared to try and liberate themselves from their situation.

'As they [the dogs] approached maturity, their keepers procured a figure roughly formed as a negro in wicker work, in the body of which were contained the blood and entrails of beasts. This was exhibited before an upper part of the cage, and the food occasionally exposed as a temptation, which attracted the attention of the dogs to it as a source of the food they wanted.

'This was repeated often, so that the animals with redoubled ferocity struggled against their confinement while in proportion to their impatience the figures was brought nearer, though yet out of their reach, and their food decreased till, at the last extremity of desperation, the keeper resigned the figure, well charged with the nauseous food before described, to their wishes.

'While they gorged themselves with the dreadful meat, he and his colleagues caressed and encouraged them. By these means, the whites ingratiate themselves so much with the animals, as to produce an effect directly opposite to that perceivable in them towards the Black figure; and, when they were employed in the pursuit for which they were intended, afforded the protection so necessary to their employers.'

A powerful stench remains in Cape Coast Castle. The castle was built on the Ghanaian coast as a trading post by the Portuguese in 1555. Later, it was controlled by the Swedish, Danish, Dutch and finally, the British in 1664. At any one time, up to 1,000 male and 500 female enslaved people were shackled and crammed into the castle’s dank, suffocating dungeons. There was no space to lie down and very little light. The floor of the dungeon was littered with human waste. Without water or sanitation, many captives fell seriously ill. If someone died in the dungeon their body would be left amongst the living.

According to Ato Ashun, author of Elmina: The Castles & The Slave Trade, captives spent an average of two months chained in these dungeons. People excreted, bled, urinated and sweat whilst cramped together in these poorly ventilated, dark pits. In the female areas, rapes, assaults, and vicious beatings by European soldiers were commonplace. In the male holding areas, men and boys were chained together.  

Resistance was not tolerated and examples were made of the stubborn. Beatings were not the only punishment. The castle had confinement cells — small pitch-black spaces for those who revolted. Here, the rebellious were kept, alone in a dark cell with just a sliver of light for weeks.

Under these dreadful conditions, enslaved people spent up to three months in captivity before being shipped off to the New World.

You may have heard of the famous Door of No Return that many go to visit at the Cape Coast Castle in Ghana … Did you know that there are more than one of these doors in West Africa? At Elmina, Cape Coast, Ouidah and Gorée Island. Why are they so important?

There was always a significant door in the forts, castles and other installations built by Europeans on West African soil to house captive men, women and children. Until these people could be loaded, like the cargo they were considered to be, onto ships headed west over the Atlantic Ocean, they were held in conditions worse than animals would be kept. 

Most doors were actually like tiny gates, facing the ocean, barely large enough for the average person today to squeeze through. 

The weeks trekking from their homes in various villages and the months waiting miserably in the dungeons had wickedly weakened the enslaved people. Those who made it here were so gaunt and reduced that they could pass through the gates easily. Captives to be enslaved and sold in the Caribbean, Brazil and the Americas would be forced to queue and march through these doors to, in most cases, file down a staircase to small boats that would ferry them to the larger ships.

What would these thousands of formerly free Africans feel? What would they think as they walked through these doors? Did they recognize that once through these doors they would never see their homes, their families, their villages, their countries or even their continent again? Could they ever fathom what the journey ahead and life across the ocean would be like?

Katharina Schramm, in a book on the role of history in African ideologies today, called the Door of No Return a symbol of "the cultural amnesia and sense of disconnection that slavery and the Middle Passage stand for." She writes that the door has become increasingly associated, not just with its largely fictional past, but with its very real present as a place of historical "healing and closure," sometimes now described as a "Door of Return" out of slavery's shadow.

It is no wonder that pilgrims today go to these doors to reconnect with the experience of their enslaved ancestors.
 

“Why didn’t the enslaved Africans fight back?” is a common question people ask when learning about the Middle Passage, the awful journey from freedom in Africa to a life of enslavement in the Americas. 

The simple answer is, African peoples did fight back. 

Resistance was common and signals the refusal by Africans to passively accept dehumanisation. Individually or in groups, people would take every opportunity to fight for their lives. They soon learned aboard the ships rebellion would be met with real violence but they knew attempts to escape were their only chance. Some captives aboard ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean resisted by committing suicide, usually by jumping overboard.

Captains and crews were always fearful of revolt and this added to the atmosphere of violence and suspicion. Crews searched the holds each day for possible weapons and punished even minor acts of resistance. One wonders what they expected from people being trafficked far away from their homes? 

The Liverpool ship, ironically named The Unity, owned by the Earle family, had notes about how often enslaved peoples tried to free themselves. Captain Richard Norris’ logbook provides valuable detail on rebellions and the deaths of enslaved Africans as each death was logged as a financial loss.

Captain Norris, with 425 enslaved African people aboard, was sailing from Africa to the Americas in 1770, and kept detailed notes.  

6 June 1770: "The slaves made an insurrection which was soon quelled with the loss of two women."

23 June 1770: "Died a girl slave, No. 13. The slaves attempted an insurrection, lost a man of Capt Monypenny's purchase, who jumped over board and was drown'd. Employed securing the men in chains and gave the women concerned 24 lashes each."

26 June 1770: "The slaves this day proposed making an insurrection and a few of them got off their handcuffs but were detected in time."

27 June 1770: "The slaves attempted to force up the gratings in the Night with a design to murder the whites or drown themselves, but were prevented by the watch. In the morning they confessed their intention and the women as well as the men were determined, if disappointed of cutting off the whites, to jump overboard but in case of being prevented by their irons were resolved as their last resource to burn the ship. Their obstinacy put me under the Necessity of shooting the Ring Leader."

These entries - all within one month! - illustrate the people kidnapped and trafficked from Africa understood the value of their freedom and what was happening to them. They were not passive but persistent in attempting to reclaim freedom. 

Why did merchants throw so many Africans overboard during the dangerous journeys aboard slave ships?

Conditions aboard slave ships were not designed for wellness but for profit. This woodcut was published in The Liberator on 7th January 1832, an American abolitionist newspaper. It depicts a scenario aboard a Brazilian slave ship where the captain ordered sick Africans thrown overboard alive because he felt they could not be sold and he refused to have to pay import duties for them. Interestingly, this image has frequently been used to represent the similar case in 1781 of the British slaving vessel The Zong, whose crew threw Africans overboard in the Caribbean Sea and filed an insurance claim for losses. 

African life was valued as a source of labour for the New World plantations. The simultaneous disdain for African life and objectification of these people allowed for many crews to make the decision to wantonly discard lives without care - usually with an economic motive. 

The transport of enslaved people across the Atlantic was a treacherous and torturous experience for the millions of Africans who made their way to the Americas.

In drastic contrast to the reality of the situation is The Voyage of the Sable Venus from Angola to the West Indies (1793), an etching plate by Thomas Stothard, a prolific artist and book illustrator.

The etching was inspired by Sandro Botticelli’s 15th-century masterpiece, The Birth of Venus. In it, Stothard presents an African woman - the “Sable Venus” - standing on a half-shell, attended by cherubs. She is being towed by dolphins to the Americas. To the left is Triton carrying the British flag and guiding the procession across the ocean whilst looking at the woman.

This depiction of the Middle Passage blantantly ignores the horrors endured by enslaved people transported across the Atlantic on board ships.

The notorious case of Captain John Kimber took place aboard his ship, Recovery, bound for Granada, on 22 September 1791. William Wilberforce brought the incident before the House of Commons on 2 April 1792, accusing Kimber of brutally assaulting and murdering a teenage African girl. She had refused to dance on deck. The girl died five days after the assault following convulsions. 

Wilberforce’s statement in Parliament inspired this powerful print by George Cruikshank eight days later. This image was used in the abolitionist fight, showing the cruelty African captives endured during the Atlantic crossing. 

The Admiralty Court tried Kimber in June 1792. Wilberforce persisted that Kimber was guilty, but the case was poorly handled. Kimber was honourably acquitted. Once released, he demanded compensation and a public apology.

The original caption to this print read: ‘The abolition of the slave trade. Or the inhumanity of dealers in human flesh exemplified in Capt’n Kimber’s treatment of a young Negro girl of 15 for her virgin modesty.’ The print was later revised, with Kimber’s name erased. This was presumably undertaken after the trial to prevent any legal action by Kimber. Cruikshank’s overtly sexualised version of events was at odds with official evidence.

Still, Cruikshank’s piece brought to light just how disposable African lives were to traders. The Middle Passage accounted for the loss of millions. Traders could claim insurance for “loss of property” for those who died or were killed.

Slavery Voyages is a large online database which provides incredible insight into the realities of death rates during these voyages.

There was no single formula for living arrangements, however let's focus on the enslaved villages that existed on some of the islands. 

Slave villages represent an important but little-known part of the Caribbean landscape. Since abandonment, their locations have been forgotten and in many cases, no traces remain above ground. As they are virtually invisible on the overgrown landscape today, village locations are particularly liable to destruction or development, unlike the more substantial stone-constructed houses of the European plantation owners. However, the villages are integral in creating a direct link between past and present because they represent the homes of the ancestors of many people living on the islands today. St Kitts is probably the only island in the West Indies that has a map showing the location of all the slave villages. William McMahon's map, drawn in 1828, shows the landscape of plantation estates after nearly three centuries of development and shortly before emancipation in 1834. 

A team of British archaeologists studied the villages of the enslaved in two areas of St Kitts in 2004 and 2005 and found that the locations of the villages shared some common features. They were usually close enough to the main house and plantation works that they could be seen from the house. This allowed the owner or manager to keep an eye on his enslaved workforce, while also reinforcing the inferior social status of the enslaved.

On the St Kitts’ plantations, the villages of the enslaved were usually located downwind of the main house from the prevailing north-easterly wind. In the mid-18th century, Reverend William Smith described a similar scene when characterising the location of the villages on the smaller sister island of Nevis:

"They live in Huts, on the Western Side of our Dwelling-Houses, so that every Plantation resembles a small Town". The location meant that "we breathe the pure Eastern Air, without being offended with the least nauseous smell: Our Kitchens and Boyling-houses are on the same side, and for the same reason". Smith 1745, 225-6; cited in Mason 1993, 126.

Historic illustrations of plantations in the Caribbean occasionally show enslaved villages as part of a wider landscape setting, though they are often romanticised views, rather than realistic depictions.

In addition to being kidnapped, trafficked across the Atlantic and enslaved in the Caribbean, living conditions in the slave villages were key in contributing to poor quality of life. Short life spans of less than 20 years after arrival in the Americas were common.

Many enslaved committed suicide as part of the belief that it would send them back home.

A letter from Cuba to King Charles IV of Spain read: ‘They are barbarous, daring, ungrateful of benefits … Good treatment makes them insolent; their temperament is hard and rude … That is why they show little fear of committing homicide upon themselves.' 

An enslaver commented that the enslaved usually hanged themselves from trees or in their huts. 'When they do that, they wear all their clothes, put in their hats the food that they did not eat, and sometimes even bring their animals to the place where they will die, in order to return well supplied to their native countries, where they believe their bodies and souls go.'

Several cases seem to confirm this explanation of why some enslaved Africans provisioned themselves before committing suicide.

In 1825, Joaquín, an enslaved man in Guane, committed suicide by hanging. Authorities noted that Joaquín was dressed 'with new trousers and new shirt, and with pig leather shoes; he had a handkerchief tied to his head and in one of the pockets of his trousers a small bag with stuff to make fire; he also had a machete, a knife, and a hat made of palm leaves.'

In 1844, Dionisio Lucumí decided to hang himself from a guava tree. He wore his best clothes, and authorities found tobacco inside the hat he was wearing. 

It's important to note that many of the enslaved who believed that through suicide they could return home were Lucumi, a faith, culture and language originating from Nigeria and developed in Cuba. In contrast, for those from the Dahomey culture (from present-day Benin), suicide was socially unacceptable.

There have been many accounts of enslaved who resorted to suicide without hesitation, throwing themselves off cliffs in Cuba, as a form of rebellion against enslavement.

“Death was only a removal from their present to their former home - a mere change of state from slavery to freedom. They bade Jenny goodbye while asking her to ‘remember me to all friends t’other side of the sea’.”
- Pickards, 1806

When the enslaved people of the Caribbean laid the dead to rest, the bodies were buried facing Africa.

Looking at burial grounds in Barbados, 95% of the bodies found in an enslaved burial ground were buried on a east to west axis; Africa being to the east of Barbados.

“When a Negro dies a natural death, or especially when they destroy themselves, they believe they return to their own country.”
- Fountain Hughes, 1730

Despite being hundreds of miles away across the ocean, almost all bodies ensured they faced in that direction. This is in line with the West African belief of reuniting a person with their ancestors across the water when they pass on.

Acts of resistance by enslaved people were more common than is generally believed. Be it through pretending illness in order to disrupt their owner’s harvest schedule, outright refusal, quietly ending pregnancies, assisting others to escape, or full on revolts, enslaved resistance was a daily occurrence. 

Probably the most harsh punishments for resistance were on the Louisiana plantation, The Whitney.

In a state that enslaved 107,000 people in its history, Louisiana is at the heart of the American south and renowned for being one of the deadliest environments for the enslaved. 

Enslaved people on The Whitney lived in meagre wooden cabins, sweltering hot during the summer, and cold in the winter. They were only a few feet from the ornate, and beautifully furnished plantation house, where white slave owners and their families lived comfortably in what was seen as one of the most beautiful houses in the South. 

No form of resistance was tolerated, a Fleur de Lys branding iron marking any enslaved man, woman or child who dared to resist.

First time offenders were branded on the shoulder, those who resisted a second time were branded either the other shoulder or on the forehead. This time around, hamstrings were also cut to debilitate movement as a final warning. A third offence meant execution, with their body parts put on spikes and placed on display in front of the modest quarters of the enslaved on the plantation.

Every morning, the first thing the enslaved workers would see as they made their way to work on the fields and to clean the pristine plantation house, was the body parts of their loved ones rotting on spikes. A brutal reminder and a warning to conform or to meet the same fate. 

In 1661, the Parliament of Barbados passed An Act for Better Ordering and Governing of Negroes, also known as the Barbados Slave Code. It established an all-encompassing system of oppression and government sanctioned violence that set a precedent for slave-owning territories across the globe.

The Barbados Slave Code established that enslaved Africans be treated as chattel and therefore were denied basic human rights. It did not set standards for housing or working conditions for enslaved people, but rather, provided protection for slaveowners. It gave slave owners the legal right to torture and murder enslaved Africans without punishment or legal consequences.

The Code also ensured that an enslaved person would remain so for their entire lives and that their descendants would automatically be enslaved too.

Prior to the Barbados Slave Code, slavery had little legal basis. As the first comprehensive slave act, the Code marked the beginning of the legal codification of slavery. It was adapted in Jamaica, Antigua and formed the basis of codes in American states such as Carolina and Georgia.

In the face of horrific forms of punishment and torture, enslaved people showed defiance and tragic humour before succumbing to their painful deaths. 

The Dutch-born Scottish soldier John Stedman kept a diary of his time in Suriname. In this diary, there are many descriptive accounts of executions and punishments that the enslaved had to endure. He recounts how the enslaved would not cry, groan or make a sound. Some requested tobacco, a drink, some made jokes, even after having body parts cut off, and left to die. Some whilst being consumed by flames would sing songs, or remain completely silent. 

One of the most famous depictions of punishments comes from William Blake’s accompaniment to Stedman’s book, illustrating an enslaved man hung from the ribs by a hook. The victim of this particular horror showed no pain to his oppressors, and even chastised another enslaved person for crying out when he was whipped. 

Even in the height of brutal indignity, countless enslaved people remained defiant to the end, never allowing their executioners to have the last laugh.

An excerpt from John Stedman’s diary reads:

‘I heard a crowd pass under my window. Curiosity made me start up, dress in a hurry, and follow them: when I discovered three negroes in chains, surrounded by a guard, going to be executed in the savannah. Their undaunted look, however averse I may be to the sight of cruelties, so attracted my attention, as to determine me to see the result (…) The sentence being read in Low Dutch (which they did not understand) one was condemned to be flogged below the gallows, and his accomplice to have his head struck off with an axe. He laid his head upon the block with great indifference, stretching out his neck; when, with one blow of the axe, it was severed from his body'.

Many drastic and painful methods were used by enslavers to deter enslaved people from running away. Punishments included attaching a short chain between the neck and the foot so that the enslaved person would have to keep the attached leg bent back in awful discomfort.

Europeans found increasingly creative and horrific means to scare the enslaved from running away or “disobeying orders”. 

The enslaved did not just run away in hopes of freedom, sometimes it was a desperate attempt to reconnect with family or loved ones; brothers ran to sisters, daughters to mothers, husbands to wives, and vice versa.

The hope not only for freedom but to be reunited with a loved one was incentive enough to take the risk. 

A social hierarchy developed on plantations, not only in accordance to skill, but in accordance to proximity to whiteness. 

Darker skinned workers were relegated to the more menial, and arduous labour of the fields, whilst lighter complexioned enslaved were forced to work domestic duties or work as “personal slaves”.

Some “mulatto” (mixed race) women were able to own enslaved people of their own and enjoyed certain “luxuries”. They were generally better dressed and better treated than their full-blooded African counterparts. However, they were also top of the list of white men’s lusts. 

Due to the lack of European women residing in plantations in the Caribbean, white men turned their eyes towards enslaved women to gratify their physical desires, yet grappling with their own racism, many preferred to seek enslaved women of mixed heritage, as they were the closest thing to a white woman. This led to some of the worst examples of sexual abuse in the Caribbean. 

This excerpt of a British Reverend’s observations illustrate the life of mixed race women in the colonies:

‘Mulatto girls, during the flower of their age, are universally sacrificed to the lust of white men; in some instances to that of their own fathers. In our town, the sale of their first commerce with the other sex, at an unripe age, is an article of trade for their mothers and elder sisters, nay, it is not an uncommon thing for their misteresses, chaste matrons, to hire them out, and take an account of their gains, or if they are free, they hire their service and their persons, to some one of the numerous band of bachelors.

‘In this commerce, they often contract diseases, and generally continue in it til they grow haggard and worn out.’

The enslavement of formerly free people provided a perfect format for the concept of divide and rule. Violence was just one of the means of gaining control in the plantation system. Through the setting up of various roles on plantations, hierarchies were created in which unique advantages were attained at varying levels. 

Many overseers (a brutal role given to men whose job was to work the enslaved as hard as possible) were Black, and this role was advantageous for them and more comfortable than doing field work. Once given this role, losing it would mean relegation into harder work and harsher punishments. The enslaved and apprenticed at times did what they could to keep their improved roles which benefited them and their families. Unfortunately, this included applying the brutal European ideologies of control and violence over other Africans. This helped to keep the system of absolute control running as smoothly as possible. 

Protests were often thwarted by other higher ranking enslaved, or by the contracted Black Militia. Distaste towards their fellow countrymen and women’s own battle for equal rights was documented by Magistrate Robert Pitman who noted that slave drivers on estates and plantations strongly condemning ‘the conduct pursued by Negroes, but more in particularly that of the women.’

Due to the fact that in the Caribbean, Black people outnumbered Whites from 10-1 to as much as 100-1, extreme violence would not have been enough to maintain control. The clever use of perks and comforts for those Blacks who would collaborate with enslavers helped to keep order on plantations and encouraged division among the Black and enslaved majority. 

Incentives were given to those who exposed plots, flogged those deemed as insolent, reported theft or defiance, and those who sexually gratified European men (and in some cases women). Without these incentivised alliances, it would have been impossible for slavery to have lasted as long as it did, on the sheer basis of numbers. European violence paired with privileges accounts for one of the most significant ways that European owners and administrators successfully manipulated the enslaved into centuries of subservience.
 

Trafficking and enslaving Africans was an economic decision. Alongside the demand for addictive sugar, the demand for enslaved Africans grew.

In 1650 an enslaved African could be bought for £7. This meant life-long ownership. In comparison, a European indentured labourer would cost an enslaver £10. After a few years, their debt would be paid, and they would no longer have to work. There were also additional costs for the labourer's food, shelter and clothing. 

Due to demand, the price of enslaved people did begin to rise. By 1690 an enslaved person cost £17-22. A century later this could be between £40 and £50. Still, the costs of keeping enslaved Africans were kept low by treating them harshly. Space was saved by cramming people together. On the voyage from West Africa, known as the Middle Passage, many died through disease or ill-treatment. Others, driven to despair, committed suicide by jumping into the sea. 

As a result of overwork, poor nutrition, substandard conditions, brutality and disease, the death rate on plantations was high. Still, plantation owners who used enslaved people found it more economical to import new African people than to provide decent conditions for their existing workforce. Until the Amelioration Act of 1798, owners simply replaced casualties by importing more people from West Africa.

The astounding profits of those that chose to use enslaved people as a workforce were increased by that decision. The cost, however, was the human rights of millions.