Human Cargo Essay

“Human Cargo: From Africa to America” Essay

“Human Cargo: From Africa to America” by Ira Berlin is an article retelling the history of African slaves back in the 1600’s through the late 1700’s. The Article reminds the audience of the cruel/harsh treatment and environment that these African men and women had to endure. Slavery, at first, did not exist in the laws of American colonies. However, the demand for labor from the Chesapeake colonies south to Georgia began the law during the 1660’s and rapidly increased in practice.

Initially slaves were captives from enslaved adulterers, criminals, debtors, and wartime prisoners. African elites would sell these captives as slaves to European countries in exchange for guns and other weapons for war. The popular demand for slaves in European countries directed the African elite’s interest more in the direction of exchange over the captives. Eventually, there were mercenaries, bandits, and professional slavers hunting for any African men and women to enslave. The captured Africans were forced to march a death march to the coast. This was just the beginning of their agony as they were shipped across the sea. After the long march ended, they were now shipped across the sea like a bunch of animals in cages. Slaves were branded with knives, whips, shackles, neck rings, and hot irons to be marked as captives as an identification of the seller. They were in the worst possible condition with disease spreading like a wild fire. The captains of the ships soon realized the value in their “cargo” and issued out orders respecting the rationing of the meal, exercising their body, and the medical needs. These white men were demonstrating their barbaric and sadistic actions to demonstrate their superiority, the sacrosanctity of the white skin. They stripped these African slaves of everything, especially lineage, “the most important source of social cohesion in African society” (Berlin, p.47). This by no means was the worst-case...