The Slave Ship and its Role in Slavery, Racial Constructs and Western Capitalism Anonymous College

The institution of slavery entailed different structures that fostered this inhumane practice in history, from the Middle Passage to the forced servitude in plantations. However, the happenings within the slave ships in the Middle Passage have been overlooked in terms of their impact in nurturing the very core of Western civilization. In Marcus Rediker’s The Slave Ship: A Human History he presents the accounts of human suffering and horrors endured by African captives and seafarers on slave ships as they navigated to the New World. Rediker offers a different perspective different from most researches on slavery by focusing specifically on the slave ship as another site of terror and violence. He gives four different human dramas on the ships that include the interactions between the captain and crew, slaves and the sailors, the relationships among the captives and lastly the encounters between abolitionists and slave trade merchants. The dramas unfold the multidimensional and extremely cruel interactions between the ship captains, the sailors and the captives in all stages of the voyages. In their encounters with the merchants, the abolitionists use the slave ships as symbols to show the ruthless pursuits of capitalism. Rediker...