The Brutality of Slavery
The predominant theme of The Slave Ship: A Human History is the savagery of slavery particularly the brutality and disregard of human dignity or life on slave ships during the transatlantic slave trade. Through firsthand accounts from former slaves and diaries, the novel offers vivid descriptions of the barbarism inflicted both on captives and also seafarers during the Middle Passage.
The reader is given a unique point of view into the brutality and horrors without reducing the narratives into mere statistics. The accounts describe the dreadful conditions that involved inhumane treatment, tortures, and inhabitable circumstances that were meant to subdue or control the slaves. Moreover, the hierarchy on the slave ships led to the mistreatment of the common sailors by the power-wielding captains and merchants. The accounts of former captives such as Olaudah Equiano and sailors like James Field Stanfield reconstruct the gruesomeness and chilling details of British and American slave ships. As a site of struggle and terror, Rediker presents the “floating dungeon” from a distinct perspective from other novels that account the four-hundred-year trauma. Rediker effectively illustrates the particulars of human suffering and horrors endured by African captives and sailors in a manner that shows the extent of the destructiveness of slavery.
Global Capitalism
In the book, Rediker focuses on the extent global capitalism was facilitated by the inhumane institution of slavery in the eighteenth century. He aims to reveal the true villains of the transatlantic trade as the slave trade captains, merchants, and industrialists. The making of global capitalism relied on the free labor of slavery, thus Rediker stresses this exploitative facet of capitalism. From the purchasing of captives from the coasts of Africa to the voyage into the New World, the backbone of global free enterprise was created. Henceforth, Rediker emphasizes that the birth of our modern capitalism relied on the suffering of many at the expense of human dignity.
The dramas highlighted in the accounts between abolitionists and industrialists show the tussle to prevent the cruel pursuits of capitalism. Moreover, the realities of these vicious practices on the ships were hidden from the general public to cover the truth behind the making of the industrialist society. The archives and chronicles express how the hostility towards the slaves and also the common sailors were driven by capitalistic endeavors. For instance, the violence against the slaves was meant to make them submissive for their tasks on deck facilitating the effectiveness of the “mobile prisons” financed by the merchants. Furthermore, the rise of industrialism in the New World depended on the efficacy of every stage of the transatlantic slave trade. As he states great reverence should go to the victims of this institution as the horrors they faced remain and are central to the creation of global capitalism.
Maritime
The setting of the accounts and narratives is the slave ship; therefore, another main motif is maritime, in the context of sea voyages and the consequent human dramas. As the book entails years of study in maritime archives and diaries by sailors, captains and slaves the details on ship tasks, routines, and navigation are explored extensively. Offering an intensive perspective on the ship the book shows the structure as viciously capable machinery while also a site of brutality. While focusing on the interactions Rediker unfolds multidimensional and awfully harsh encounters between the ship captains, the seafarers and the prisoners in all stages of the voyages.
Race
Through the human dramas on the ships, Rediker illustrates how racial constructs were solidified on the floating dungeons. Thus, the slave ship as a site of the institution of slavery fostered the social construction of race. The ship dynamic between captains and the crew shifted with the presence of African captives on board, Rediker explores how the full crew was regarded as white when slaves were boarded. Whereas the captives despite their ethnicity were considered as ‘Negro race’. The dramas explored between the captains and common sailors were dictated by classism, in that the lowest in hierarchy received poor treatment. However, with captives on the ships, the interactions were based on constructs of race. The dynamic would further go to facilitate the perception of racial constructs on land which Rediker asserts still haunts the modern society.
