The “Black Atlantic” is a term which refers to the trans-Atlantic slave trade of the eighteenth century. According to Philip D. Curtain, it is estimated that 9,566,000 Africans were forced from their homeland to the western continents of Europe, North America, and South America. The journey itself was harsh and it is estimated that twenty percent lost their lives to the ocean. In addition, numerous amounts of Africans died once arriving to their new “home” from disease and harsh living conditions. Approaching the term from these facts alone confirm the accuracy of the term and the nature of it. This definition alone, though, does not offer an insight to the influence the “Black Atlantic” had on Africans. To understand the influence the “Black Atlantic” had on those involved three “populations” need to be examined; free Africans and African sailors, enslaved Africans, and Africans left behind.
According to Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, the Atlantic ocean became a “symbol of movement” (Gerzina 42) for Africans. To many Africans, the Atlantic became a symbol of freedom of which they did not have in their homeland. This journey and the foreign lands, in which it took them to, provided them with a new African identity. Gerzina used the personal writings of Olaudah Equiano and travel journals of African sailors to explain the influence the “Black Atlantic” had on them. These journals and writings come from Africans which had a freedom that many other Africans who were part of the trade did not have. They defined a particular population which was divided from the majority of Africans who were taken and enslaved on plantations or as servants. A majority of those who were enslaved on plantations were not given the freedom of mobility. (Gerzina 45) For the Africans who were enslaved the Atlantic held within it a different meaning. It was the force in which stole their freedom and imprisoned them from the outside world. They were stolen from their home, separated from their families, and forced to work under cruel conditions. The final population influenced by the “Black Atlantic” were the family members and members of African society that remained in Africa. According to Joseph E. Inikori, “the Atlantic slave trade was a factor in the historical process that produced the current economic underdevelopment in tropical Africa” (Inikori 37) The effect of having such a large portion of the working population taken from Africa had long term effects on the economical development of Africa. The influence of the “Black Atlantic” was best explained by Gerzina when she wrote, “If the ocean was the site of disaporic travel and therefore symbolic of danger, displacement, and death, it also represented self-determination and the route to independence.” (Gerzina 43)
Although I think you are correct that the Gerzina article articulates the cultural consciousness of both free and enslaved black populations that developed from their interactions with Europeans during the 18th century, I didn't see where she addressed the issue of the populations left behind in Africa or African underdevelopment.
ReplyDeleteGerzina's article (from my perception and as such, is subject to the lingering effects of kids and a busy household) was her response to Paul Gilroy's book, The Black Atlantic and his thinly veiled Marxist theories about the development of an African consciousness which was a direct expression of their collective experiences with the Altantic slave trade.
I'm still somewhat confused as to why the debate over the exact number of people taken from their African homelands became and continues to be such a hot button for scholars. It seems that bean counting has overtaken the larger issues of the lingering effects of millions of people compelled into a forced migration, then enslaved. Does it matter if it was 10 million or 12 million or 50 million? And that doesn't even count the children born into slavery and sold away from their families. Statistical modeling in history, I feel, detracts from the harsh reality that these were people. Maybe it's easier to think of them as statistics.