Commodification in Saltwater Slavery Book Review Paper Example

The book brings out the instances of rethinking of the routes from colonial Africa to the lands in America. The book brings out this form of understanding from the perspective of the forced labour on the Africans by the Americans in the entire process of the slave trade across the Atlantic. Based on both the methods and the arguments presented by the author in this book, it is apparent that he has carved a foundational intellectual pathway to help bring out the history of the Atlantic trade especially on the African Immigrants (Smallwood 23). Since the entire book is based on the Atlantic trade that was pegged onto the Gold Coast between the years of 1075 and 1725, it offers a clear picture on the issues about forced migration and the commodification of the slaves in the farms and industries operated by their colonial masters.

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The book has centered its theme on the trajectory episodes emanating from the entire process, and most of the slaves in these farms are viewed as mere commodities with no human value at all. The author bases its application on the slave trade between the British, North Americans, West Africans, and the Caribbean in the provision of the historical scholarship on the same subject. The book gives an illumination that brings to the public knowledge the secret dungeons that were managed by the colonialists alongside the African Coast to the slave markets in London and Jamaica. The book goes ahead to explain the plights of the slaves in the plantations of the White farmers in a bid to try and solve the extent to which the slaves were used as commodities of trade (Smallwood 12). However, as much as these slaves were used as commodities of trade along the coastal lines, the price tags on the slaves were not human at all. This pricing policy brought in effect the extent to which the global market forces tended to give the slave traders an upper hand in the actual process in the illegal trade.

On the same note, the author tries to expose the world under the Atlantic trade based on the manner in which the process was a measure coined by the Europeans to help fill the gap in both time and space the definition. In this case, as defined by the propagation of the maps, sailing ships, and the financial networks that would be significant in the understanding of the trade in an amicable yet disorientating process. The main idea in this book brings out the fact that most African captives did not find any joy in the land of slavery as it looked like in the beginning but found a geographical entity that was never coherent at all, and only realized this was a complete space of terror of the saltwater (Smallwood 25). The passage at the Atlantic could not be viewed as a Middle Passage but could be experienced as a motion that existed without any clear direction or even destination.

This book is the first and only piece of publication that has brought out the instances of slavery during the colonial era in most African countries. It has brought out the idea of commodification in most markets across the globe where the slaves were used as objects and not as humans in any way by the colonial masters. On economic, matters, the author has adequately dealt with the issues linked to the cultural histories related to the financial systems across the globe. Therefore, the book gives the boundary and coexistence that is provided in the social, economic, and cultural aspects of the trade in a broad manner of events (Smallwood 14). The Atlantic trade was mainly concerned with the process of institutionalizing the process of distinctively alienating the process of transforming people into commodities and then using the same persons as their commodities of trade.

The building of the social death policy used by the Orlando Patterson gave the epitome and the foundation of the commodification process among the African slaves. Amazingly, from the RAC records found on the books of accounts of its ledgers, it is apparent that the firm massed millions of slaves in a bid to try and lure the masters to gather as much as they gather in terms of the number of the slaves delivered to their farms or industries (Smallwood 16). As much as there had been series of escapes from the hands of these colonialists, they still managed to use the unscrupulous Africans to help in the process of luring the slaves into the ships for delivery into the European farms and Plantations abroad.

Conclusion

In summary, the Atlantic slave trade was a severe issue that demeaned the rights of the Africans. The colonialist used the coastal points of incarceration to help capture and keep hold of the slaves who were then turned into commodities by even determining their outer limits to the merchants in the business. The African were lured into the grounds of death by promises of better and lucrative benefits abroad. The colonialist had little regard for the slaves as they never considered the number of days the captives could stay within the ships. However, the entire process was based on the laid down number of slaves that were required for a particular voyage, and this could take up to over two months before the threshold was realized.

Works Cited

Smallwood, Stephanie E. Saltwater Slavery. Harvard University Press, 2008.