Commerce in People

Vern Chao
World History 2

Commerce in People (Strayer's Chapter 14)

• In Robert Strayer's chapter Commerce in People, he teaches what specifically happened within the Atlantic Slave Trade.
• Under a section in the chapter, "Slave trade in context," it was surprising for me to learn that a pope had granted permission to kings of Spain and Portugal to capture persons into slavery. More of this shock can be found in page 689.
• In the same section, I find it interesting (not supporting the fact of what was interesting) that the West African communities were actually  divided. In page 693, Strayer mentions that West Africa did not have an identity because of its multiple divisions of people.
• In addition to outside information and from the text, there is such a terrible sight yet artistic view of what is illustrated in page 691. In the page, The Art Archive (NY) has an image of the Middle Passage. The Middle Passage refers to the 3 stages that the African slaves suffered from. The first stage is when the Africans are being chased, assaulted, and captured on their homeland by Europeans and sometimes their own (chieftain) people. The second stage is when the Africans were carelessly and forcefully placed onto the ships by the European settlers. Thirdly (if all two stages were passed for the Africans), the last stage refers to the new life that the Africans are essentially trapped in by being sold into malicious slavery.
• The image in the page is really impactful because there were such staggering numbers and statistics towards populations, the treatment in the boats, and how the Africans would rather kill themselves through drowning in the sea than suffer brutal abuse for the rest of their lives.