The transatlantic slave trade reflects a time when African laborers were bonded and trafficked as a commodity. They were not perceived as laborers, but as a commodity to be exploited. Bound and forced to traverse the Atlantic was daunting and a perilous journey, but upon the arrival from across the Atlantic, there was additional trafficking of enslaved Africans between colonies that fueled the intercolonial slave trade. Historian Gregory O’Malley compiles a study that contends with the trafficking of enslaved Africans in British America in Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America, 1619-1907.

 

The author emphasizes that the intercolonial slave trade is an important part of history often neglected. In this study, O’Malley presents readers with five arguments about the intercolonial slave trade. First and foremost, the intercolonial slave trade was immense. From the mid-1600s to the early 1800s, approximately 15% of 2.7 million enslaved Africans brought to British ports were forcibly moved in the intercolonial slave trade (7). Second, they were human beings whose lives were devastated and deeply changed by their forced trafficking and enslavement. The final passage proved to be even more isolating and daunting to enslaved Africans because of the increased distance from their place of origin. Third, it was this intercolonial trafficking that expanded and proliferated slavery in the Americas. Fourth, it was the capturing and trafficking of these human beings that enabled the economy to look beyond the profit of commodifying enslaved people, but in opening economic opportunities of commerce that transcended regions. Lastly, the intercolonial trade brought about the fall of mercantilism and the rise of the free market economy in Europe. This allowed for the British trafficking of enslaved people to take place in both Spanish and French colonies, whether licit or illicit, contributing to the dominance of the British economy by the 1800s. The Spanish and the French were also involved in the trafficking of enslaved peoples, but not to the same extent as the British empire.

 

This study emphasizes that the trafficking and bondage of enslaved Africans prioritized the dehumanization of people, turning them into human beings that were commoditized. Enslaved Africans were sold to the highest bidder based on who would pay more rather than where the labor of the person was needed more. O’Malley states, “The regular and visible exchange of enslaved people as property in the market of early America offered one important site where colonists learned to see African men and women as economic units with their humanity obscured” (29). This book brings forth the importance of the history of the intercolonial slave trade. From colonial merchants, planters, the British empire, the Spanish empire, and the French empire, the dehumanization and commodification of African laborers who were enslaved and commodified persisted.

 

One of our main topics in our discussion of Final Passages was O’Malley’s use of sources. In his introduction, O’Malley lays out the four principal types of sources from which he drew: a database he compiled of intercolonial shipments carrying enslaved people; the correspondence of merchants; the correspondence of colonial officials; and testimony from witnesses or survivors of the slave trade. These sources all present their own challenges, such as the biased correspondence of merchants and colonial officials, who actively erased the humanity of the people they bought, sold, and transported. We began our discussion of sources by watching the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Timelapse on the SlaveVoyages database, which visualizes the movements of over 30,000 ships carrying ten million people over the course of more than three hundred years, to get a sense of the total scope of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. We then watched the Intra-American Slave Trade Timelapse, which is based on O’Malley’s database of intercolonial shipments. It visualizes the movements of over 9,000 ships carrying 400,000 people over about three hundred years. Our discussion turned on the ways that O’Malley uses this data to fill out our understanding of the lived experiences of intercolonial trade.

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