Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of Slavery by Ana Lucia Araujo- forthcoming October 2024- 620 Pages

 Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of Slavery by Ana Lucia Araujo- forthcoming October 2024- 620 Pages is an extraordinarly valuable addition to the history of Trans-Atlantic Slavery.

Most works on the enslavement of people from Africa totally concentrate on Slavery in what is now the United States.  However as Professor Araujo details over ten times as many enslaved persons were transported to Brazil as to America.  

We are provided a detailed explanation as to how inter-African politics and warfare impacted the slave trade as well as how Early Europeans demand for slaves in turn caused conflicts between kingdoms.

Slave trade in sub- Sahara Africa can be traced back to at least 1000 years ago, as Araujo documents.  War captives or persons guilty of crimes were shipped via Arabic traders to the Ottoman Empire and India.  The first European slave merchants were from Portugal.  They both collaborated with African leaders who wanted European goods and captured people on their own.  Araujo detailed the horrible cruelty and extreme violence involved. Women and young girls were raped with impunity 

Araujo spends a lot of time on the lives of enslaved women in Brazil and on the sugar islands. Working on a sugar plantation was especially dangerous.  The population of Rio de Janeiro was over half black in 1850.  Araujo presented a marvelous account of the lives of enslaved women in Rio.

In South America European men arrived without families, seeking to get rich. Enslaved women could be raped, some bonds were formed but they were always unequal.  Children born to an enslaved woman were themselves slaves.

There is much more in this marvelous book.

"Humans in Shackles is a sweeping narrative history of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the Americas.

 

During the era of the Atlantic slave trade, more than twelve million enslaved Africans were forcibly transported to the Americas in cramped, inhuman conditions. Many of them died on the way, and those who survived had to endure further suffering in the violent conditions that met them on shore. Covering more than three hundred years, Humans in Shackles grapples with this history by emphasizing the lived experience of enslaved people in tracing the long, complex history of slavery in the Americas.

 

Based on twenty years of research, this book not only serves as a comprehensive history; it also expands that history by providing a truly transnational account that emphasizes the central role of Brazil in the Atlantic slave trade. It is also deeply informed by African history, and it shows how African practices and traditions survived and persisted in the Americas among communities of enslaved people. Drawing on primary sources including travel accounts, pamphlets, newspaper articles, slave narratives, and visual sources including both artworks and artefacts, Araujo illuminates the social, cultural, and religious lives of enslaved people working in plantations and urban areas; building families and cultivating affective ties; congregating and recreating their cultures; and organizing rebellions.

 

Humans in Shackles puts the lived experiences of enslaved peoples at the center of the story and investigates the heavy impact these atrocities had on the current wealth disparity of the Americas and rampant anti-Black racism." From the Publisher- The University of Chicago Press

From https://analuciaaraujo.org/

 

"I am a social and cultural historian writing transnational and comparative history. Currently, I am a Full Professor of History at the historically black Howard University in Washington DC, United States. I was trained in Brazil, Canada, and France with a PhD in History and Social and Historical Anthropology (2007), a PhD in Art History (2004), an MA in History (1998), and a BA in Visual Arts (1995).

My work explores the history of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade and their present-day legacies, including the long history of calls for reparations for slavery and colonialism. My books and articles explore the memory, heritage, and visual culture of slavery. I write, speak, and publish in English, Portuguese, French, and Spanish and my work has been translated into German and Dutch. My scholarship has been internationally recognized through fellowships, awards, and professional offices.

In 2023, Carnegie Corporation New York named me “Great Immigrant, Great American,” an annual list honoring the contribution of US naturalized citizens to democracy and America. I also received a Getty Residential Senior Scholar Grant, and therefore spent the first semester of 2023 at the Getty Research Institute, in Los Angeles, CA.

In 2024, I was one of the eight scholars in the United States to receive the inaugural ACLS HBCU fellowship. In Spring 2022, I was a member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute of Advanced Study (funding provided by the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation), Princeton, NJ. I was also awarded the Franklin Research Grant of the American Philosophical Society (2021/22).

I just published the book The Gift: How Objects of Prestige Shaped the Atlantic Slave Trade and Colonialism  with Cambridge University Press. The book explores how European-made luxurious artifacts, including objects that incorporate formal and symbolic elements found in West African and West Central African artifacts, shaped the interactions between Africans and Europeans during the era of the Atlantic slave trade and colonialism. The book follows the trajectory of a ceremonial sword given by a French ship captain to a local agent of the Kingdom of Ngoyo on the Loango coast, which later was found in Dahomey, from where it was looted by the French troops at the end of the nineteenth century. Research for this book was supported by the grants of Getty Research Institute and the American Philosophical Society, and the fellowship of the Institute for Advanced Study.

My book Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of Slavery in the Americas (University of Chicago Press) will be published in October 2024. The book is a hemispheric and narrative history of slavery in the Americas. A trade academic book intended for general readers, Humans in Shackles places Brazil (the country that imported the largest number of enslaved Africans in the Americas), the African continent, slave resistance, and enslaved women at the center of this painful history.

Also, a new revised and expanded edition of my book Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade: A Transnational and Comparative History was published with Bloomsbury in November 2023.

Since 2017,  I have been a member of the International Scientific Committee of the UNESCO “Routes of Enslaved Peoples” Project (former Slave Route Project). I am also a member of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History Scholarly Advisory Board and an elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, London, UK.  In 2019, I was a Visiting Professor at the University of Paris VIII, France, and was a visiting fellow at the Museum of World Cultures (former Tropenmuseum) in Amsterdam in 2023. I am also a member of the Editorial Board of the British journal Slavery and Abolition and of the advisory board of the Memory Studies Association. Previously, I served on the Board of Editors of the American Historical Review, the flagship journal of the American Historical Association(2019-2023), on the Executive Committee of the Brazilian Studies Association (2016-2020), and on the Executive Board of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (2019-2022).

I have lectured about the history of Atlantic slavery and the slave trade in the United States, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, France, England, Portugal, Germany, the Netherlands, and South Africa. I authored or edited over fifteen books.  My other recent books include Slavery in the Age of Memory: Engaging the Past (Bloomsbury, 2020), named one of the “Best Black History Books” of 2020 by Black Perspectives, the award-winning blog of the African American Intellectual History Society and Museums and Atlantic Slavery (part of the Museums in Focus series) published by Routledge in April 2021. My book Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade: A Transnational and Comparative History (2017) examines from a transnational perspective the long history of the demands of reparations for slavery and the slave trade in the Americas, Europe, and Africa. 

Currently, I have three book projects in progress: The Power of Art: The World Black Artists Made in the Americas (under contract with Cambridge University Press), Global Slavery: A Visual History (under contract with Bloomsbury), and Oceans of Tears: The French Trade in Enslaved Africans (under contract with Cambridge University Press).

Engaging with the public is an important dimension of my work. My opinion articles and reviews in English and Portuguese appeared in Slate, the Washington Post, Newsweek, History News Network, African Arguments, Intercept Brasil, Setenta e Quatro, and the Brazilian magazine Ciência Hoje. My work has been featured in several media outlets in the United States, Britain, Portugal, Canada, Brazil, Spain, France, and the Netherlands. 

In 2023, I created and launched the #Slaveryarchive Digital Initiative. Based on its own social media accounts on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, the initiative now gives a permanent space to the #slaveryarchive posts. The #Slaveryarchive Digital Initiative is intended to educate the public about the history of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade and will also promote scholarship in this field via book talks on video, a podcast, book reviews, syllabi, and the #Slaveryarchive Book "

I give my greatest thanks to Professor Araujo for this profound  book.

Mel Ulm

The Reading Life 

The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave Breeding Industry by Ned and Constance Sublette - 2015 - 752 pages

The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave Breeding Industry by Ned and Constance Sublette - 2015 - 752 pages

An Autodidactic Corner Selection

The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave Breeding Industry should be required reading for all teachers of American history.  It shows how slavery corrupted all slavers and inflicted terrible cruelty on the victims.  I cannot find a way to adequately praise this book. Those taught the after school cartoon version of the founding of America will be shocked maybe even hurt by what they learn about God - Like figures like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.  This book left me feeling humbled by my own ignorance of American history.  

Date line (from information in The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave Breeding Industry)

1513 circa - The Spanish first introduce slaves in their territory Florida

1619- First record of slaves entering into Virginia on a Dutch Ship

1623 - Dutch East India Company begins to aggressively import captured persons from Africa.  Throughout the slavery era, western trading companies backed by sovereign powers encouraged war between African tribes in which those taken in war were sold.

1641 - Puritans codify slavery - allowing prisoners of war to be held as slaves, a codicil that will have very destructive consequences on the West Coast of Africa.

1776 - The USA begins the revolutionary war.  Thomas Jefferson authors the declaration of Independence.  His words elegantly claimed liberty was a right of all.  

1781 - Hostilities end in America's victory

1783 - The Treaty of Paris recognizes America's independent status.  The territory of the USA is extended to Mississippi.  A massive political fight began over the expansion of slavery into new areas

In the constitution slaves count as 3/5th of a person, this gave slave holding states a big advantage politically.

1810 - the importation of slaves into USA is banned.  This was sponsored and pushed for by then President Thomas Jefferson.  The as taught in schools myth is that this showed Jefferson, a slave owner, long term wanted to end slavery.  The exposure of the venality and self-serving reasons for Jefferson's actions is presented in completely convincing details. By stopping the import of slaves those already here became much more valuable.  It became very profitable to breed slaves.  When a slave was too old for field work, Jefferson cut their food rations in half.  He was such a poor business man, on his death his slaves had to be sold by auction to partially liquidate his debts.  He is acknowledged as very well read, an elegant writer, and a first rate horseman.  His slave mistress had the same father as his deceased wife.  His mistress, Sally Hemmings was three quarters white, then called a quadroon.  Children of enslaved women were slaves.  

The costliest slave was a light skinned early teenage female, called "A Fancy Girl".  In auctions in New Orleans, they were sold naked. Owners had full sexual rights to slaves and many a southern matron sold off slaves resembling their husbands.

1803 - The Louisiana Purchase doubles the territory of the country, opening up a vast market for slaves.  New Orleans become a major city for the slave trade

1821 - Florida becomes a USA Territory

1830 era. Slaves are subject to experimental surgery, mostly on women designed to make them better breeders.

By 1850 there were about four million enslaved persons.

1861 - civil war begins, the southern states wanted slavery.  The common poor people of the southern states were told it was a war for liberty, that the north wanted to have their slaves take over.

1865 - 13th Amendment is signed freeing the slaves.  This was intended, and it worked, to destroy the financial system and economy of the south.

The biggest theme of The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave Breeding Industry  is to show how slaves were more than just labor.  Slaves represented a huge stock pile of wealth.  You could borrow on them at the bank, breed them and sell of your surplus (children were put to work at about age five, women impregnated as soon as biologically possible.  Banks would package together loans on slaves and sell them, just as are housing loans now.

Ned and Constance Sublette supply hundreds of horrifying details on the slave trade.  They go into much detail on the political infighting over slavery in the era up to 1865.  Eight of the first twelve presidents owned slaves.  Andrew Jackson is given a very negative portrayal, very well deserved.  

Slave ownership destroyed much of the integrity of slave owners.  Few seemed to realize the hypocrisy of claiming you believe all men are entitled to freedom while owning slaves.  

This book will shock many.  It did me.  I am very grateful to Ned and Constance Sublette for the hard work behind this book.

To not read this is to be willfully protected by ignorance.

Mel u