Middle Passages: Syllabus
Course Readings:
Lecture/Discussion One: Introduction: Why Slaves? Why Africans? (Smallwood, Walvin)
Reading:
Gad Heuman and James Walvin, eds., The Slavery Reader, Part One:
Curtin, “Epidemiology and the Slave Trade”
Manning, “Why Africans? The Rise of the Slave Trade to 1700”
Eltis and Richardson, “West Africa and the Transatlantic Slave Trade: New Evidence of Long-Run Trends”
Eltis, “Labour and Coercion in the English Atlantic World from the Seventeenth to the early Twentieth Century”
Lecture/Discussion Two: Slavery in Africa (TBA)
Reading:
Miers & Kopytoff, Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, Part I, Chapter I Introduction.
Akosua Perbi, A History of Indigenous Slavery in Ghana, Chapters 2-5
Lecture/Discussion Three: Working with the Slave Trade Database (Smallwood, Walvin)
Reading:
David Eltis, “Construction of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database: Sources and Methods”(http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/database/methodology-01.faces)“Guide to Understanding and Using the Online Database and Website”
Excursion to Harewood
Reading:
James Walvin, ‘The Colonial Origins of English Wealth: The Harewoods of Yorkshire’
Lecture/Discussion Four: Ships, Crews, and Cargoes (Smallwood)
Reading:
Marcus Rediker, Slave Ship, Chapter 2
Stephanie E. Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora, Chapter 3
Lecture/Discussion Five: Life and Death in the Ocean Crossing (Walvin)
Reading:
James Walvin, Black Ivory: A History of British Slavery, Chapter 4
Herbert S. Klein and Stanley L. Engerman, “Long-Term Trends in African Mortality in the Transatlantic Slave Trade,” Slavery & Abolition, 18: 1 (1997), 36-48
Excursion to Liverpool
Reading:
Jane Longmore, ‘Cemented by the Blood of a Negro?’ The Impact of the Slave Trade on Eighteenth-Century Liverpool’, D. Richardson, S. Schwarz and T. Tibbles, eds., Liverpool and Transatlantic Slavery
Jacqueline Nassy Brown, ‘Enslaving history: Narratives on Local Whiteness in a Black Atlantic Port,’ American Ethnologist 27.2 (2000), pp.340-70
Lecture/Discussion Six: Impact of the Slave Trade in Africa and the Americas (Smallwood)
Reading:
Patrick Manning, Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental, and African Slave Trades, Chapter 7
Anne C. Bailey, African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade, Chapter 6
Stephanie E. Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery, Chapter 7
Lecture/Discussion Seven: Antislavery and Abolition of the Slave Trade (Walvin)
Reading:
James Walvin, Atlas of Slavery, Chapter 18
Marcus Rediker, Slave Ship, Chapter 10
Akosua Adoma Perbi, Indigenous Slavery in Ghana, pp. 152-169
Lecture/Discussion Eight: The Impact of the Slave Trade on African Society Today (Van Den Bersselaar)
Reading:
Gareth Austin, “The ‘Reversal of Fortune’ Thesis and the Compression of History: Perspectives from African and Comparative Economic History”
Joseph E. Inikori, “Ideology Versus the Tyranny of Paradigm: Historians and the Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on African Societies”
Nathan Nunn, “The Long-Term Effects of Africa’s Slave Trades”