Global Studies Public Forum: Paper Prompt #1

Global Studies Public Forum: Paper Prompt #1

Slavery refers to a relationship between two or more individuals that are economical, social, and sometimes emotional. There are certain essential features of any connection between the slaveholder and the slave. They are the forms of control that are executed upon the slave. The power is founded on the actual or the potential use of violence. It entails the absence of any payment beyond maintenance, and the misuse of the labour or other features of slave for economic benefits. While there are essential elements that determine what slavery is, the components and the slave/slaveholder relationships are packaged in several ways that reflect their cultural and social context. The above assertions are acceptable, but they are open to any debate. In this essay, the claim will be tested, and an outline of the theory that rests upon it will be provided. The paper will explore how this global theoretical framework will help in a better understanding of the slave trade and the ongoing impact of slavery in the world today.

In the 18th century, there lived an African man by the name Wager Apongo. He led the most massive rebellion of the British Empire. However, before he participated in the tremendous Jamaican revolution that took place in 1760-1761, he was on a notable odyssey.

The rebellion was commonly referred to as the Tacky’s Revolt. At the time of intensive warfare and imperial expansion in West Africa, Apongo was a military leader (Bales and Kevin 2012, 20). He had been a remarkable guest of a chief agent of Cape Coast Castle by the name John Cape. The Cape Coast Castle was Britain’s major stronghold on the Gold Coast. Captain Arthur Forrest of HMS Wager renamed Apongo for the Royal Navy warship in the 1740s when Apongo was captured and sold to him. Wager reencountered John Cape in Jamaica at the Westmoreland Parish where he came in bondage to Forrest’s plantation. By that time, John Cape had retired, and would sometimes entertain his friend from the Old World (Bales and Kevin 2012, 21). He laid the table for weekend visits and treated the slave with honour insinuating that one-day Apongo would be set free. Whatever understanding was there between the two individuals did not go beyond 1756 when John Cape died. In the subsequent years, Wager started to plan and organize a war against the whites and waited for an opportune time to strike.

Wager and other over one thousand enslaved black individuals took advantage of Britain’s war against its European rivals (Bales and Kevin 2012,22). They were involved in a series of an uprising, which started on April 7 and lasted for 18 months. During that time, the rebels killed 60 whites and destroyed property worth tens of thousands pounds. More than 500 black people were killed in battle during the repression, and the suppression of revolt that followed and other 500 were conveyed from the island for life. Based on the histories of the conflict that were written by two slaveholders, the rebellion came up at the initiation of Tacky, an African man who had been chief in Guinea. Tacky was recognized for his military prowess, and he was organized and executed by the people from the West African region that stretched from Komoe to Volta Rivers. Slaveholders realized that these Africans were rebellious and their ill-repute has lasted to this day.

The engagement of Wager in the revolt might also justify this martial repute. People always hear about rebels responding to their enslavement by rising against their bosses. Also, they hear about the falling of elite people into slavery. However, the intricate patterns of antagonism and alliance have not been acknowledged over time. Also, there is no acknowledgment of the great distance that defines relations such as those among John Cape, Apongo and Arthur Forrest. The recognition of how life histories such as theirs were intertwined enables the comprehension of how the slave trade prompted the diasporic warfare. The warfare established and shook the Atlantic world in the 18th century.

The Atlantic odyssey of Apongo illustrates the martial characteristics of Atlantic slavery. It highlights the predicament of the European and African empires with the massive involuntary migrations that occurred in the 18th century (Quirk and Joel 2011, 15) The 1760 to 1761 revolt was the unpredictable admixture of many military campaigns and journeys rather than a conflict between the slaves and the masters. Individuals who were involved in the uprising travelled for long and bore many turns of fortune, ensnaring their several episodes into one story. The journeys of different individuals were combined in Tacky’s revolt to illustrate its causes and consequences (Lovejoy and Paul E 2011, 33). The various people whose itineraries were brought together include the imperial functionaries, the women and children, planters, the sailors and soldiers from Europe, merchants, the enslaved men and the African and the Caribbean. All these people were involved in life-and-death fights to strike for freedom, establish state power, gather wealth, or merely survive.

The intercontinental slave trade removed individuals from the big area of Atlantic Africa and spread them all through the Americas (Quirk and Joel 2011, 20). Suddenly, those who had been military or administrative leaders found themselves dispersed by the trade and current winds and displaced from the sustaining landscapes. Also, they replanted in strange lands where they worked to recover some level of power and to establish other social lives. It was inevitable for some of them to conclude that war was the only solution to their enslavement. In most cases, the ordinary people were caught up in expansionary wars and slaving raids, which were performed across the ocean and set down in strange lands (Crane and Andrew 2013, 55). The masters there were brutal and exploitive. When the emerging conflicts seemed to liberate them or offered compensation for working for their masters, slaves could take up arms for any faction that seemed to provide a good life.

In the current world, the process of dispersal from the place of origin, relocation and adaptation to a strange land is well known to students who study cultural change. The students pull American, Atlantic, and African history into a single typical frame to identify the large-scale forms of change in African identity, religion and expression. The same expansive approach can illustrate how the chaos of enslavement and the everyday hostilities of life in captivity triggered a militant reaction. The reaction resulted in great uprisings reverberating back to Europe and across the Americas (Crane and Andrew 2013, 57). The intentions and tactics used by the rebels made it clear to the spectators that most of them had been African soldiers. All squads had military discipline and training and had at least acquired the knowledge of defensive tactics in Africa. Most of the American slave revolts can be viewed as the extensions of the African wars. Casting them does not just declare the significance of Africa in the creation of the Atlantic world (Lovejoy and Paul E 2011, 41). It also provides a revelation of how complex networks of Transregional power, belonging, conflict and migration gave the political history some of its distinguishing features. Understanding the slave revolt as a type of conflict is the starting point towards new cartography of slavery.

Works cited

Bales, Kevin. Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy, Updated with a New Preface. Univ of California Press, 2012.

Crane, Andrew. “Modern slavery as a management practice: Exploring the conditions and capabilities for human exploitation.” Academy of Management Review 38.1 (2013): 49-69.

Quirk, Joel. The anti-slavery project: From the slave trade to human trafficking. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.

Lovejoy, Paul E. Transformations in slavery: a history of slavery in Africa. Vol. 117. Cambridge University Press, 2011.