Slavery at Sea

Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage

By: Sowande’ M Mustakeem

Narrated by: Mia Ellis

Most times left solely within the confine of plantation narratives, slavery was far from a land-based phenomenon. This book reveals for the first time how it took critical shape at sea. Expanding the gaze even more widely, the book centers on how the oceanic transport of human cargoes - known as the infamous Middle Passage - comprised a violently regulated process foundational to the institution of bondage.

Sowande' Mustakeem's groundbreaking study goes inside the Atlantic slave trade to explore the social conditions and human costs embedded in the world of maritime slavery. Mining ship logs, records, and personal documents, Mustakeem teases out the social histories produced between those on traveling ships: slaves, captains, sailors, and surgeons. As she shows, crewmen manufactured captives through enforced dependency, relentless cycles of physical, psychological terror, and pain that led to the making - and unmaking - of enslaved Africans held and transported onboard slave ships. Mustakeem relates how this process, and related power struggles, played out not just for adult men, but also for women, children, teens, infants, nursing mothers, the elderly, diseased, ailing, and dying.

©2016 the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois (P)2021 Tantor

True History

I was captivated by all of the information of history that has never been taught or dicussed. There is so much white washing of history in general and in particular black and brown history. I was saddened,sickend and disheartened although never shocked by the treatment of "bonded people" . I'm glad i chose to listen to this book no matter how hard, considering all i learned. I wish it was shared more with school students but sadly i know it never will happen, so more parents should share this knowledge with their children. I recommend it for everyone who wants true history.

Raw and authentic truth of the middle passage

This book is amazing telling a story of real life events upon slave ships for enslaved and the mariners. Thank you to the author for sharing this monumental history.

Crock of Poo

This book is full of fibs when it comes to the manner of slavery in the British Colonies. There was in actuality only about 70 years that it was under American control, and would have disappeared on its own under the Declaration of Independence. When you talk about slavery as an institution, and compare it to the rest of the world, it was nothing near as you led to believe. You will not read any of the above in this book by the way, and what a poorly researched book.