Enslaved Africans. A Discussion of Essay

Life had not been easy for the prisoners that survived, as they had been taken over and prepared for their lives as slaves. The operation of preparation had been called "seasoning" and it involved a sort of training process which would make blacks good slaves for the American world.

The main African centers had been found in Senegambia, Sierra-Leone, Oyo, Dahomey, and Benin. The trip from inland towards the ports in which the European awaited for the slaves had also been unforgiving for the prisoners. Captives would have to travel for hundreds of miles while they were tied up in order to prevent them from running away. Many of them died on their way towards the ports.

The time it took for ships to get from Africa to America varied between forty days and six months. The conditions onboard ships had been horrible and prisoners had been packed by ship captains to the last loading limit in order for their profits to grow. Approximately one third from all the black slaves ever to have been captured for the purpose of being sold to Europeans had died on the road in the ships that they had been forced to embark on. Another third of them supposedly died on their way from Africa to America, or during the process of seasoning.

Tens of millions of African slaves have been transported over the Atlantic between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries, with most of the black slaves being taken into Brazil.After landing on the American continent slaves were being sold to their new masters. During the few days of staying in America, slaves would be taken through the process of seasoning. The seasoning process involved masters taking their new slaves and teaching them the basic rules which they would have to obey. This accommodation also took its toll with slaves dying in large numbers as a result of the fact that they had been put to work until exhaustion.

There are no words to describe the horrors through which Africans had to go until they reached the American continent. The fact that the people that enslaved them were belonging to their own race made it more difficult for them to accept their regrettable fate. The travel from inland to the African ports, from Africa to America, and the seasoning, certainly contributed in killing the souls of those subjected to such horrors. Slavery is something that all people should regret for having been practiced by sons and daughters of the human race.

Works Cited

Clark Hine, William C. Hine, Stanley Harold. "The Africa-American Odyssey." Prentice Hall, 2005.

Doudou Diene. "From Chains to Bonds: The Slave Trade Revisited." Books/UNESCO, 2001.

Darlene Clark Hine, William C. Hine, Stanley Harold. "The Africa-American Odyssey." Prentice Hall, 2005.

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Darlene Clark Hine, William C. Hine, Stanley Harold. "The Africa-American Odyssey." Prentice Hall, 2005.

Doudou Diene. "From Chains to Bonds: The….....