WEBVTT

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- (Narrator) This is the story of a world
whose borders and territories

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were drawn by the slave trade,

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where violence, subjugation, 
and profit imposed their own routes.

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This criminal system shaped our history,
and our world.

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On São Tomé, the Portuguese
invented an economic model

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with unprecedented profitability:
the sugar plantation.

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- (English voiceover) This was 
the first black colony,

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the first slave society.

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- (English voiceover) We witnessed
the marriage of the black men

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with sugar cane.

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- (Narrator) In the 16th century,
other European powers

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were eager to follow their model.

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Their greed would plunge 
an entire continent

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into chaos and violence.

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Nearly 13 million Africans were cast onto
new slavery routes to the new world,

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where the English, the French,
and the Dutch hoped to become wealthy;

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immeasurably wealthy.

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[intense music with strong bass drum beat]

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Because the Caribbean
has similar climatic features to São Tomé,

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it eventually became
the principal crossroads

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of the slave trader's routes.

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For people in the western world,

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these islands are today
associated with vacation.

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Guadeloupe offers tourists
a dream destination.

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Sunshine and pristine nature,

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rekindling myths of a lost paradise.

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Holidaymakers tend to confine themselves
to the beaches of Le Gosier,

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Sainte-Anne, and Saint François.

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But as this sign indicates,
they are all-too-close

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to another side of the island's heritage

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that was anything but a paradise.

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Just a few meters away from the bathers

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is a burial site where countless
skeletons were discovered.

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Between 500 and 1,000 graves
are still buried beneath the sand.

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The Raisins Clairs beach is one of 15 
slave cemeteries that have been excavated.

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15, among the 1,000
that exist in the Caribbean.

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89 skeletons have been exhumed
by French archaeological research experts.

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Judging by the state of the bones,
they concluded that these men and women

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had not reached the age of 30.

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By the time of their death,
the toll from working on the plantations

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had so deformed their bodies
that they seemed more like 75 year olds.

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These people were human guinea pigs
for the sugar experiment,

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the collateral damage
of an unprecedented trade war:

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The Sugar War.

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- 74% of all slaves carried off,

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were carried off because of sugar.

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If you want to understand the slave trade,
you just need to know about sugar.

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Sugar proved more addictive
than pepper or cinnamon.

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From the 17th century onward,

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Europeans craved this rare
and expensive commodity.

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In London, Amsterdam, and Paris,
sugar fever was rampant,

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prompting a new generation of adventurers
to go to any extremes to get it.

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Shipowners and fitters,
merchants and pirates,

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all knew that to produce sugar,
you needed a lot of slaves.

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John Hawkins was one of these
new entrepreneurs

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for whom profit reigned supreme.

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The English privateer was a pioneer
in understanding that a fortune

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could be made by shipping Black captives
to the New World.

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In the mid 16th century,
he convinced Queen Elizabeth I

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to lend him a ship, The Jesus of Lubec.

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For the expedition,
Hawkins conspicuously set the tone

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by choosing a trussed up Black man
on his emblem.

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- (Male speaker) "I do confirm
to your highness

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"that I will bring home 40,000 marks
without any offense of the least

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to any of Your Highnesses,
allies, or friends.

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"I will conduct this enterprise
and turn it to the benefit

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"of your whole realm,
with Your Highness' consent.

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"The voyage I propose
is to load negroes in Guinea

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"and sell them in the West Indies,

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"in truck of pearls, gold, and emeralds
that I will bring back in abundance."

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- (Narrator) 1620,
a century after sugar plantations

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were introduced in Brazil.

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The Atlantic became the battleground
for the sugar war.

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England, The Netherlands, and France

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wanted to break Spain
and Portugal's hegemony.

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In the Caribbean,
the Dutch took control

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of Curaçao, Sint Eustatius,
and Saint Martin.

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The French: Guadeloupe, Martinique,
Grenada and Saint-Domingue.

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The English occupied The Bahamas,
Jamaica, Antigua, Barbados and Dominica.

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Only Cuba and Puerto Rico
remained under Spanish rule.

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After the extermination
of the native Arawak people,

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the first sugar canes flourished
on this fertile land.

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- The Caribbean became
a space of conquest

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for the Europeans very early on.

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Really, it was the first place
that Columbus landed in the new world,

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the first place that the Spanish
began to search for gold,

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and the first place they began
to enslave the Indians.

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So they were thoroughgoing
colonial spaces

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created by design of European planters

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and imperial policy makers.

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and for their profit, right?

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There aren't so many places

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where you can completely
overlay a territory like that.

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So, in some ways, the Caribbean
is the space where you find

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the purest of Colonial territories.

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Where the masters of the space
actually get to create the space

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to suit their own needs.

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- (Narrator) In Guadalupe,
every plot of land,

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every single square inch of ground,

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is connected to this violent
and deeply rooted history.

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Today, all that is left of sugar war
is a field of ruins.

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Of the 250 sugar refineries active
in the late 19th century,

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only two remain in operation.

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In 2017, experts from France's

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National Institute of Preventive
Archeological Research

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exhumed the remains of the Saint Jacques
residence and sugar refinery

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in Anse-Bertrand:

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A mill, stock rooms,
and three rows of so-called "negro huts"

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where hundreds of slaves
were penned up together.

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In this brutal work camp, human beings
were but one tool among others.

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Each became a mechanized, emaciated body,

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consumed by work until their final breath.

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- Both the time in which the slaves
were digging the cane holes

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and the times in which they're harvesting

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were really the peak of the labor
on a plantation.

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You could almost see the slaves
wasting away

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when they were digging these cane holes
because the work was so strenuous

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and they were getting fed so poorly.

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You found women in all of the gangs,

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often times doing the hardest,
dirtiest labor on the plantation.

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Alongside the men, or even before the men.

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And one of the things that means,

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when you find young women doing
this quite debilitating labor,

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is that the birth rates are very low
and the mortality rates,

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the infant mortality
rate is shockingly high.

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In the mid-18th century,
people talked about

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9 out of 10 infants born 
to enslaved Jamaican women

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dying, right, within the first year.

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So, there's no way in which the plantation
can reproduce itself

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under those kinds of conditions.

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- (English voiceover) The plantations
were managed by overseers

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who saw the slaves
in purely functional terms.

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[speaking French]

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This was absolute exploitation
of the workforce.

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It was a very particular society

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because the average rate
of life expectancy on a plantation

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was extremely low,

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about 8 to 10 years after arriving.

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[speaking French]

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- (English voiceover)
The logic of the slave system

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was one where the availability
of the workforce had to be absolute.

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And for this, man was conceived
as an accessory of the land.

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He appeared as such in house inventories.

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Slaves are listed next to records
for livestock or manufacturing implements.

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That's the archaic aspect,

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which was put to use
by a capitalist system,

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and which largely met
market supply and demand,

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with its fluctuations, needs,
and competition:

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Free competition.

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- (Narrator) The sugar plantations
saw slavery enter a new era.

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The stronger the demand for sugar,
the more the slave trade expanded,

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and the more the slave traders
sought support from banks

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to finance their expeditions.

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London is one of the oldest centers
of global finance.

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The city of London was the first
to create a commodities exchange,

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to develop credit markets,
and to issue banknotes on a massive scale.

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Without the invention
of a centralized banking system,

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the explosion of the slave trade
in the 17th century

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would not have been possible.

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Preparing for a slave expedition
was expensive,

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and having a financial arsenal

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gave England a decisive advantage
over its competitors.

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- You've got to remember that the State
is getting a tremendous amount of revenue

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from the plantation complex,

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so they had a very strong,
vested interest in the slave trade.

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If you had gone to the king of England
in 1680 and said,

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"Look, I'm gonna give you a choice.

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"You can either have these 13 colonies
in North America,

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"or you can have this one little island
called Barbados."

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He would have taken Barbados
in a split second

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because of the sugar revenues.

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And this is something
that's going to persist

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as a very important interest
for European states

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up until the very end of slavery.

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To support the sugar war,
the city lent money on a colossal scale.

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In the midst of these
steel and glass buildings,

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the two pillars of the English economy
that financed the slave trade

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are still prominent on the London skyline.

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At the heart of the financial district
is the venerable bank of England,

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the world's first central bank.

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A couple of blocks away
is Britain's most powerful

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insurance company,
the prestigious Lloyd's of London.

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Atlantic slave traders
had to take on heavy debts

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to charter their ships.

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Without an insurance company,

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most would risk ruin
on their first expedition.

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The slave traders made investments
as if playing a game of poker.

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The risks were high, but if successful,

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the return would far outweigh
any other type of investment.

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Insurers like Lloyd's
had everything to gain

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by participating in this game of chance.

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A successful expedition could yield
up to three times the initial stake.

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In the Lloyd's archives,
little evidence remains

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of the profits amassed by insuring
these high-risk expeditions.

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Most accounting records were lost
in a fire in 1838,

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the same year that slavery
was abolished in the British Caribbean.

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Ports had to adapt
to this initial scramble

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for Africa and the Caribbean.

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In London, Blackwall became
the slave trade's principal wharf.

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All manner of goods were sold here.

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Precious fabrics, jewels, porcelain,
weapons, and brandy.

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All bought on credit 
with the bank's money.

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A giant port complex gradually evolved.

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A city within a city,
entirely devoted to this new business.

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Following London in 1663,

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other seaports rushed to take advantage
of this lucrative trade.

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Lorient, Copenhagen, La Rochelle,

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Bristol, Nantes, Liverpool,

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Bordeaux, Antwerp.

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From all over Europe,
slave ships set sail for Africa.

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- When I began to see slave ships leaving

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from not just Liverpool and Nantes,

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but from every port in the Atlantic.

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As soon as a port becomes big enough
to contemplate a transoceanic voyage,

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there's a good chance that voyage
is going to be a slave trade voyage.

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And we've got like 170 separate ports, 
tiny places.

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Today, they've got no idea 
that once upon a time,

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they sent out slave voyages.

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Saint Peter's Port in the Channel Islands,
charming place.

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And yet, it's a slave trade port.

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[snare drum cadence]

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Over a period of two centuries,
more than 3,500 expeditions

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set sail from French ports.

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More than half of them
left from the port of Nantes,

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the main French hub of triangular trade.

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The sculpted figures along
the Quai de la Fosse, or Feydeau Island,

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are reminders of an era

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when the great slave trading families
displayed their pride

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in being the main architects
of the city's wealth.

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It was they who made Nantes
France's leading commercial port.

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[speaking French]

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- (English voiceover)
Wealth came from slavery.

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There were negotiators, ship owners,
and all those who produced foodstuffs.

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Vintners, flour producers,
fabric producers, hardware producers.

00:14:39.746 --> 00:14:41.096 line:1
[speaking French]

00:14:42.893 --> 00:14:44.296 line:1
[speaking French]

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- (English voiceover) The Atlantic ports
also generated wealth

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for areas that stretched very far inland,

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as far as Orléans, in the case of Nantes.

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Goods were also transported along rivers.

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So the wealth that slavery
produced was essential for France.

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[speaking French]

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- (Narrator) 1669. From Nantes,
Bordeaux, La Rochelle and Le Havre,

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slavery money flowed back up rivers

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to Rouen, Orléans and Angoulême.

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It had such repercussions on inland areas
that it became a national objective.

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Louis XIV knew that to win the sugar war,

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he would need a powerful fleet.

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The king ordered the construction
of 500 galleons.

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The Atlantic became the theater
of a naval war

00:15:38.321 --> 00:15:40.674
between France, England and
the Netherlands.

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A bitter fight, in which each sunken ship
was a total loss

00:15:44.870 --> 00:15:46.967
for the respective country's economy.

00:15:48.641 --> 00:15:50.017
[speaking French]

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- (English voiceover) It was
very expensive to build and equip

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a 74-gun ship and pay its crew.

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Ultimately, who bore the cost?

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The bill for financing these wars,
the financing of ships and arsenals,

00:16:05.237 --> 00:16:07.692
was mainly footed by French peasants.

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The slave trade fleets were protected.

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16,000 galleons were already protecting
Dutch commercial ships,

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while the 3,000 light and fast
Royal Navy cruisers

00:16:21.137 --> 00:16:22.722
terrified their adversaries.

00:16:23.225 --> 00:16:25.737
France paled in comparison
to these armadas.

00:16:29.496 --> 00:16:32.104
Each nation needed a fortress
in Africa

00:16:32.104 --> 00:16:34.408
if it were to compete
in the Atlantic race.

00:16:35.126 --> 00:16:37.064
Just like on the Caribbean islands,

00:16:37.064 --> 00:16:40.417
these forts were the bastions of 
triangular trade.

00:16:41.601 --> 00:16:43.272
As military bases,

00:16:43.272 --> 00:16:46.790
they offered a secure store
for bartered goods and captives

00:16:46.790 --> 00:16:48.348
before departure by sea.

00:16:53.273 --> 00:16:54.818
In less than 80 years,

00:16:54.818 --> 00:16:58.261
43 such forts were built
from Senegal to the Niger Delta.

00:16:58.792 --> 00:17:02.106
Every stone, every beam,
every element of masonry

00:17:02.106 --> 00:17:04.190
was transported by boat from Europe.

00:17:06.743 --> 00:17:09.392
- Most of these fortresses
are built by states.

00:17:09.704 --> 00:17:14.093
Individual capitalists
or even groups of trading capitalists

00:17:14.093 --> 00:17:16.577
did not have that kind of money

00:17:16.577 --> 00:17:19.344
in order to build
those sorts of fortresses.

00:17:19.978 --> 00:17:22.359
- (Narrator) The English
already had thirteen,

00:17:22.359 --> 00:17:24.041
the Dutch ten, the Danish five.

00:17:24.397 --> 00:17:26.471
Even the Prussians,
with their three forts,

00:17:26.471 --> 00:17:27.760
surpassed the French.

00:17:28.462 --> 00:17:30.754
On the Gold Coast, in today’s Ghana,

00:17:30.754 --> 00:17:34.969
the Fante and Ashanti rented Europeans
plots of land to build their forts.

00:17:35.587 --> 00:17:39.008
The Europeans established
trading posts and fortresses

00:17:39.008 --> 00:17:40.555
all along the Atlantic coast,

00:17:40.555 --> 00:17:43.223
From the Ewé territory
to the Kongo Kingdom.

00:17:44.154 --> 00:17:47.821
Equatorial Africa became
the world’s principal source of slaves.

00:17:52.785 --> 00:17:56.830
In this accounting document
written in 1688,

00:17:56.830 --> 00:18:02.538
we learn that over an 8-year period,
it shipped 60,783 slaves.

00:18:03.480 --> 00:18:08.038
Each cost the Royal African Company
8 to 12 pounds sterling

00:18:08.038 --> 00:18:12.671
the equivalent of between 
€950 and €1500 today.

00:18:13.503 --> 00:18:15.343
They were all bought with trade goods.

00:18:15.343 --> 00:18:17.765
The demand for slaves was so high

00:18:17.765 --> 00:18:21.352
that the Europeans pressured their
African partners to help them

00:18:21.352 --> 00:18:26.173
plan, rationalize, and industrialize
their system of mass deportation.

00:18:30.980 --> 00:18:33.701 line:1
- Slaves were often bought on credit.

00:18:33.977 --> 00:18:38.067
And so that meant that European ships
would come,

00:18:38.067 --> 00:18:42.809
they would have a whole cargo
full of textiles, different metal ware,

00:18:42.809 --> 00:18:47.319
rum, tobacco, whatever.

00:18:47.808 --> 00:18:51.381
And these would be given
to the local merchants,

00:18:51.381 --> 00:18:53.080
extended to them on credit.

00:18:53.080 --> 00:18:55.733
And then the merchants
would go inland with those goods

00:18:55.697 --> 00:18:57.491
and buy slaves and come back.

00:18:58.011 --> 00:19:02.584
- The biggest impact
was the level of violence,

00:19:02.584 --> 00:19:04.263
the rising level of violence,

00:19:04.263 --> 00:19:09.933
the level of uncertainty
that permeated society everywhere,

00:19:09.933 --> 00:19:16.134
and also the opportunity 
for new "big men" to emerge,

00:19:16.134 --> 00:19:17.780
new powerful leaders.

00:19:17.780 --> 00:19:21.280
Somebody gets a hold of more firearms,
somebody gets more aggressive,

00:19:21.280 --> 00:19:24.911
they build their own personal chieftain
and, suddenly, they’re powerful.

00:19:27.191 --> 00:19:29.924
- (Narrator) Among these leaders
was Antera Duke,

00:19:29.924 --> 00:19:33.580
a major African trader 
from Calabar in what is now Nigeria.

00:19:34.311 --> 00:19:39.004
In his diary, he spoke of the methods
he used to terrorize captives:

00:19:39.004 --> 00:19:42.022
kidnapping, detention, and murder.

00:19:50.179 --> 00:19:52.668
(fire roars and crackles)

00:19:57.692 --> 00:20:00.031
- (Man) "About 4am, I got up.

00:20:00.031 --> 00:20:01.453
"Awful rain.

00:20:01.453 --> 00:20:03.867
"I walked up to the city trading house,

00:20:03.867 --> 00:20:05.869
"where I met all the gentlemen.

00:20:06.800 --> 00:20:08.310
"We got ready to cut off heads.

00:20:16.220 --> 00:20:19.785
"5am, we began decapitating slaves.

00:20:27.379 --> 00:20:29.627
"50 heads fell that day."

00:20:43.800 --> 00:20:48.130
- Very clearly, these sacrifices
were intended as a form of terrorism

00:20:48.130 --> 00:20:51.582
that were meant to make it very clear
to the population

00:20:51.582 --> 00:20:55.202
who was the boss and who was not,

00:20:55.202 --> 00:21:00.237
very much the way
the Mafioso type organizations behave

00:21:00.807 --> 00:21:04.359
in terms of making sure
that the members of the association

00:21:04.359 --> 00:21:06.525
respect whoever the Godfather is,

00:21:06.525 --> 00:21:10.736
and if anybody steps out of line
they can be assassinated or killed.

00:21:11.062 --> 00:21:13.408
And so they don't
step out of line, obviously.

00:21:14.438 --> 00:21:18.938
- (Narrator) For the benefit of a handful
of enterprising & unscrupulous profiteers,

00:21:18.938 --> 00:21:22.309
the entire continental economy
was transformed.

00:21:22.613 --> 00:21:26.903
On the coast, African brokers 
knew all of the inner workings

00:21:26.862 --> 00:21:28.530
of the sugar plantation.

00:21:31.087 --> 00:21:34.044
A slave ship from Saint-Malo,
“Le Marie Séraphique”,

00:21:34.044 --> 00:21:36.955
docked at Loango in the Kingdom of Kongo.

00:21:42.485 --> 00:21:45.298
Its captain’s drawings provide
exceptional details

00:21:45.298 --> 00:21:48.577
of the negotiations
between Europeans and Africans.

00:21:49.394 --> 00:21:51.245
The merchants from the coast knew

00:21:51.245 --> 00:21:54.231
that the Marie Séraphique’s captain
was in a hurry:

00:21:54.231 --> 00:21:57.309
he had to arrive in the West Indies
before harvest time.

00:21:57.925 --> 00:22:01.062
This was the time of year
when slaves sold best,

00:22:01.062 --> 00:22:03.487
and when the best sugar was available.

00:22:04.214 --> 00:22:06.544
So they deliberately 
prolonged negotiations

00:22:06.544 --> 00:22:07.777
to drive prices up.

00:22:08.459 --> 00:22:12.735
312 captives were rounded up
in 116 days.

00:22:15.478 --> 00:22:18.729
The Marie Séraphique arrived
in Saint-Domingue, now Haiti,

00:22:18.947 --> 00:22:20.774
one year after leaving France.

00:22:20.996 --> 00:22:23.311
Only nine captives had perished:

00:22:23.311 --> 00:22:26.680
a good ratio for the crew,
who celebrated their success.

00:22:27.652 --> 00:22:29.852
In the drawings of the
Marie Séraphique,

00:22:29.852 --> 00:22:32.447
no allusion to the
slaves’ suffering appears.

00:22:33.442 --> 00:22:35.262
They were dehumanized shadows,

00:22:35.551 --> 00:22:39.338
tallied and lined up like barrels
at the bottom of the hold;

00:22:40.302 --> 00:22:44.302
the transportation of human beings
turned into a nightmare.

00:22:48.093 --> 00:22:52.063
- It’s very important to understand
that violence onboard slave ships

00:22:52.063 --> 00:22:53.726
would be used selectively.

00:22:53.726 --> 00:22:55.406
In other words, no captain

00:22:55.406 --> 00:22:59.829 line:1
wanted to kill the entire allotment
of people on board

00:22:59.829 --> 00:23:02.059
because that voyage
would then have no profit.

00:23:02.478 --> 00:23:06.248
So when there was resistance,
what the captains would do,

00:23:06.248 --> 00:23:09.697
is organize a spectacle

00:23:09.697 --> 00:23:14.378
in which a small number of people
would be executed

00:23:14.378 --> 00:23:17.085
in extremely vicious, horrific ways

00:23:17.085 --> 00:23:21.655
as a means of terrorizing everybody else.

00:23:21.655 --> 00:23:24.598
All of the enslaved would be forced
to come up on deck

00:23:24.598 --> 00:23:26.413
in order to view these executions.

00:23:26.813 --> 00:23:31.247
One slave ship surgeon
said that frequently the decks,

NOTE Paragraph

00:23:31.247 --> 00:23:34.695
the main deck of the ship
would just be completely awash in blood

00:23:35.031 --> 00:23:37.579
in the aftermath of one of these
failed revolts.

00:23:37.930 --> 00:23:41.221
Revolts were common, and they were
almost always suppressed.

00:23:41.520 --> 00:23:46.696
But the captains would use that situation
to kill a small number,

00:23:46.696 --> 00:23:49.167
in order to intimidate everybody else,

00:23:49.167 --> 00:23:53.502
sending the message that if you resist us,
this will be your fate.

00:24:04.581 --> 00:24:09.443
I’ve also suggested that the slave ship
created categories of race.

00:24:10.775 --> 00:24:14.106
For example, the multi-ethnic Africans

00:24:14.106 --> 00:24:17.287
who are loaded on board a slave ship

00:24:17.386 --> 00:24:24.361
go aboard as Ebo or Fante or Mende,

00:24:24.361 --> 00:24:26.370
but when they come off the ship,

00:24:26.370 --> 00:24:30.835
they are unloaded as members
of a “negro race”.

00:24:31.236 --> 00:24:34.855
And the same parallel process
goes on among the sailors.

00:24:35.413 --> 00:24:41.223
These motley crews, they are English,
Irish, also in some cases African.

00:24:41.739 --> 00:24:44.561
They leave their European port,

00:24:44.561 --> 00:24:47.612
but when they arrive
on the West coast of Africa,

00:24:47.612 --> 00:24:49.354
they become the White people.

00:24:56.437 --> 00:24:57.900
- (Narrator) On Caribbean beaches,

00:24:57.900 --> 00:25:02.445
captives disembarked as “blacks”
in a world dominated by “whites”.

00:25:04.995 --> 00:25:06.998
[singing in unison and cracking whips]

00:25:07.209 --> 00:25:10.886
Providing an outlet for a society
founded on violence and race,

00:25:10.886 --> 00:25:13.431
the Carnival maintains
the memory of the days

00:25:13.431 --> 00:25:17.071
when the sugar industry imposed
its rhythms, rites, and seasons,

00:25:17.071 --> 00:25:19.430
and set the pace for island life.

00:25:20.997 --> 00:25:23.600
[singing in unison]

00:25:30.565 --> 00:25:33.330
It was an era when drummers
announced the end of winter

00:25:33.330 --> 00:25:35.655
and the resumption of cutting;

00:25:35.655 --> 00:25:38.848
when fleeing slaves
covered themselves in molasses

00:25:38.848 --> 00:25:40.531
to help prevent their re-capture.

00:25:43.061 --> 00:25:44.731
[speaking French]

00:25:44.731 --> 00:25:49.385
- (English voiceover) What progressively
distinguished Atlantic slavery,

00:25:49.385 --> 00:25:52.139
what made it different
from other systems of slavery,

00:25:52.139 --> 00:25:53.992
was the construction of race.

00:25:57.762 --> 00:26:00.376
It was precisely this superimposition
that developed

00:26:00.376 --> 00:26:04.018
between physical appearance,
with its own term, and status.

00:26:08.006 --> 00:26:12.287
At the extremities of this continuum 
of both status and color,

00:26:12.287 --> 00:26:15.578
there was the white master
and the black slave.

00:26:23.728 --> 00:26:27.566
The term "white” did not exist
prior to slave societies.

00:26:33.166 --> 00:26:36.630
The term "white" developed
specifically in the Antilles.

00:26:37.940 --> 00:26:40.900
So you can see how vital
this Atlantic slave area was

00:26:40.900 --> 00:26:43.352
to the construction 
of the racial categories

00:26:43.352 --> 00:26:44.607
that we still use now.

00:26:46.031 --> 00:26:49.634
We use them as though they hadn't
changed throughout time,

00:26:49.634 --> 00:26:51.146
when, in fact, they have.

00:26:57.809 --> 00:27:01.819
Race was a weapon of submission,
meant to carve into flesh

00:27:01.819 --> 00:27:07.266
the supposed inferiority of some people,
and the infinite superiority of others.

00:27:08.618 --> 00:27:10.932
Cut off from their roots
and their families,

00:27:10.932 --> 00:27:13.960
the Black slaves were reduced
to a servile mass,

00:27:13.960 --> 00:27:16.644
without names and without orientation.

00:27:19.015 --> 00:27:23.025
The plantation was a machine
that devoured its workforce.

00:27:23.496 --> 00:27:26.314
It needed a constant supply
of new arrivals.

00:27:27.432 --> 00:27:30.797
Landowners wanted to transform
the slaves’ bodies into tools.

00:27:32.208 --> 00:27:34.241
On plantations, whipping and torture

00:27:34.241 --> 00:27:36.690
were used to deprive them
of their humanity.

00:27:38.933 --> 00:27:43.106
In this garden of torture,
the master’s authority was absolute.

00:27:52.629 --> 00:27:56.308 line:1
- So you take, for example,
a character like Thomas Thistlewood.

00:27:56.308 --> 00:28:00.721 line:1
And you can almost see in his diaries
the escalation in the violence

00:28:00.721 --> 00:28:01.934
that he has to mete out,

00:28:01.934 --> 00:28:04.502
or that he thinks he has to mete out 
to the enslaved

00:28:04.502 --> 00:28:06.368
to keep them working on the plantation.

00:28:13.970 --> 00:28:17.033
-(Male voice) "I arrived as a foreman
on the new plantation

00:28:17.033 --> 00:28:18.445
"barely two weeks ago.

00:28:19.660 --> 00:28:22.653
"We had to carry out justice
on a negro who had escaped.

00:28:24.661 --> 00:28:25.876
"We severely whipped him

00:28:25.876 --> 00:28:29.602
"and rubbed pepper, salt,
and lime juice into his wounds.

00:28:34.408 --> 00:28:38.149
"Three days later, the body
of another slave who had escaped

00:28:38.459 --> 00:28:39.486
"was brought to us.

00:28:39.486 --> 00:28:43.021
"I cut off his head
and we burned the body in public.

00:28:43.021 --> 00:28:46.370
"That was the only way
to exert our control over the negroes.

00:28:49.681 --> 00:28:53.169
"In this affair, my reasoning
was adopted by all the colonies.

00:28:54.200 --> 00:28:58.309
"The unfortunate condition of the Negro
naturally led to us being hated.

00:28:59.162 --> 00:29:01.950
"Only strength and violence
can hold them back."

00:29:27.698 --> 00:29:31.064
- These kinds of tortures
and these kinds of punishments,

00:29:31.064 --> 00:29:32.423
this kind of brutality,

00:29:32.423 --> 00:29:35.381
actually became common-place
on these plantations

00:29:35.381 --> 00:29:38.083
where you had white people
working out among armies of slaves

00:29:38.083 --> 00:29:40.039
who they feared they could not control.

00:29:40.258 --> 00:29:43.925
The sound of the screaming
and the stench of the burning bodies,

00:29:43.925 --> 00:29:47.508
that also became a fundamental feature
of the Jamaican landscape, right?

00:29:47.508 --> 00:29:49.733
That is what plantation society is.

00:29:49.733 --> 00:29:53.155
It’s that smell, it’s that sound,
it’s that fear and terror

00:29:53.155 --> 00:29:56.226
that’s compelling people to work
and to obey their masters.

00:29:56.515 --> 00:29:59.569
There is no way to separate
that kind of terror

00:29:59.569 --> 00:30:01.384
from the labor on the plantation,

00:30:01.384 --> 00:30:04.025
from the profits that labor produced.

00:30:05.874 --> 00:30:08.186
- (Narrator) But the plantation owners
could not squander

00:30:08.186 --> 00:30:10.598
the slaves they had bought on credit.

00:30:10.598 --> 00:30:12.919
The state had financed
the shipment of slaves,

00:30:12.919 --> 00:30:15.249
and wanted
its return on investment.

00:30:22.735 --> 00:30:26.230
The plantation society relied
solely on market forces.

00:30:26.230 --> 00:30:30.955
Violence was a necessary cost,
and thus included in balance sheets.

00:30:31.825 --> 00:30:34.930
It took 4 years to amortize
the price of a slave.

00:30:35.332 --> 00:30:39.588
After that, they were valuable only
insofar as that they could hold a machete.

00:30:40.111 --> 00:30:43.895
This was the price to pay
so that Europe could eat sugar.

00:30:48.353 --> 00:30:52.030
- I don’t think that it’s possible to reduce
another human being to a mere cipher,

00:30:52.535 --> 00:30:54.136
to a mere extension of your will.

00:30:54.396 --> 00:30:56.622
And that’s where a lot of the tension

00:30:56.984 --> 00:31:00.698
and the possibilities for slave revolt
and resistance come in,

00:31:00.698 --> 00:31:05.239
because if my purpose
is to subject you absolutely,

00:31:05.239 --> 00:31:08.520
but you can never be subjected absolutely,

00:31:08.520 --> 00:31:10.496
we're always gonna have conflict.

00:31:10.659 --> 00:31:13.632
At the extremes of human domination,
even in slavery,

00:31:13.632 --> 00:31:15.997
we find there is always resistance,

00:31:15.997 --> 00:31:18.072
there is always tension,
and there is always struggle.

00:31:20.844 --> 00:31:22.078
- (Narrator) Throughout the Caribbean,

00:31:22.078 --> 00:31:26.357
escaped slaves took refuge
in the heart of the most remote forests.

00:31:26.357 --> 00:31:29.161
They were called “maroon slaves”,

00:31:29.161 --> 00:31:32.012
in reference to the Spanish word
“cimarrón”,

00:31:32.012 --> 00:31:35.655
which originally designated cattle
that had escaped into the wild.

00:31:35.655 --> 00:31:40.011
In these isolated places,
they began to organize resistance.

00:31:40.555 --> 00:31:41.867
In Jamaica they included

00:31:41.867 --> 00:31:44.831
Captain Leonard Parkinson,
the leader of the maroons,

00:31:44.831 --> 00:31:48.757
and Grandy Nanny, an Ashanti,
known as the “maroon priestess”;

00:31:49.887 --> 00:31:52.783
in Barbados, Boussa, an Igbo war chief.

00:31:53.665 --> 00:31:57.712
Through rebellion, the insurgents
found a name and an identity.

00:32:06.491 --> 00:32:08.744
- All throughout the mountainous areas
of Jamaica,

00:32:08.744 --> 00:32:12.335
you have these communities
of formerly enslaved people

00:32:12.335 --> 00:32:13.661
who have escaped,

00:32:13.661 --> 00:32:18.408
and they learn the territory,
they learn to cultivate crops there,

00:32:18.408 --> 00:32:22.109
and they learn to fight, as well:
harassing plantations,

00:32:22.109 --> 00:32:24.812
taking gun powder, getting new recruits,

00:32:24.812 --> 00:32:27.903
and maintaining and building communities
in the mountains, right?

00:32:27.903 --> 00:32:30.185
This becomes increasingly
a problem for the British,

00:32:30.185 --> 00:32:33.779
and by the second/third decade
of the 18th century,

00:32:33.779 --> 00:32:36.209
it breaks out into major war.

00:32:36.209 --> 00:32:38.356
And the British aren’t even sure
they're going to be able

00:32:38.356 --> 00:32:39.940
to maintain the Island.

00:32:41.260 --> 00:32:43.449
- (Narrator) The uprisings
spread to other islands,

00:32:43.730 --> 00:32:45.597
and then to the coast of Africa.

00:32:45.926 --> 00:32:49.298
Wars raged in the slave capturers'
hunting grounds,

00:32:49.298 --> 00:32:52.948
notably in Senegambia,
where Muslim religious leaders

00:32:52.948 --> 00:32:56.138
blamed slave-trade goods
for corrupting society.

00:32:58.362 --> 00:33:03.038
These outbursts of violence
plunged the sugar industry into a crisis,

00:33:03.038 --> 00:33:05.812
which also had an impact in Europe.

00:33:06.349 --> 00:33:08.746
A growing number of voices
expressed outrage

00:33:08.746 --> 00:33:10.615
at the horrors of the slave trade.

00:33:13.089 --> 00:33:15.239
- In all of the major slave trading ports,

00:33:15.239 --> 00:33:17.107 line:1
everybody knew the truth
of the slave trade.

00:33:17.107 --> 00:33:19.506 line:1
And I’ll tell you one way
in which they knew it.

00:33:20.166 --> 00:33:25.113 line:1
Slave-trading vessels
had a very specific smell,

00:33:25.519 --> 00:33:29.545
and you could never
get the smell out of the wood.

00:33:30.182 --> 00:33:35.511
In fact, it was said
in Charleston, South Carolina,

00:33:35.855 --> 00:33:37.521
which was the major port

00:33:37.521 --> 00:33:40.655
for the importation of slaves
into North America,

00:33:40.967 --> 00:33:45.526
that when the wind was blowing
off the water a certain way,

00:33:45.526 --> 00:33:48.739
you could smell a slave ship
before you could see it.

00:33:49.995 --> 00:33:55.346
What that meant was that
in every port, these ships,

00:33:55.566 --> 00:34:01.148
these ships of horror
that stank of human misery,

00:34:02.313 --> 00:34:05.011
that this was all very well known.

00:34:12.007 --> 00:34:16.591
- Certainly information about
the slave trade and its characteristics,

00:34:16.856 --> 00:34:20.633
the experiences of enslaved Africans
in the course of the Middle Passage

00:34:20.633 --> 00:34:24.224 line:1
came increasingly to public attention
in the late 1780s.

00:34:24.875 --> 00:34:29.237 line:1
Abolitionist campaigners placed
particular emphasis on the Middle Passage.

00:34:29.454 --> 00:34:34.676 line:1
- That’s when
the polemical arguments begin,

00:34:34.676 --> 00:34:39.419 line:1
and many pamphlets being published,
and the case being argued,

00:34:39.419 --> 00:34:43.038
slave owners realizing for the first time,

00:34:43.038 --> 00:34:45.843
that they’re going to have
to make an argument

00:34:45.843 --> 00:34:48.657
about the legitimacy of colonial slavery.

00:34:55.698 --> 00:34:58.701
- (Narrator) Within this context,
in 1783,

00:34:58.998 --> 00:35:02.335
a court case involving Lloyd's
and a slave trade company

00:35:02.335 --> 00:35:04.531
enjoyed significant publicity in Britain.

00:35:05.716 --> 00:35:08.041
Abolitionists used it as a platform

00:35:08.041 --> 00:35:10.963
to reveal the slave traders’
barbaric practices.

00:35:12.645 --> 00:35:17.985
- The so-called Zong Massacre,
which took place in the early 1780s,

00:35:18.230 --> 00:35:20.929
was a very important event.

00:35:21.258 --> 00:35:24.777
It basically consisted
of a slave ship captain

00:35:24.777 --> 00:35:29.039
throwing a group
of living Africans overboard

00:35:29.039 --> 00:35:32.021
in an effort to collect insurance money.

00:35:33.463 --> 00:35:36.724
Now this was...this voyage went on,

00:35:36.724 --> 00:35:40.710
and it only came to court
a couple of years later

00:35:40.710 --> 00:35:43.826
because the insurance company
refused to pay.

00:35:44.428 --> 00:35:46.971
And when this event came to court,

00:35:46.971 --> 00:35:51.308
an abolitionist named Granville Sharp
shows up at this court case,

00:35:51.308 --> 00:35:55.101
and the question being:
“Were they actually property or not?”

00:35:55.101 --> 00:35:58.396
and Sharp’s answer is:
“This is mass murder.

00:35:58.396 --> 00:36:03.044
"This is just plain mass murder.

00:36:03.044 --> 00:36:04.823
"This is not about property rights.

00:36:04.823 --> 00:36:06.197
"These are human beings.”

00:36:12.261 --> 00:36:15.112 line:1
- The judge actually upheld
the insurance companies,

00:36:15.112 --> 00:36:19.691 line:1
which refused to pay insurance
on the murdered Africans.

00:36:19.936 --> 00:36:25.067
And it was Vassa who brought this
to attention of Granville Sharp,

00:36:25.067 --> 00:36:27.407
and it was Granville Sharp
who then turned it into a big issue

00:36:27.407 --> 00:36:30.624
that helped to mobilize
public opinion in Britain.

00:36:32.476 --> 00:36:34.834
- (Narrator) Gustavo Vassa
was one of England's

00:36:34.842 --> 00:36:36.685
most fervent abolitionists.

00:36:36.685 --> 00:36:41.278
Born in Nigeria, he was deported
to the Caribbean at the age of 11.

00:36:41.278 --> 00:36:45.127
At the age of 21,
he managed to buy his freedom

00:36:45.127 --> 00:36:46.740
while passing through England.

00:36:47.338 --> 00:36:50.728
In his autobiography published in 1789,

00:36:50.728 --> 00:36:54.878
he recounted his experience
of the Middle Passage down in the hold,

00:36:54.878 --> 00:36:57.867
and delivered an impassioned plea
against slavery.

00:36:58.568 --> 00:37:00.331
Vassa held up a mirror to the nations

00:37:00.331 --> 00:37:03.497
that had reduced him
to the rank of a marketable object.

00:37:04.323 --> 00:37:07.331
- (Male voice) "Gentlemen, such a tendency

00:37:07.331 --> 00:37:09.976
"has the slave-trade 
to debauch men's minds,

00:37:09.976 --> 00:37:12.724
"and harden them
to every feeling of humanity!

00:37:15.391 --> 00:37:18.045
"It is the fatality
of this mistaken avarice,

00:37:18.277 --> 00:37:20.618
"that it corrupts the milk
of human kindness

00:37:21.102 --> 00:37:22.470
"and turns it into gall.

00:37:24.760 --> 00:37:30.783
"Which violates that first natural right
of mankind, equality and independency,

00:37:30.783 --> 00:37:33.095
"and gives one man
a dominion over his fellows

00:37:33.095 --> 00:37:35.281
"which God could never intend!

00:37:40.838 --> 00:37:44.033
"Yet how mistaken is the avarice
even of the planters?

00:37:44.310 --> 00:37:46.265
"Are slaves more useful

00:37:46.265 --> 00:37:49.361
"by being thus humbled
to the condition of brutes,

00:37:49.361 --> 00:37:52.861
"than they would be if suffered to enjoy
the privileges of men?"

00:38:08.086 --> 00:38:11.810
- (Narrator) By the time Gustavo Vassa
spoke out in 1789,

00:38:12.145 --> 00:38:15.905
7.7 million Africans had been deported:

00:38:15.905 --> 00:38:19.347
1 million from Senegambia,

00:38:19.347 --> 00:38:23.037
3.4 million from Benin and Biafra,

00:38:23.037 --> 00:38:25.763
3.2 million from Central Africa,

00:38:25.763 --> 00:38:28.911
and close to 73,000 from eastern Africa.

00:38:41.514 --> 00:38:45.005
While David Eltis
and the Emory University research team

00:38:45.005 --> 00:38:47.600
have established
precise deportation figures,

00:38:47.600 --> 00:38:52.001
the income amassed by the slave trade
is still being estimated.

00:38:52.001 --> 00:38:56.561
Historians are trying to assess today
how much profit the slave trade yielded

00:38:56.561 --> 00:38:59.217
for banks and insurance companies.

00:39:05.092 --> 00:39:08.316
- The slave trade is not only
a foundation of American capitalism;

00:39:08.316 --> 00:39:12.383
it is a foundation of all of European
and Atlantic capitalism

00:39:12.383 --> 00:39:19.527
because it created
this massively profitable economic system

00:39:19.527 --> 00:39:22.305
that linked the countries
of Northwestern Europe

00:39:22.305 --> 00:39:25.361
to the Americas
through the plantation system.

00:39:25.652 --> 00:39:31.870
The great scholar-activist C. L. R. James
pointed out that the slave system

00:39:32.152 --> 00:39:36.934
created the greatest
planned accumulation of wealth

00:39:36.934 --> 00:39:40.456
the world had ever seen
up to that moment in time.

00:39:41.043 --> 00:39:44.830
And this, of course, is a very important
part of Western prosperity.

00:39:47.586 --> 00:39:49.568
- (Narrator) Between 1633

00:39:49.878 --> 00:39:52.706
and Britain's abolition
of the slave trade in 1807,

00:39:52.706 --> 00:39:54.375
English and then British companies

00:39:54.375 --> 00:40:00.319
deported 2,755,830 African captives.

00:40:01.127 --> 00:40:03.394
Most of them died on the plantations,

00:40:03.394 --> 00:40:06.085
worn out from working
in the sugar cane fields.

00:40:06.572 --> 00:40:08.681
All of this, for the sake of profit.

00:40:10.949 --> 00:40:15.928
In 2007, London's Westminster Abbey
hosted a bicentennial commemoration

00:40:15.928 --> 00:40:17.985
of the abolition of the slave trade

00:40:17.985 --> 00:40:20.438
in the presence of
then-Prime Minister Tony Blair

00:40:20.438 --> 00:40:22.242
and Queen Elizabeth II.

00:40:23.178 --> 00:40:25.995
One guest,
human rights activist Toyin Agbetu,

00:40:25.995 --> 00:40:27.442 line:1
disrupted the ceremony.

00:40:27.442 --> 00:40:30.114 line:1
- (Toyin Agbetu, angrily)...

00:41:23.160 --> 00:41:25.718
The plantation owners and slave traders

00:41:25.718 --> 00:41:28.646
could not accept losing
the hard-won Caribbean,

00:41:28.646 --> 00:41:33.556
the immensely lucrative driving force
behind the rise of global capitalism.

00:41:34.711 --> 00:41:36.712
At the beginning of the 19th century,

00:41:36.712 --> 00:41:40.189
they sought to thwart
the wave of protest in civil society.

00:41:41.358 --> 00:41:42.907
By that time, slavery,

00:41:42.907 --> 00:41:45.770
a practice that dated back
to the dawn of humanity,

00:41:45.770 --> 00:41:48.720
seemed immoral,
and to belong to the past.

00:41:49.773 --> 00:41:52.189
Britain had understood this
before the others,

00:41:52.189 --> 00:41:55.078
and was thus one step
ahead of its rivals.

00:41:56.214 --> 00:41:59.470
It was preparing itself
for world domination.

00:42:08.007 --> 00:42:11.595
[slow string music with heavy bass drum]