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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 man

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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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Fifteen, 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 Highness'
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 the 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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- [speaking French]

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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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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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- (Narrator) 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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00:13:05,688 --> 00:13:08,756
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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[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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00:14:10,667 --> 00:14:14,402
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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00:14:27,309 --> 00:14:29,638
- (English voiceover)
Wealth came from slavery.

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00:14:29,638 --> 00:14:33,364
There were negotiators, ship owners,
and all those who produced foodstuffs.

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00:14:34,354 --> 00:14:39,746
Vintners, flour producers,
fabric producers, hardware producers.

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00:14:39,746 --> 00:14:41,096
[speaking French]

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00:14:42,893 --> 00:14:44,296
- [speaking French]

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- (English voiceover) The Atlantic ports
also generated wealth

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00:14:47,297 --> 00:14:49,631
for areas that stretched very far inland,

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00:14:49,631 --> 00:14:52,869
as far as Orléans, in the case of Nantes.

240
00:14:55,049 --> 00:14:58,223
Goods were also transported along rivers.

241
00:15:00,310 --> 00:15:04,063
So the wealth that slavery
produced was essential for France.

242
00:15:04,063 --> 00:15:06,173
[speaking French]

243
00:15:08,418 --> 00:15:13,514
- (Narrator) 1669. From Nantes,
Bordeaux, La Rochelle and Le Havre,

244
00:15:13,514 --> 00:15:15,904
slavery money flowed back up rivers

245
00:15:15,904 --> 00:15:19,144
to Rouen, Orléans and Angoulême.

246
00:15:19,144 --> 00:15:24,016
It had such repercussions on inland areas
that it became a national objective.

247
00:15:25,126 --> 00:15:28,118
Louis XIV knew that to win the Sugar War,

248
00:15:28,118 --> 00:15:29,893
he would need a powerful fleet.

249
00:15:32,403 --> 00:15:35,486
The king ordered the construction
of 500 galleons.

250
00:15:35,486 --> 00:15:38,151
The Atlantic became the theater
of a naval war

251
00:15:38,151 --> 00:15:40,782
between France, England and
the Netherlands.

252
00:15:40,782 --> 00:15:44,870
A bitter fight, in which each sunken ship
was a total loss

253
00:15:44,870 --> 00:15:46,967
for the respective country's economy.

254
00:15:48,641 --> 00:15:49,917
- [speaking French]

255
00:15:49,917 --> 00:15:52,850
- (English voiceover) It was
very expensive to build and equip

256
00:15:52,850 --> 00:15:55,248
a 74-gun ship and pay its crew.

257
00:15:57,791 --> 00:16:00,185
Ultimately, who bore the cost?

258
00:16:00,185 --> 00:16:05,237
The bill for financing these wars,
the financing of ships and arsenals,

259
00:16:05,237 --> 00:16:07,692
was mainly footed by French peasants.

260
00:16:11,187 --> 00:16:13,758
- (Narrator) The slave trade fleets
were protected.

261
00:16:13,758 --> 00:16:17,831
16,000 galleons were already protecting
Dutch commercial ships,

262
00:16:17,831 --> 00:16:21,137
while the 3,000 light and fast
Royal Navy cruisers

263
00:16:21,137 --> 00:16:22,965
terrified their adversaries.

264
00:16:22,965 --> 00:16:25,737
France paled in comparison
to these armadas.

265
00:16:29,496 --> 00:16:32,104
Each nation needed a fortress
in Africa

266
00:16:32,104 --> 00:16:34,886
if it were to compete
in the Atlantic race.

267
00:16:34,886 --> 00:16:37,064
Just like on the Caribbean islands,

268
00:16:37,064 --> 00:16:40,307
these forts were the bastions of 
triangular trade.

269
00:16:41,321 --> 00:16:43,112
As military bases,

270
00:16:43,112 --> 00:16:46,790
they offered a secure store
for bartered goods and captives

271
00:16:46,790 --> 00:16:48,348
before departure by sea.

272
00:16:52,983 --> 00:16:54,738
In less than 80 years,

273
00:16:54,738 --> 00:16:58,512
43 such forts were built
from Senegal to the Niger Delta.

274
00:16:58,512 --> 00:17:02,106
Every stone, every beam,
every element of masonry

275
00:17:02,106 --> 00:17:04,190
was transported by boat from Europe.

276
00:17:06,513 --> 00:17:09,554
- Most of these fortresses
are built by states.

277
00:17:09,554 --> 00:17:14,093
Individual capitalists
or even groups of trading capitalists

278
00:17:14,093 --> 00:17:16,577
did not have that kind of money

279
00:17:16,577 --> 00:17:19,234
in order to build
those sorts of fortresses.

280
00:17:20,038 --> 00:17:22,359
- (Narrator) The English
already had thirteen,

281
00:17:22,359 --> 00:17:24,217
the Dutch ten, the Danish five.

282
00:17:24,217 --> 00:17:26,471
Even the Prussians,
with their three forts,

283
00:17:26,471 --> 00:17:28,102
surpassed the French.

284
00:17:28,102 --> 00:17:30,754
On the Gold Coast, in today’s Ghana,

285
00:17:30,754 --> 00:17:35,385
the Fante and Ashanti rented Europeans
plots of land to build their forts.

286
00:17:35,385 --> 00:17:38,868
The Europeans established
trading posts and fortresses

287
00:17:38,868 --> 00:17:40,555
all along the Atlantic coast,

288
00:17:40,555 --> 00:17:43,223
from the Ewé territory
to the Kongo Kingdom.

289
00:17:44,154 --> 00:17:47,821
Equatorial Africa became
the world’s principal source of slaves.

290
00:17:52,785 --> 00:17:56,830
In this accounting document
written in 1688,

291
00:17:56,830 --> 00:18:02,538
we learn that over an 8-year period,
it shipped 60,783 slaves.

292
00:18:03,480 --> 00:18:08,038
Each cost the Royal African Company
8 to 12 pounds sterling,

293
00:18:08,038 --> 00:18:13,071
the equivalent of between 
€950 and €1500 today.

294
00:18:13,071 --> 00:18:15,343
They were all bought with trade goods.

295
00:18:15,343 --> 00:18:17,765
The demand for slaves was so high

296
00:18:17,765 --> 00:18:21,352
that the Europeans pressured their
African partners to help them

297
00:18:21,352 --> 00:18:26,173
plan, rationalize, and industrialize
their system of mass deportation.

298
00:18:30,450 --> 00:18:33,977
- Slaves were often bought on credit.

299
00:18:33,977 --> 00:18:38,067
And so that meant that European ships
would come,

300
00:18:38,067 --> 00:18:42,809
they would have a whole cargo
full of textiles, different metal ware,

301
00:18:42,809 --> 00:18:47,319
rum, tobacco, whatever.

302
00:18:47,319 --> 00:18:51,201
And these would be given
to the local merchants,

303
00:18:51,201 --> 00:18:53,080
extended to them on credit.

304
00:18:53,080 --> 00:18:55,733
And then the merchants
would go inland with those goods

305
00:18:55,697 --> 00:18:57,501
and buy slaves and come back.

306
00:18:57,501 --> 00:19:02,384
- The biggest impact
was the level of violence,

307
00:19:02,384 --> 00:19:04,263
the rising level of violence,

308
00:19:04,263 --> 00:19:09,933
the level of uncertainty
that permeated society everywhere,

309
00:19:09,933 --> 00:19:16,134
and also the opportunity 
for new "big men" to emerge,

310
00:19:16,134 --> 00:19:17,930
new powerful leaders.

311
00:19:17,930 --> 00:19:21,370
Somebody gets a hold of more firearms,
somebody gets more aggressive,

312
00:19:21,370 --> 00:19:24,911
they build their own personal chieftain
and, suddenly, they’re powerful.

313
00:19:27,191 --> 00:19:29,924
- (Narrator) Among these leaders
was Antera Duke,

314
00:19:29,924 --> 00:19:34,161
a major African trader 
from Calabar in what is now Nigeria.

315
00:19:34,161 --> 00:19:39,004
In his diary, he spoke of the methods
he used to terrorize captives:

316
00:19:39,004 --> 00:19:42,022
kidnapping, detention, and murder.

317
00:19:50,179 --> 00:19:52,668
[fire roars and crackles]

318
00:19:56,872 --> 00:20:00,031
- (Man) "About 4am, I got up.

319
00:20:00,031 --> 00:20:01,673
"Awful rain.

320
00:20:01,673 --> 00:20:03,867
"I walked up to the city trading house,

321
00:20:03,867 --> 00:20:06,379
"where I met all the gentlemen.

322
00:20:06,379 --> 00:20:08,310
"We got ready to cut off heads.

323
00:20:16,220 --> 00:20:19,785
"5am, we began decapitating slaves.

324
00:20:27,379 --> 00:20:29,527
"50 heads fell that day."

325
00:20:43,460 --> 00:20:48,130
- Very clearly, these sacrifices
were intended as a form of terrorism

326
00:20:48,130 --> 00:20:51,582
that were meant to make it very clear
to the population

327
00:20:51,582 --> 00:20:53,632
who was the boss and who was not,

328
00:20:53,632 --> 00:21:00,064
in very much the way
the Mafioso type organizations behave

329
00:21:00,927 --> 00:21:04,279
in terms of making sure
that the members of the association

330
00:21:04,279 --> 00:21:06,465
respect whoever the Godfather is,

331
00:21:06,465 --> 00:21:10,802
and if anybody steps out of line
they can be assassinated or killed.

332
00:21:10,802 --> 00:21:13,408
And so they don't
step out of line, obviously.

333
00:21:14,438 --> 00:21:18,938
- (Narrator) For the benefit of a handful
of enterprising & unscrupulous profiteers,

334
00:21:18,938 --> 00:21:22,613
the entire continental economy
was transformed.

335
00:21:22,613 --> 00:21:26,903
On the coast, African brokers 
knew all of the inner workings

336
00:21:26,862 --> 00:21:28,530
of the sugar plantation.

337
00:21:30,677 --> 00:21:34,044
A slave ship from Saint-Malo,
“Le Marie Séraphique”,

338
00:21:34,044 --> 00:21:36,955
docked at Loango in the Kingdom of Kongo.

339
00:21:42,395 --> 00:21:45,298
Its captain’s drawings provide
exceptional details

340
00:21:45,298 --> 00:21:49,017
of the negotiations
between Europeans and Africans.

341
00:21:49,017 --> 00:21:51,245
The merchants from the coast knew

342
00:21:51,245 --> 00:21:54,231
that the Marie Séraphique’s captain
was in a hurry:

343
00:21:54,231 --> 00:21:57,759
he had to arrive in the West Indies
before harvest time.

344
00:21:57,759 --> 00:22:01,062
This was the time of year
when slaves sold best,

345
00:22:01,062 --> 00:22:03,704
and when the best sugar was available.

346
00:22:03,704 --> 00:22:06,194
So they deliberately 
prolonged negotiations

347
00:22:06,194 --> 00:22:08,227
to drive prices up.

348
00:22:08,227 --> 00:22:12,735
312 captives were rounded up
in 116 days.

349
00:22:15,058 --> 00:22:18,729
The Marie Séraphique arrived
in Saint-Domingue, now Haiti,

350
00:22:18,729 --> 00:22:20,882
one year after leaving France.

351
00:22:20,882 --> 00:22:23,311
Only nine captives had perished:

352
00:22:23,311 --> 00:22:26,680
a good ratio for the crew,
who celebrated their success.

353
00:22:27,652 --> 00:22:29,852
In the drawings of the
Marie Séraphique,

354
00:22:29,852 --> 00:22:32,977
no allusion to the
slaves’ suffering appears.

355
00:22:32,977 --> 00:22:35,472
They were dehumanized shadows,

356
00:22:35,472 --> 00:22:39,338
tallied and lined up like barrels
at the bottom of the hold,

357
00:22:40,382 --> 00:22:44,302
the transportation of human beings
turned into a nightmare.

358
00:22:48,013 --> 00:22:52,063
- It’s very important to understand
that violence onboard slave ships

359
00:22:52,063 --> 00:22:53,806
would be used selectively.

360
00:22:53,806 --> 00:22:55,406
In other words, no captain

361
00:22:55,406 --> 00:22:59,829
wanted to kill the entire allotment
of people on board

362
00:22:59,829 --> 00:23:02,328
because that voyage
would then have no profit.

363
00:23:02,328 --> 00:23:06,248
So when there was resistance,
what the captains would do,

364
00:23:06,248 --> 00:23:09,697
is organize a spectacle

365
00:23:09,697 --> 00:23:14,378
in which a small number of people
would be executed

366
00:23:14,378 --> 00:23:17,285
in extremely vicious, horrific ways

367
00:23:17,285 --> 00:23:21,655
as a means of terrorizing everybody else.

368
00:23:21,655 --> 00:23:24,598
All of the enslaved would be forced
to come up on deck

369
00:23:24,598 --> 00:23:26,636
in order to view these executions.

370
00:23:26,636 --> 00:23:31,107
One slave ship surgeon
said that frequently the decks,

371
00:23:31,107 --> 00:23:34,875
the main deck of the ship
would just be completely awash in blood

372
00:23:34,875 --> 00:23:37,760
in the aftermath of one of these
failed revolts.

373
00:23:37,760 --> 00:23:41,417
Revolts were common, and they were
almost always suppressed.

374
00:23:41,417 --> 00:23:46,696
But the captains would use that situation
to kill a small number,

375
00:23:46,696 --> 00:23:49,097
in order to intimidate everybody else,

376
00:23:49,097 --> 00:23:53,502
sending the message that if you resist us,
this will be your fate.

377
00:23:53,801 --> 00:23:56,110
[flute and bass drum playing slowly]

378
00:24:04,421 --> 00:24:09,443
I’ve also suggested that the slave ship
created categories of race.

379
00:24:10,645 --> 00:24:14,106
For example, the multi-ethnic Africans

380
00:24:14,106 --> 00:24:17,386
who are loaded on board a slave ship

381
00:24:17,386 --> 00:24:24,201
go aboard as Ebo or Fante or Mende,

382
00:24:24,201 --> 00:24:26,300
but when they come off the ship,

383
00:24:26,300 --> 00:24:31,235
they are unloaded as members
of a “negro race”.

384
00:24:31,236 --> 00:24:35,173
And the same parallel process
goes on among the sailors.

385
00:24:35,173 --> 00:24:41,692
These motley crews, they are English,
Irish, also in some cases African.

386
00:24:41,692 --> 00:24:44,381
They leave their European port,

387
00:24:44,381 --> 00:24:47,402
but when they arrive
on the West coast of Africa,

388
00:24:47,402 --> 00:24:49,354
they become the White people.

389
00:24:55,897 --> 00:24:57,840
- (Narrator) On Caribbean beaches,

390
00:24:57,840 --> 00:25:02,445
captives disembarked as “Blacks”
in a world dominated by “Whites”.

391
00:25:04,780 --> 00:25:06,839
[singing in unison and cracking whips]

392
00:25:06,839 --> 00:25:10,806
Providing an outlet for a society
founded on violence and race,

393
00:25:10,806 --> 00:25:13,431
the Carnival maintains
the memory of the days

394
00:25:13,431 --> 00:25:17,071
when the sugar industry imposed
its rhythms, rites, and seasons,

395
00:25:17,071 --> 00:25:19,430
and set the pace for island life.

396
00:25:20,997 --> 00:25:29,925
[singing in unison]

397
00:25:29,925 --> 00:25:33,330
It was an era when drummers
announced the end of winter

398
00:25:33,330 --> 00:25:35,435
and the resumption of cutting;

399
00:25:35,435 --> 00:25:38,268
when fleeing slaves
covered themselves in molasses

400
00:25:38,268 --> 00:25:40,531
to help prevent their re-capture.

401
00:25:43,061 --> 00:25:45,761
- [speaking French]

402
00:25:45,761 --> 00:25:49,385
- (English voiceover) What progressively
distinguished Atlantic slavery,

403
00:25:49,385 --> 00:25:52,139
what made it different
from other systems of slavery,

404
00:25:52,139 --> 00:25:53,992
was the construction of race.

405
00:25:57,552 --> 00:26:00,376
It was precisely this superimposition
that developed

406
00:26:00,376 --> 00:26:04,018
between physical appearance,
with its own term, and status.

407
00:26:08,006 --> 00:26:12,287
At the extremities of this continuum 
of both status and color,

408
00:26:12,287 --> 00:26:15,578
there was the white master
and the black slave.

409
00:26:24,808 --> 00:26:28,708
The term "White” did not exist
prior to slave societies.

410
00:26:33,166 --> 00:26:36,630
The term "White" developed
specifically in the Antilles.

411
00:26:37,580 --> 00:26:40,900
So you can see how vital
this Atlantic slave area was

412
00:26:40,900 --> 00:26:43,152
to the construction 
of the racial categories

413
00:26:43,152 --> 00:26:44,657
that we still use now.

414
00:26:46,031 --> 00:26:49,404
We use them as though they hadn't
changed throughout time,

415
00:26:49,404 --> 00:26:51,146
when, in fact, they have.

416
00:26:57,339 --> 00:26:59,814
- (Narrator) Race was
a weapon of submission,

417
00:26:59,814 --> 00:27:04,465
meant to carve into flesh
the supposed inferiority of some people,

418
00:27:04,465 --> 00:27:07,266
and the infinite superiority of others.

419
00:27:08,368 --> 00:27:10,862
Cut off from their roots
and their families,

420
00:27:10,862 --> 00:27:13,960
the Black slaves were reduced
to a servile mass,

421
00:27:13,960 --> 00:27:16,644
without names and without orientation.

422
00:27:19,245 --> 00:27:23,326
The plantation was a machine
that devoured its workforce.

423
00:27:23,326 --> 00:27:26,244
It needed a constant supply
of new arrivals.

424
00:27:27,062 --> 00:27:30,797
Landowners wanted to transform
the slaves’ bodies into tools.

425
00:27:31,828 --> 00:27:34,261
On plantations, whipping and torture

426
00:27:34,261 --> 00:27:36,690
were used to deprive them
of their humanity.

427
00:27:38,433 --> 00:27:43,106
In this garden of torture,
the master’s authority was absolute.

428
00:27:52,649 --> 00:27:56,308
- So you take, for example,
a character like Thomas Thistlewood.

429
00:27:56,308 --> 00:28:00,261
And you can almost see in his diaries
the escalation in the violence

430
00:28:00,261 --> 00:28:01,710
that he has to mete out,

431
00:28:01,710 --> 00:28:04,432
or that he thinks he has to mete out 
to the enslaved

432
00:28:04,432 --> 00:28:06,488
to keep them working on the plantation.

433
00:28:13,970 --> 00:28:17,033
- (Male voice) "I arrived as a foreman
on the new plantation

434
00:28:17,033 --> 00:28:18,445
"barely two weeks ago.

435
00:28:19,490 --> 00:28:22,653
"We had to carry out justice
on a negro who had escaped.

436
00:28:24,231 --> 00:28:25,756
"We severely whipped him

437
00:28:25,756 --> 00:28:29,602
"and rubbed pepper, salt,
and lime juice into his wounds.

438
00:28:34,268 --> 00:28:37,879
"Three days later, the body
of another slave who had escaped

439
00:28:37,879 --> 00:28:39,336
"was brought to us.

440
00:28:39,336 --> 00:28:43,021
"I cut off his head
and we burned the body in public.

441
00:28:43,021 --> 00:28:46,370
"That was the only way
to exert our control over the negroes.

442
00:28:49,241 --> 00:28:53,169
"In this affair, my reasoning
was adopted by all the colonies.

443
00:28:54,200 --> 00:28:58,762
"The unfortunate condition of the Negro
naturally led to us being hated.

444
00:28:58,762 --> 00:29:01,950
"Only strength and violence
can hold them back."

445
00:29:27,108 --> 00:29:30,672
- These kinds of tortures
and these kinds of punishments,

446
00:29:30,672 --> 00:29:32,163
this kind of brutality,

447
00:29:32,163 --> 00:29:35,051
actually became common-place
on these plantations

448
00:29:35,051 --> 00:29:38,083
where you had white people
working out among armies of slaves

449
00:29:38,083 --> 00:29:40,039
who they feared they could not control.

450
00:29:40,039 --> 00:29:43,435
The sound of the screaming
and the stench of the burning bodies,

451
00:29:43,435 --> 00:29:47,278
that also became a fundamental feature
of the Jamaican landscape, right?

452
00:29:47,278 --> 00:29:49,493
That is what plantation society is.

453
00:29:49,493 --> 00:29:52,955
It’s that smell, it’s that sound,
it’s that fear and terror

454
00:29:52,955 --> 00:29:56,392
that’s compelling people to work
and to obey their masters.

455
00:29:56,392 --> 00:29:59,479
There is no way to separate
that kind of terror

456
00:29:59,479 --> 00:30:01,384
from the labor on the plantation,

457
00:30:01,384 --> 00:30:04,025
from the profits that labor produced.

458
00:30:05,324 --> 00:30:08,186
- (Narrator) But the plantation owners
could not squander

459
00:30:08,186 --> 00:30:10,388
the slaves they had bought on credit.

460
00:30:10,388 --> 00:30:12,919
The state had financed
the shipment of slaves,

461
00:30:12,919 --> 00:30:15,249
and wanted
its return on investment.

462
00:30:22,735 --> 00:30:26,310
The plantation society relied
solely on market forces.

463
00:30:26,310 --> 00:30:30,815
Violence was a necessary cost,
and thus included in balance sheets.

464
00:30:31,825 --> 00:30:35,262
It took 4 years to amortize
the price of a slave.

465
00:30:35,262 --> 00:30:39,861
After that, they were valuable only
insofar as that they could hold a machete.

466
00:30:39,861 --> 00:30:43,895
This was the price to pay
so that Europe could eat sugar.

467
00:30:47,715 --> 00:30:49,532
- I don’t think that it’s possible

468
00:30:49,532 --> 00:30:52,360
to reduce another human being
to a mere cypher,

469
00:30:52,360 --> 00:30:54,246
to a mere extension of your will.

470
00:30:54,246 --> 00:30:56,550
And that’s where a lot of the tension

471
00:30:56,550 --> 00:31:00,398
and the possibilities for slave revolt
and resistance come in,

472
00:31:00,398 --> 00:31:05,239
because if my purpose
is to subject you absolutely,

473
00:31:05,239 --> 00:31:08,280
but you can never be subjected absolutely,

474
00:31:08,280 --> 00:31:10,225
we're always gonna have conflict.

475
00:31:10,225 --> 00:31:13,361
At the extremes of human domination,
even in slavery,

476
00:31:13,361 --> 00:31:15,646
we find there is always resistance,

477
00:31:15,646 --> 00:31:18,412
there is always tension,
and there is always struggle.

478
00:31:20,134 --> 00:31:22,078
- (Narrator) Throughout the Caribbean,

479
00:31:22,078 --> 00:31:26,357
escaped slaves took refuge
in the heart of the most remote forests.

480
00:31:26,357 --> 00:31:29,161
They were called “maroon slaves”,

481
00:31:29,161 --> 00:31:31,922
in reference to the Spanish word
“cimarrón”,

482
00:31:31,922 --> 00:31:35,655
which originally designated cattle
that had escaped into the wild.

483
00:31:35,655 --> 00:31:40,165
In these isolated places,
they began to organize resistance.

484
00:31:40,165 --> 00:31:41,867
In Jamaica they included

485
00:31:41,867 --> 00:31:44,831
Captain Leonard Parkinson,
the leader of the maroons,

486
00:31:44,831 --> 00:31:48,757
and Grandy Nanny, an Ashanti,
known as the “maroon priestess”;

487
00:31:49,887 --> 00:31:53,253
in Barbados, Boussa, an Igbo war chief.

488
00:31:53,253 --> 00:31:57,712
Through rebellion, the insurgents
found a name and an identity.

489
00:32:05,941 --> 00:32:08,614
- All throughout the mountainous areas
of Jamaica,

490
00:32:08,614 --> 00:32:11,885
you have these communities
of formerly enslaved people

491
00:32:11,885 --> 00:32:13,507
who have escaped,

492
00:32:13,507 --> 00:32:18,288
and they learn the territory,
they learn to cultivate crops there,

493
00:32:18,288 --> 00:32:21,929
and they learn to fight, as well:
harassing plantations,

494
00:32:21,929 --> 00:32:24,379
taking gun powder, getting new recruits,

495
00:32:24,379 --> 00:32:27,743
and maintaining and building communities
in the mountains, right?

496
00:32:27,743 --> 00:32:30,375
This becomes increasingly
a problem for the British,

497
00:32:30,375 --> 00:32:33,779
and by the second/third decade
of the 18th century,

498
00:32:33,779 --> 00:32:35,769
it breaks out into major war.

499
00:32:35,769 --> 00:32:38,446
And the British aren’t even sure
they're going to be able

500
00:32:38,446 --> 00:32:39,940
to maintain the Island.

501
00:32:40,980 --> 00:32:43,449
- (Narrator) The uprisings
spread to other islands,

502
00:32:43,449 --> 00:32:45,676
and then to the coast of Africa.

503
00:32:45,676 --> 00:32:49,048
Wars raged in the slave capturers'
hunting grounds,

504
00:32:49,048 --> 00:32:52,878
notably in Senegambia,
where Muslim religious leaders

505
00:32:52,878 --> 00:32:56,138
blamed slave-trade goods
for corrupting society.

506
00:32:58,112 --> 00:33:03,038
These outbursts of violence
plunged the sugar industry into a crisis,

507
00:33:03,038 --> 00:33:05,732
which also had an impact in Europe.

508
00:33:05,732 --> 00:33:08,746
A growing number of voices
expressed outrage

509
00:33:08,746 --> 00:33:10,615
at the horrors of the slave trade.

510
00:33:12,579 --> 00:33:14,969
- In all of the major slave trading ports,

511
00:33:14,969 --> 00:33:17,107
everybody knew the truth
of the slave trade.

512
00:33:17,107 --> 00:33:19,506
And I’ll tell you one way
in which they knew it.

513
00:33:20,326 --> 00:33:25,433
Slave-trading vessels
had a very specific smell,

514
00:33:25,433 --> 00:33:29,347
and you could never
get the smell out of the wood.

515
00:33:30,242 --> 00:33:35,605
In fact, it was said
in Charleston, South Carolina,

516
00:33:35,605 --> 00:33:37,361
which was the major port

517
00:33:37,361 --> 00:33:40,820
for the importation of slaves
into North America,

518
00:33:40,820 --> 00:33:45,146
that when the wind was blowing
off the water a certain way,

519
00:33:45,146 --> 00:33:48,678
you could smell a slave ship
before you could see it.

520
00:33:49,995 --> 00:33:55,346
What that meant was that
in every port, these ships,

521
00:33:55,346 --> 00:34:00,982
these ships of horror
that stank of human misery,

522
00:34:01,923 --> 00:34:04,581
that this was all very well known.

523
00:34:11,837 --> 00:34:16,231
- Certainly information about
the slave trade and its characteristics,

524
00:34:16,231 --> 00:34:20,333
the experiences of enslaved Africans
in the course of the Middle Passage

525
00:34:20,333 --> 00:34:24,315
came increasingly to public attention
in the late 1780s.

526
00:34:24,315 --> 00:34:29,237
Abolitionist campaigners placed
particular emphasis on the Middle Passage.

527
00:34:29,237 --> 00:34:34,306
- That’s when
the polemical arguments begin,

528
00:34:34,306 --> 00:34:39,069
and many pamphlets being published,
and the case being argued,

529
00:34:39,069 --> 00:34:42,878
slave owners realizing for the first time,

530
00:34:42,878 --> 00:34:45,393
that they’re going to have
to make an argument

531
00:34:45,393 --> 00:34:48,437
about the legitimacy of colonial slavery.

532
00:34:55,758 --> 00:34:58,862
- (Narrator) Within this context,
in 1783,

533
00:34:58,862 --> 00:35:02,055
a court case involving Lloyd's
and a slave trade company

534
00:35:02,055 --> 00:35:04,531
enjoyed significant publicity in Britain.

535
00:35:05,716 --> 00:35:08,041
Abolitionists used it as a platform

536
00:35:08,041 --> 00:35:10,963
to reveal the slave traders’
barbaric practices.

537
00:35:12,645 --> 00:35:18,350
- The so-called Zong Massacre,
which took place in the early 1780s,

538
00:35:18,350 --> 00:35:20,929
was a very important event.

539
00:35:20,929 --> 00:35:24,777
It basically consisted
of a slave ship captain

540
00:35:24,777 --> 00:35:29,039
throwing a group
of living Africans overboard

541
00:35:29,039 --> 00:35:32,021
in an effort to collect insurance money.

542
00:35:33,263 --> 00:35:36,394
Now this was...this voyage went on,

543
00:35:36,394 --> 00:35:40,340
and it only came to court
a couple of years later

544
00:35:40,340 --> 00:35:44,028
because the insurance company
refused to pay.

545
00:35:44,028 --> 00:35:46,521
And when this event came to court,

546
00:35:46,521 --> 00:35:51,308
an abolitionist named Granville Sharp
shows up at this court case,

547
00:35:51,308 --> 00:35:55,556
and the question being:
“Were they actually property or not?”

548
00:35:55,556 --> 00:35:58,572
and Sharp’s answer is:
“This is mass murder.

549
00:35:59,482 --> 00:36:02,604
"This is just plain mass murder.

550
00:36:02,604 --> 00:36:04,533
"This is not about property rights.

551
00:36:04,533 --> 00:36:06,197
"These are human beings.”

552
00:36:11,831 --> 00:36:15,112
- The judge actually upheld
the insurance companies,

553
00:36:15,112 --> 00:36:19,691
which refused to pay insurance
on the murdered Africans.

554
00:36:19,691 --> 00:36:24,497
And it was Vassa who brought this
to attention of Granville Sharp,

555
00:36:24,497 --> 00:36:27,537
and it was Granville Sharp
who then turned it into a big issue

556
00:36:27,537 --> 00:36:30,624
that helped to mobilize
public opinion in Britain.

557
00:36:32,476 --> 00:36:34,842
- (Narrator) Gustavo Vassa
was one of England's

558
00:36:34,842 --> 00:36:36,805
most fervent abolitionists.

559
00:36:36,805 --> 00:36:41,278
Born in Nigeria, he was deported
to the Caribbean at the age of 11.

560
00:36:41,278 --> 00:36:45,127
At the age of 21,
he managed to buy his freedom

561
00:36:45,127 --> 00:36:47,180
while passing through England.

562
00:36:47,180 --> 00:36:50,628
In his autobiography published in 1789,

563
00:36:50,628 --> 00:36:54,878
he recounted his experience
of the Middle Passage down in the hold,

564
00:36:54,878 --> 00:36:58,148
and delivered an impassioned plea
against slavery.

565
00:36:58,148 --> 00:37:00,331
Vassa held up a mirror to the nations

566
00:37:00,331 --> 00:37:03,863
that had reduced him
to the rank of a marketable object.

567
00:37:03,863 --> 00:37:07,331
- (Male voice) "Gentlemen, such a tendency

568
00:37:07,331 --> 00:37:09,776
"has the slave-trade 
to debauch men's minds,

569
00:37:09,776 --> 00:37:12,724
"and harden them
to every feeling of humanity!

570
00:37:15,511 --> 00:37:18,277
"It is the fatality
of this mistaken avarice,

571
00:37:18,277 --> 00:37:20,742
"that it corrupts the milk
of human kindness

572
00:37:20,742 --> 00:37:22,470
"and turns it into gall.

573
00:37:24,270 --> 00:37:30,283
"Which violates that first natural right
of mankind, equality and independency,

574
00:37:30,283 --> 00:37:32,865
"and gives one man
a dominion over his fellows

575
00:37:32,865 --> 00:37:35,281
"which God could never intend!

576
00:37:40,838 --> 00:37:44,440
"Yet how mistaken is the avarice
even of the planters?

577
00:37:44,440 --> 00:37:46,055
"Are slaves more useful

578
00:37:46,055 --> 00:37:49,361
"by being thus humbled
to the condition of brutes,

579
00:37:49,361 --> 00:37:52,861
"than they would be if suffered to enjoy
the privileges of men?"

580
00:38:07,856 --> 00:38:11,950
- (Narrator) By the time Gustavo Vassa
spoke out in 1789,

581
00:38:11,950 --> 00:38:15,765
7.7 million Africans had been deported:

582
00:38:15,765 --> 00:38:19,347
1 million from Senegambia,

583
00:38:19,347 --> 00:38:22,637
3.4 million from Benin and Biafra,

584
00:38:22,637 --> 00:38:25,763
3.2 million from Central Africa,

585
00:38:25,763 --> 00:38:28,911
and close to 73,000 from eastern Africa.

586
00:38:40,994 --> 00:38:44,605
While David Eltis
and the Emory University research team

587
00:38:44,605 --> 00:38:47,415
have established
precise deportation figures,

588
00:38:47,415 --> 00:38:51,621
the income amassed by the slave trade
is still being estimated.

589
00:38:51,621 --> 00:38:56,161
Historians are trying to assess today
how much profit the slave trade yielded

590
00:38:56,161 --> 00:38:59,010
for banks and insurance companies.

591
00:39:04,441 --> 00:39:07,766
- The slave trade is not only
a foundation of American capitalism;

592
00:39:07,766 --> 00:39:12,265
it is a foundation of all of European
and Atlantic capitalism

593
00:39:12,265 --> 00:39:18,897
because it created
this massively profitable economic system

594
00:39:18,897 --> 00:39:22,017
that linked the countries
of Northwestern Europe

595
00:39:22,017 --> 00:39:25,361
to the Americas
through the plantation system.

596
00:39:25,361 --> 00:39:31,564
The great scholar-activist C. L. R. James
pointed out that the slave system

597
00:39:31,564 --> 00:39:36,734
created the greatest
planned accumulation of wealth

598
00:39:36,734 --> 00:39:40,816
the world had ever seen
up to that moment in time.

599
00:39:40,816 --> 00:39:44,830
And this, of course, is a very important
part of Western prosperity.

600
00:39:46,926 --> 00:39:48,968
- (Narrator) Between 1633

601
00:39:48,968 --> 00:39:52,434
and Britain's abolition
of the slave trade in 1807,

602
00:39:52,434 --> 00:39:54,375
English and then British companies

603
00:39:54,375 --> 00:40:00,587
deported 2,755,830 African captives.

604
00:40:00,587 --> 00:40:03,244
Most of them died on the plantations,

605
00:40:03,244 --> 00:40:06,085
worn out from working
in the sugar cane fields.

606
00:40:06,085 --> 00:40:08,681
All of this, for the sake of profit.

607
00:40:10,299 --> 00:40:15,518
In 2007, London's Westminster Abbey
hosted a bicentennial commemoration

608
00:40:15,518 --> 00:40:17,700
of the abolition of the slave trade

609
00:40:17,700 --> 00:40:20,188
in the presence of
then-Prime Minister Tony Blair

610
00:40:20,188 --> 00:40:22,558
and Queen Elizabeth II.

611
00:40:22,558 --> 00:40:25,825
One guest,
human rights activist Toyin Agbetu,

612
00:40:25,825 --> 00:40:27,359
disrupted the ceremony.

613
00:40:27,359 --> 00:40:30,114
- (Toyin Agbetu, angrily)...

614
00:41:23,160 --> 00:41:25,718
The plantation owners and slave traders

615
00:41:25,718 --> 00:41:28,646
could not accept losing
the hard-won Caribbean,

616
00:41:28,646 --> 00:41:33,484
the immensely lucrative driving force
behind the rise of global capitalism.

617
00:41:34,711 --> 00:41:36,712
At the beginning of the 19th century,

618
00:41:36,712 --> 00:41:40,089
they sought to thwart
the wave of protest in civil society.

619
00:41:41,078 --> 00:41:42,907
By that time, slavery,

620
00:41:42,907 --> 00:41:45,596
a practice that dated back
to the dawn of humanity,

621
00:41:45,596 --> 00:41:48,590
seemed immoral,
and to belong to the past.

622
00:41:49,313 --> 00:41:51,994
Britain had understood this
before the others,

623
00:41:51,994 --> 00:41:54,987
and was thus one step
ahead of its rivals.

624
00:41:55,894 --> 00:41:59,470
It was preparing itself
for world domination.

625
00:42:05,097 --> 00:42:08,685
[slow string music with heavy bass drum]