1 00:00:01,608 --> 00:00:05,103 - (Narrator) This is the story of a world whose borders and territories 2 00:00:05,103 --> 00:00:07,074 were drawn by the slave trade, 3 00:00:07,074 --> 00:00:11,411 where violence, subjugation, and profit imposed their own routes. 4 00:00:11,411 --> 00:00:15,353 This criminal system shaped our history, and our world. 5 00:00:16,511 --> 00:00:19,673 On São Tomé, the Portuguese invented an economic model 6 00:00:19,673 --> 00:00:23,330 with unprecedented profitability: the sugar plantation. 7 00:00:23,330 --> 00:00:26,454 - (English voiceover) This was the first black colony, 8 00:00:26,454 --> 00:00:28,321 the first slave society. 9 00:00:29,222 --> 00:00:32,490 - (English voiceover) We witnessed the marriage of the black man 10 00:00:32,490 --> 00:00:34,055 with sugar cane. 11 00:00:35,243 --> 00:00:38,448 - (Narrator) In the 16th century, other European powers 12 00:00:38,448 --> 00:00:40,898 were eager to follow their model. 13 00:00:40,898 --> 00:00:44,032 Their greed would plunge an entire continent 14 00:00:44,032 --> 00:00:46,259 into chaos and violence. 15 00:00:46,259 --> 00:00:50,876 Nearly 13 million Africans were cast onto new slavery routes to the new world, 16 00:00:50,876 --> 00:00:55,108 where the English, the French, and the Dutch hoped to become wealthy; 17 00:00:55,108 --> 00:00:57,412 immeasurably wealthy. 18 00:00:58,545 --> 00:01:01,761 [intense music with strong bass drum beat] 19 00:01:16,861 --> 00:01:21,212 Because the Caribbean has similar climatic features to São Tomé, 20 00:01:21,212 --> 00:01:23,686 it eventually became the principal crossroads 21 00:01:23,686 --> 00:01:26,062 of the slave trader's routes. 22 00:01:26,062 --> 00:01:28,132 For people in the western world, 23 00:01:28,132 --> 00:01:30,966 these islands are today associated with vacation. 24 00:01:31,681 --> 00:01:35,325 Guadeloupe offers tourists a dream destination. 25 00:01:35,325 --> 00:01:37,793 Sunshine and pristine nature, 26 00:01:37,793 --> 00:01:41,046 rekindling myths of a lost paradise. 27 00:01:41,046 --> 00:01:44,765 Holidaymakers tend to confine themselves to the beaches of Le Gosier, 28 00:01:44,765 --> 00:01:46,923 Sainte-Anne, and Saint François. 29 00:01:46,923 --> 00:01:50,117 But as this sign indicates, they are all-too-close 30 00:01:50,117 --> 00:01:52,465 to another side of the island's heritage 31 00:01:52,465 --> 00:01:55,171 that was anything but a paradise. 32 00:01:55,976 --> 00:01:58,136 Just a few meters away from the bathers 33 00:01:58,136 --> 00:02:01,521 is a burial site where countless skeletons were discovered. 34 00:02:02,950 --> 00:02:07,371 Between 500 and 1,000 graves are still buried beneath the sand. 35 00:02:08,810 --> 00:02:13,458 The Raisins Clairs beach is one of 15 slave cemeteries that have been excavated. 36 00:02:14,658 --> 00:02:18,534 Fifteen, among the 1,000 that exist in the Caribbean. 37 00:02:24,561 --> 00:02:30,099 89 skeletons have been exhumed by French archaeological research experts. 38 00:02:30,099 --> 00:02:34,290 Judging by the state of the bones, they concluded that these men and women 39 00:02:34,290 --> 00:02:36,699 had not reached the age of 30. 40 00:02:36,699 --> 00:02:40,039 By the time of their death, the toll from working on the plantations 41 00:02:40,039 --> 00:02:44,530 had so deformed their bodies that they seemed more like 75 year olds. 42 00:02:47,996 --> 00:02:51,914 These people were human guinea pigs for the sugar experiment, 43 00:02:51,914 --> 00:02:55,579 the collateral damage of an unprecedented trade war: 44 00:02:55,579 --> 00:02:57,253 The Sugar War. 45 00:02:59,043 --> 00:03:02,846 - 74% of all slaves carried off, 46 00:03:04,183 --> 00:03:06,133 were carried off because of sugar. 47 00:03:06,133 --> 00:03:10,137 If you want to understand the slave trade, you just need to know about sugar. 48 00:03:12,100 --> 00:03:15,610 Sugar proved more addictive than pepper or cinnamon. 49 00:03:15,610 --> 00:03:18,034 From the 17th century onward, 50 00:03:18,034 --> 00:03:21,938 Europeans craved this rare and expensive commodity. 51 00:03:21,938 --> 00:03:26,029 In London, Amsterdam, and Paris, sugar fever was rampant, 52 00:03:26,029 --> 00:03:30,501 prompting a new generation of adventurers to go to any extremes to get it. 53 00:03:31,523 --> 00:03:34,668 Shipowners and fitters, merchants and pirates, 54 00:03:34,668 --> 00:03:38,337 all knew that to produce sugar, you needed a lot of slaves. 55 00:03:39,300 --> 00:03:42,071 John Hawkins was one of these new entrepreneurs 56 00:03:42,071 --> 00:03:44,831 for whom profit reigned supreme. 57 00:03:44,831 --> 00:03:48,739 The English privateer was a pioneer in understanding that a fortune 58 00:03:48,739 --> 00:03:52,624 could be made by shipping Black captives to the New World. 59 00:03:52,624 --> 00:03:56,643 In the mid 16th century, he convinced Queen Elizabeth I 60 00:03:56,643 --> 00:03:59,836 to lend him a ship, The Jesus of Lubec. 61 00:03:59,836 --> 00:04:03,306 For the expedition, Hawkins conspicuously set the tone 62 00:04:03,306 --> 00:04:06,441 by choosing a trussed-up Black man on his emblem. 63 00:04:09,013 --> 00:04:11,323 - (Male speaker) "I do confirm to your highness 64 00:04:11,323 --> 00:04:15,558 "that I will bring home 40,000 marks without any offense of the least 65 00:04:15,558 --> 00:04:18,534 to any of Your Highness' allies or friends. 66 00:04:19,425 --> 00:04:22,886 "I will conduct this enterprise and turn it to the benefit 67 00:04:22,886 --> 00:04:26,822 "of your whole realm, with Your Highness' consent. 68 00:04:26,822 --> 00:04:30,155 "The voyage I propose is to load negroes in Guinea 69 00:04:30,155 --> 00:04:32,437 "and sell them in the West Indies, 70 00:04:32,437 --> 00:04:37,144 "in truck of pearls, gold, and emeralds that I will bring back in abundance." 71 00:04:39,329 --> 00:04:42,980 - (Narrator) 1620, a century after sugar plantations 72 00:04:42,980 --> 00:04:44,902 were introduced in Brazil, 73 00:04:44,902 --> 00:04:48,014 the Atlantic became the battleground for the Sugar War. 74 00:04:48,014 --> 00:04:50,255 England, The Netherlands, and France 75 00:04:50,255 --> 00:04:53,032 wanted to break Spain and Portugal's hegemony. 76 00:04:54,016 --> 00:04:56,518 In the Caribbean, the Dutch took control 77 00:04:56,518 --> 00:05:00,601 of Curaçao, Sint Eustatius, and Saint Martin. 78 00:05:00,601 --> 00:05:05,093 The French: Guadeloupe, Martinique, Grenada and Saint-Domingue. 79 00:05:05,093 --> 00:05:10,692 The English occupied The Bahamas, Jamaica, Antigua, Barbados and Dominica. 80 00:05:12,374 --> 00:05:16,511 Only Cuba and Puerto Rico remained under Spanish rule. 81 00:05:16,511 --> 00:05:19,886 After the extermination of the native Arawak people, 82 00:05:19,886 --> 00:05:22,991 the first sugar canes flourished on this fertile land. 83 00:05:23,893 --> 00:05:26,389 - The Caribbean became a space of conquest 84 00:05:26,389 --> 00:05:28,414 for the Europeans very early on. 85 00:05:28,414 --> 00:05:31,657 Really, it was the first place that Columbus landed in the new world, 86 00:05:31,657 --> 00:05:35,195 the first place that the Spanish began to search for gold, 87 00:05:35,195 --> 00:05:37,923 and the first place they began to enslave the Indians. 88 00:05:37,923 --> 00:05:40,499 So they were thoroughgoing colonial spaces 89 00:05:40,499 --> 00:05:44,318 created by design of European planters 90 00:05:44,318 --> 00:05:46,020 and imperial policy makers. 91 00:05:46,020 --> 00:05:48,202 And for their profit, right? 92 00:05:48,202 --> 00:05:49,525 There aren't so many places 93 00:05:49,525 --> 00:05:52,302 where you can completely overlay a territory like that. 94 00:05:52,302 --> 00:05:55,393 So, in some ways, the Caribbean is the space where you find 95 00:05:55,393 --> 00:05:57,492 the purest of Colonial territories. 96 00:05:57,492 --> 00:06:01,549 Where the masters of the space actually get to create the space 97 00:06:01,549 --> 00:06:03,323 to suit their own needs. 98 00:06:04,965 --> 00:06:07,326 - (Narrator) In Guadalupe, every plot of land, 99 00:06:07,326 --> 00:06:09,755 every single square inch of ground, 100 00:06:09,755 --> 00:06:12,816 is connected to this violent and deeply-rooted history. 101 00:06:25,300 --> 00:06:29,555 Today, all that is left of the Sugar War is a field of ruins. 102 00:06:35,613 --> 00:06:40,105 Of the 250 sugar refineries active in the late 19th century, 103 00:06:40,105 --> 00:06:42,332 only two remain in operation. 104 00:06:56,118 --> 00:06:58,972 In 2017, experts from France's 105 00:06:58,972 --> 00:07:02,297 National Institute of Preventive Archeological Research 106 00:07:02,297 --> 00:07:06,063 exhumed the remains of the Saint Jacques residence and sugar refinery 107 00:07:06,063 --> 00:07:08,334 in Anse-Bertrand: 108 00:07:08,334 --> 00:07:12,024 a mill, stock rooms, and three rows of so-called "negro huts" 109 00:07:12,024 --> 00:07:14,855 where hundreds of slaves were penned up together. 110 00:07:16,043 --> 00:07:20,626 In this brutal work camp, human beings were but one tool among others. 111 00:07:21,484 --> 00:07:24,590 Each became a mechanized, emaciated body, 112 00:07:24,590 --> 00:07:27,487 consumed by work until their final breath. 113 00:07:29,103 --> 00:07:32,337 - Both the time in which the slaves were digging the cane holes 114 00:07:32,337 --> 00:07:34,555 and the times in which they're harvesting 115 00:07:34,555 --> 00:07:37,229 were really the peak of the labor on a plantation. 116 00:07:37,229 --> 00:07:39,435 You could almost see the slaves wasting away 117 00:07:39,435 --> 00:07:42,865 when they were digging these cane holes because the work was so strenuous 118 00:07:42,865 --> 00:07:44,921 and they were getting fed so poorly. 119 00:07:51,482 --> 00:07:53,274 You found women in all of the gangs, 120 00:07:53,274 --> 00:07:57,274 often times doing the hardest, dirtiest labor on the plantation. 121 00:07:57,274 --> 00:07:59,607 Alongside the men, or even before the men. 122 00:07:59,607 --> 00:08:01,500 And one of the things that means, 123 00:08:01,500 --> 00:08:04,440 when you find young women doing this quite debilitating labor, 124 00:08:04,440 --> 00:08:07,640 is that the birth rates are very low and the mortality rates, 125 00:08:07,640 --> 00:08:10,166 the infant mortality rate is shockingly high. 126 00:08:10,166 --> 00:08:12,511 In the mid-18th century, people talked about 127 00:08:12,511 --> 00:08:16,520 9 out of 10 infants born to enslaved Jamaican women 128 00:08:16,520 --> 00:08:19,324 dying, right, within the first year. 129 00:08:20,048 --> 00:08:23,168 So, there's no way in which the plantation can reproduce itself 130 00:08:23,168 --> 00:08:24,919 under those kinds of conditions. 131 00:08:27,830 --> 00:08:29,250 - [speaking French] 132 00:08:29,250 --> 00:08:32,357 - (English voiceover) The plantations were managed by overseers 133 00:08:32,357 --> 00:08:34,767 who saw the slaves in purely functional terms. 134 00:08:37,035 --> 00:08:40,146 This was absolute exploitation of the workforce. 135 00:08:40,146 --> 00:08:42,186 It was a very particular society 136 00:08:42,186 --> 00:08:47,132 because the average rate of life expectancy on a plantation 137 00:08:47,132 --> 00:08:48,739 was extremely low, 138 00:08:48,739 --> 00:08:51,592 about 8 to 10 years after arriving. 139 00:08:54,912 --> 00:08:56,332 - [speaking French] 140 00:08:56,332 --> 00:08:58,803 - (English voiceover) The logic of the slave system 141 00:08:58,803 --> 00:09:02,246 was one where the availability of the workforce had to be absolute. 142 00:09:03,658 --> 00:09:07,043 And for this, man was conceived as an accessory of the land. 143 00:09:08,957 --> 00:09:10,944 He appeared as such in house inventories. 144 00:09:13,307 --> 00:09:17,567 Slaves are listed next to records for livestock or manufacturing implements. 145 00:09:23,254 --> 00:09:25,938 That's the archaic aspect, 146 00:09:25,938 --> 00:09:28,599 which was put to use by a capitalist system, 147 00:09:28,599 --> 00:09:31,511 and which largely met market supply and demand, 148 00:09:31,511 --> 00:09:34,373 with its fluctuations, needs, and competition; 149 00:09:34,373 --> 00:09:35,772 free competition. 150 00:09:40,284 --> 00:09:44,161 - (Narrator) The sugar plantations saw slavery enter a new era. 151 00:09:44,161 --> 00:09:47,886 The stronger the demand for sugar, the more the slave trade expanded, 152 00:09:47,886 --> 00:09:51,193 and the more the slave traders sought support from banks 153 00:09:51,193 --> 00:09:53,292 to finance their expeditions. 154 00:09:55,142 --> 00:09:58,676 London is one of the oldest centers of global finance. 155 00:09:58,676 --> 00:10:03,349 The city of London was the first to create a commodities exchange, 156 00:10:03,349 --> 00:10:07,664 to develop credit markets, and to issue banknotes on a massive scale. 157 00:10:07,664 --> 00:10:10,704 Without the invention of a centralized banking system, 158 00:10:10,704 --> 00:10:13,663 the explosion of the slave trade in the 17th century 159 00:10:13,663 --> 00:10:15,534 would not have been possible. 160 00:10:15,534 --> 00:10:18,483 Preparing for a slave expedition was expensive, 161 00:10:18,483 --> 00:10:20,179 and having a financial arsenal 162 00:10:20,179 --> 00:10:23,379 gave England a decisive advantage over its competitors. 163 00:10:24,598 --> 00:10:28,571 - You've got to remember that the State is getting a tremendous amount of revenue 164 00:10:28,571 --> 00:10:30,780 from the plantation complex, 165 00:10:30,780 --> 00:10:34,386 so they had a very strong, vested interest in the slave trade. 166 00:10:35,357 --> 00:10:40,151 If you had gone to the king of England in 1680 and said, 167 00:10:40,151 --> 00:10:41,950 "Look, I'm gonna give you a choice. 168 00:10:41,950 --> 00:10:46,062 "You can either have these 13 colonies in North America, 169 00:10:46,062 --> 00:10:48,942 "or you can have this one little island called Barbados." 170 00:10:48,942 --> 00:10:51,605 He would have taken Barbados in a split second 171 00:10:51,605 --> 00:10:53,746 because of the sugar revenues. 172 00:10:53,746 --> 00:10:56,135 And this is something that's going to persist 173 00:10:56,135 --> 00:10:59,583 as a very important interest for European states 174 00:10:59,583 --> 00:11:01,830 up until the very end of slavery. 175 00:11:04,271 --> 00:11:08,333 - (Narrator) To support the sugar war, the city lent money on a colossal scale. 176 00:11:08,333 --> 00:11:11,642 In the midst of these steel and glass buildings, 177 00:11:11,642 --> 00:11:15,395 the two pillars of the English economy that financed the slave trade 178 00:11:15,395 --> 00:11:17,813 are still prominent on the London skyline. 179 00:11:20,908 --> 00:11:24,754 At the heart of the financial district is the venerable bank of England, 180 00:11:24,754 --> 00:11:26,528 the world's first central bank. 181 00:11:27,624 --> 00:11:30,234 A couple of blocks away is Britain's most powerful 182 00:11:30,234 --> 00:11:33,912 insurance company, the prestigious Lloyd's of London. 183 00:11:33,912 --> 00:11:37,118 Atlantic slave traders had to take on heavy debts 184 00:11:37,118 --> 00:11:39,295 to charter their ships. 185 00:11:39,295 --> 00:11:40,952 Without an insurance company, 186 00:11:40,952 --> 00:11:43,993 most would risk ruin on their first expedition. 187 00:11:48,236 --> 00:11:52,509 The slave traders made investments as if playing a game of poker. 188 00:11:52,509 --> 00:11:55,613 The risks were high, but if successful, 189 00:11:55,613 --> 00:11:59,865 the return would far outweigh any other type of investment. 190 00:11:59,865 --> 00:12:02,560 Insurers like Lloyd's had everything to gain 191 00:12:02,560 --> 00:12:04,788 by participating in this game of chance. 192 00:12:05,724 --> 00:12:09,680 A successful expedition could yield up to three times the initial stake. 193 00:12:10,642 --> 00:12:13,443 In the Lloyd's archives, little evidence remains 194 00:12:13,443 --> 00:12:17,626 of the profits amassed by insuring these high-risk expeditions. 195 00:12:17,626 --> 00:12:21,629 Most accounting records were lost in a fire in 1838, 196 00:12:21,629 --> 00:12:25,320 the same year that slavery was abolished in the British Caribbean. 197 00:12:29,916 --> 00:12:32,794 Ports had to adapt to this initial scramble 198 00:12:32,794 --> 00:12:35,055 for Africa and the Caribbean. 199 00:12:35,055 --> 00:12:39,151 In London, Blackwall became the slave trade's principal wharf. 200 00:12:39,151 --> 00:12:41,863 All manner of goods were sold here. 201 00:12:41,863 --> 00:12:45,549 Precious fabrics, jewels, porcelain, weapons, and brandy. 202 00:12:45,549 --> 00:12:48,599 All bought on credit with the bank's money. 203 00:12:48,599 --> 00:12:51,620 A giant port complex gradually evolved; 204 00:12:51,620 --> 00:12:55,595 a city within a city, entirely devoted to this new business. 205 00:12:58,478 --> 00:13:01,311 Following London in 1663, 206 00:13:01,311 --> 00:13:05,688 other seaports rushed to take advantage of this lucrative trade. 207 00:13:05,688 --> 00:13:08,756 Lorient, Copenhagen, La Rochelle, 208 00:13:08,756 --> 00:13:11,109 Bristol, Nantes, Liverpool, 209 00:13:11,109 --> 00:13:13,055 Bordeaux, Antwerp. 210 00:13:13,055 --> 00:13:17,195 From all over Europe, slave ships set sail for Africa. 211 00:13:17,195 --> 00:13:19,740 - When I began to see slave ships leaving 212 00:13:19,740 --> 00:13:23,518 from not just Liverpool and Nantes, 213 00:13:23,518 --> 00:13:25,591 but from every port in the Atlantic. 214 00:13:25,591 --> 00:13:31,344 As soon as a port becomes big enough to contemplate a transoceanic voyage, 215 00:13:31,344 --> 00:13:34,843 there's a good chance that voyage is going to be a slave trade voyage. 216 00:13:34,843 --> 00:13:39,639 And we've got like 170 separate ports, tiny places. 217 00:13:39,639 --> 00:13:42,406 Today, they've got no idea that once upon a time, 218 00:13:42,406 --> 00:13:44,799 they sent out slave voyages. 219 00:13:44,799 --> 00:13:47,772 Saint Peter's Port in the Channel Islands, charming place. 220 00:13:47,772 --> 00:13:50,484 And yet, it's a slave trade port. 221 00:13:50,719 --> 00:13:52,434 [drum cadence] 222 00:13:55,473 --> 00:13:59,358 Over a period of two centuries, more than 3,500 expeditions 223 00:13:59,358 --> 00:14:01,926 set sail from French ports. 224 00:14:01,926 --> 00:14:04,804 More than half of them left from the port of Nantes, 225 00:14:04,804 --> 00:14:07,165 the main French hub of triangular trade. 226 00:14:10,667 --> 00:14:14,402 The sculpted figures along the Quai de la Fosse, or Feydeau Island, 227 00:14:14,402 --> 00:14:15,823 are reminders of an era 228 00:14:15,823 --> 00:14:19,003 when the great slave trading families displayed their pride 229 00:14:19,003 --> 00:14:22,055 in being the main architects of the city's wealth. 230 00:14:22,055 --> 00:14:25,894 It was they who made Nantes France's leading commercial port. 231 00:14:25,894 --> 00:14:27,309 - [speaking French] 232 00:14:27,309 --> 00:14:29,638 - (English voiceover) Wealth came from slavery. 233 00:14:29,638 --> 00:14:33,364 There were negotiators, ship owners, and all those who produced foodstuffs. 234 00:14:34,354 --> 00:14:39,746 Vintners, flour producers, fabric producers, hardware producers. 235 00:14:39,746 --> 00:14:41,096 [speaking French] 236 00:14:42,893 --> 00:14:44,296 - [speaking French] 237 00:14:44,296 --> 00:14:47,297 - (English voiceover) The Atlantic ports also generated wealth 238 00:14:47,297 --> 00:14:49,631 for areas that stretched very far inland, 239 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]