WEBVTT 00:00:01.608 --> 00:00:05.103 - (Narrator) This is the story of a world whose borders and territories 00:00:05.103 --> 00:00:07.074 were drawn by the slave trade, 00:00:07.074 --> 00:00:11.411 where violence, subjugation, and profit imposed their own routes. 00:00:11.411 --> 00:00:15.353 This criminal system shaped our history, and our world. 00:00:16.511 --> 00:00:19.673 On São Tomé, the Portuguese invented an economic model 00:00:19.673 --> 00:00:23.330 with unprecedented profitability: the sugar plantation. 00:00:23.330 --> 00:00:26.454 - (English voiceover) This was the first black colony, 00:00:26.454 --> 00:00:28.321 the first slave society. 00:00:29.222 --> 00:00:32.490 - (English voiceover) We witnessed the marriage of the black man 00:00:32.490 --> 00:00:34.055 with sugar cane. 00:00:35.243 --> 00:00:38.448 - (Narrator) In the 16th century, other European powers 00:00:38.448 --> 00:00:40.898 were eager to follow their model. 00:00:40.898 --> 00:00:44.032 Their greed would plunge an entire continent 00:00:44.032 --> 00:00:46.259 into chaos and violence. 00:00:46.259 --> 00:00:50.876 Nearly 13 million Africans were cast onto new slavery routes to the new world, 00:00:50.876 --> 00:00:55.108 where the English, the French, and the Dutch hoped to become wealthy; 00:00:55.108 --> 00:00:57.412 immeasurably wealthy. 00:00:58.545 --> 00:01:01.761 [intense music with strong bass drum beat] 00:01:16.861 --> 00:01:21.212 Because the Caribbean has similar climatic features to São Tomé, 00:01:21.212 --> 00:01:23.686 it eventually became the principal crossroads 00:01:23.686 --> 00:01:26.062 of the slave trader's routes. 00:01:26.062 --> 00:01:28.132 For people in the western world, 00:01:28.132 --> 00:01:30.966 these islands are today associated with vacation. 00:01:31.681 --> 00:01:35.325 Guadeloupe offers tourists a dream destination. 00:01:35.325 --> 00:01:37.793 Sunshine and pristine nature, 00:01:37.793 --> 00:01:41.046 rekindling myths of a lost paradise. 00:01:41.046 --> 00:01:44.765 Holidaymakers tend to confine themselves to the beaches of Le Gosier, 00:01:44.765 --> 00:01:46.923 Sainte-Anne, and Saint François. 00:01:46.923 --> 00:01:50.117 But as this sign indicates, they are all-too-close 00:01:50.117 --> 00:01:52.465 to another side of the island's heritage 00:01:52.465 --> 00:01:55.171 that was anything but a paradise. 00:01:55.976 --> 00:01:58.136 Just a few meters away from the bathers 00:01:58.136 --> 00:02:01.521 is a burial site where countless skeletons were discovered. 00:02:02.950 --> 00:02:07.371 Between 500 and 1,000 graves are still buried beneath the sand. 00:02:08.810 --> 00:02:13.458 The Raisins Clairs beach is one of 15 slave cemeteries that have been excavated. 00:02:14.658 --> 00:02:18.534 Fifteen, among the 1,000 that exist in the Caribbean. 00:02:24.561 --> 00:02:30.099 89 skeletons have been exhumed by French archaeological research experts. 00:02:30.099 --> 00:02:34.290 Judging by the state of the bones, they concluded that these men and women 00:02:34.290 --> 00:02:36.699 had not reached the age of 30. 00:02:36.699 --> 00:02:40.039 By the time of their death, the toll from working on the plantations 00:02:40.039 --> 00:02:44.530 had so deformed their bodies that they seemed more like 75 year olds. 00:02:47.996 --> 00:02:51.914 These people were human guinea pigs for the sugar experiment, 00:02:51.914 --> 00:02:55.579 the collateral damage of an unprecedented trade war: 00:02:55.579 --> 00:02:57.253 The Sugar War. 00:02:59.043 --> 00:03:02.846 line:1 - 74% of all slaves carried off, 00:03:04.183 --> 00:03:06.133 line:1 were carried off because of sugar. 00:03:06.133 --> 00:03:10.137 If you want to understand the slave trade, you just need to know about sugar. 00:03:12.100 --> 00:03:15.610 Sugar proved more addictive than pepper or cinnamon. 00:03:15.610 --> 00:03:18.034 From the 17th century onward, 00:03:18.034 --> 00:03:21.938 Europeans craved this rare and expensive commodity. 00:03:21.938 --> 00:03:26.029 In London, Amsterdam, and Paris, sugar fever was rampant, 00:03:26.029 --> 00:03:30.501 prompting a new generation of adventurers to go to any extremes to get it. 00:03:31.523 --> 00:03:34.668 Shipowners and fitters, merchants and pirates, 00:03:34.668 --> 00:03:38.337 all knew that to produce sugar, you needed a lot of slaves. 00:03:39.300 --> 00:03:42.071 John Hawkins was one of these new entrepreneurs 00:03:42.071 --> 00:03:44.831 for whom profit reigned supreme. 00:03:44.831 --> 00:03:48.739 The English privateer was a pioneer in understanding that a fortune 00:03:48.739 --> 00:03:52.624 could be made by shipping Black captives to the New World. 00:03:52.624 --> 00:03:56.643 In the mid 16th century, he convinced Queen Elizabeth I 00:03:56.643 --> 00:03:59.836 to lend him a ship, The Jesus of Lubec. 00:03:59.836 --> 00:04:03.306 For the expedition, Hawkins conspicuously set the tone 00:04:03.306 --> 00:04:06.441 by choosing a trussed-up Black man on his emblem. 00:04:09.013 --> 00:04:11.323 - (Male speaker) "I do confirm to your highness 00:04:11.323 --> 00:04:15.558 "that I will bring home 40,000 marks without any offense of the least 00:04:15.558 --> 00:04:18.534 to any of Your Highness' allies or friends. 00:04:19.425 --> 00:04:22.886 "I will conduct this enterprise and turn it to the benefit 00:04:22.886 --> 00:04:26.822 "of your whole realm, with Your Highness' consent. 00:04:26.822 --> 00:04:30.155 "The voyage I propose is to load negroes in Guinea 00:04:30.155 --> 00:04:32.437 "and sell them in the West Indies, 00:04:32.437 --> 00:04:37.144 "in truck of pearls, gold, and emeralds that I will bring back in abundance." 00:04:39.329 --> 00:04:42.980 - (Narrator) 1620, a century after sugar plantations 00:04:42.980 --> 00:04:44.902 were introduced in Brazil, 00:04:44.902 --> 00:04:48.014 the Atlantic became the battleground for the Sugar War. 00:04:48.014 --> 00:04:50.255 England, The Netherlands, and France 00:04:50.255 --> 00:04:53.032 wanted to break Spain and Portugal's hegemony. 00:04:54.016 --> 00:04:56.518 In the Caribbean, the Dutch took control 00:04:56.518 --> 00:05:00.601 line:1 of Curaçao, Sint Eustatius, and Saint Martin. 00:05:00.601 --> 00:05:05.093 line:1 The French: Guadeloupe, Martinique, Grenada and Saint-Domingue. 00:05:05.093 --> 00:05:10.692 The English occupied The Bahamas, Jamaica, Antigua, Barbados and Dominica. 00:05:12.374 --> 00:05:16.511 Only Cuba and Puerto Rico remained under Spanish rule. 00:05:16.511 --> 00:05:19.886 After the extermination of the native Arawak people, 00:05:19.886 --> 00:05:22.991 the first sugar canes flourished on this fertile land. 00:05:23.893 --> 00:05:26.389 line:1 - The Caribbean became a space of conquest 00:05:26.389 --> 00:05:28.414 line:1 for the Europeans very early on. 00:05:28.414 --> 00:05:31.657 line:1 Really, it was the first place that Columbus landed in the new world, 00:05:31.657 --> 00:05:35.195 the first place that the Spanish began to search for gold, 00:05:35.195 --> 00:05:37.923 and the first place they began to enslave the Indians. 00:05:37.923 --> 00:05:40.499 So they were thoroughgoing colonial spaces 00:05:40.499 --> 00:05:44.318 created by design of European planters 00:05:44.318 --> 00:05:46.020 and imperial policy makers. 00:05:46.020 --> 00:05:48.202 And for their profit, right? 00:05:48.202 --> 00:05:49.525 There aren't so many places 00:05:49.525 --> 00:05:52.302 where you can completely overlay a territory like that. 00:05:52.302 --> 00:05:55.393 So, in some ways, the Caribbean is the space where you find 00:05:55.393 --> 00:05:57.492 the purest of Colonial territories. 00:05:57.492 --> 00:06:01.549 Where the masters of the space actually get to create the space 00:06:01.549 --> 00:06:03.323 to suit their own needs. 00:06:04.965 --> 00:06:07.326 - (Narrator) In Guadalupe, every plot of land, 00:06:07.326 --> 00:06:09.755 every single square inch of ground, 00:06:09.755 --> 00:06:12.816 is connected to this violent and deeply-rooted history. 00:06:25.300 --> 00:06:29.555 Today, all that is left of the Sugar War is a field of ruins. 00:06:35.613 --> 00:06:40.105 Of the 250 sugar refineries active in the late 19th century, 00:06:40.105 --> 00:06:42.332 only two remain in operation. 00:06:56.118 --> 00:06:58.972 In 2017, experts from France's 00:06:58.972 --> 00:07:02.297 National Institute of Preventive Archeological Research 00:07:02.297 --> 00:07:06.063 exhumed the remains of the Saint Jacques residence and sugar refinery 00:07:06.063 --> 00:07:08.334 in Anse-Bertrand: 00:07:08.334 --> 00:07:12.024 a mill, stock rooms, and three rows of so-called "negro huts" 00:07:12.024 --> 00:07:14.855 where hundreds of slaves were penned up together. 00:07:16.043 --> 00:07:20.626 In this brutal work camp, human beings were but one tool among others. 00:07:21.484 --> 00:07:24.590 Each became a mechanized, emaciated body, 00:07:24.590 --> 00:07:27.487 consumed by work until their final breath. 00:07:29.103 --> 00:07:32.337 - Both the time in which the slaves were digging the cane holes 00:07:32.337 --> 00:07:34.555 and the times in which they're harvesting 00:07:34.555 --> 00:07:37.229 were really the peak of the labor on a plantation. 00:07:37.229 --> 00:07:39.435 You could almost see the slaves wasting away 00:07:39.435 --> 00:07:42.865 when they were digging these cane holes because the work was so strenuous 00:07:42.865 --> 00:07:44.921 and they were getting fed so poorly. 00:07:51.482 --> 00:07:53.274 You found women in all of the gangs, 00:07:53.274 --> 00:07:57.274 often times doing the hardest, dirtiest labor on the plantation. 00:07:57.274 --> 00:07:59.607 Alongside the men, or even before the men. 00:07:59.607 --> 00:08:01.500 And one of the things that means, 00:08:01.500 --> 00:08:04.440 when you find young women doing this quite debilitating labor, 00:08:04.440 --> 00:08:07.640 is that the birth rates are very low and the mortality rates, 00:08:07.640 --> 00:08:10.166 the infant mortality rate is shockingly high. 00:08:10.166 --> 00:08:12.511 In the mid-18th century, people talked about 00:08:12.511 --> 00:08:16.520 9 out of 10 infants born to enslaved Jamaican women 00:08:16.520 --> 00:08:19.324 dying, right, within the first year. 00:08:20.048 --> 00:08:23.168 So, there's no way in which the plantation can reproduce itself 00:08:23.168 --> 00:08:24.919 under those kinds of conditions. 00:08:27.830 --> 00:08:29.250 - [speaking French] 00:08:29.250 --> 00:08:32.357 - (English voiceover) The plantations were managed by overseers 00:08:32.357 --> 00:08:34.767 line:1 who saw the slaves in purely functional terms. 00:08:37.035 --> 00:08:40.146 line:1 This was absolute exploitation of the workforce. 00:08:40.146 --> 00:08:42.186 It was a very particular society 00:08:42.186 --> 00:08:47.132 because the average rate of life expectancy on a plantation 00:08:47.132 --> 00:08:48.739 was extremely low, 00:08:48.739 --> 00:08:51.592 about 8 to 10 years after arriving. 00:08:54.912 --> 00:08:56.332 - [speaking French] 00:08:56.332 --> 00:08:58.803 - (English voiceover) The logic of the slave system 00:08:58.803 --> 00:09:02.246 line:1 was one where the availability of the workforce had to be absolute. 00:09:03.658 --> 00:09:07.043 line:1 And for this, man was conceived as an accessory of the land. 00:09:08.957 --> 00:09:10.944 He appeared as such in house inventories. 00:09:13.307 --> 00:09:17.567 Slaves are listed next to records for livestock or manufacturing implements. 00:09:23.254 --> 00:09:25.938 That's the archaic aspect, 00:09:25.938 --> 00:09:28.599 which was put to use by a capitalist system, 00:09:28.599 --> 00:09:31.511 and which largely met market supply and demand, 00:09:31.511 --> 00:09:34.373 with its fluctuations, needs, and competition; 00:09:34.373 --> 00:09:35.772 free competition. 00:09:40.284 --> 00:09:44.161 - (Narrator) The sugar plantations saw slavery enter a new era. 00:09:44.161 --> 00:09:47.886 The stronger the demand for sugar, the more the slave trade expanded, 00:09:47.886 --> 00:09:51.193 and the more the slave traders sought support from banks 00:09:51.193 --> 00:09:53.292 to finance their expeditions. 00:09:55.142 --> 00:09:58.676 London is one of the oldest centers of global finance. 00:09:58.676 --> 00:10:03.349 The city of London was the first to create a commodities exchange, 00:10:03.349 --> 00:10:07.664 to develop credit markets, and to issue banknotes on a massive scale. 00:10:07.664 --> 00:10:10.704 Without the invention of a centralized banking system, 00:10:10.704 --> 00:10:13.663 the explosion of the slave trade in the 17th century 00:10:13.663 --> 00:10:15.534 would not have been possible. 00:10:15.534 --> 00:10:18.483 Preparing for a slave expedition was expensive, 00:10:18.483 --> 00:10:20.179 and having a financial arsenal 00:10:20.179 --> 00:10:23.379 gave England a decisive advantage over its competitors. 00:10:24.598 --> 00:10:28.571 line:1 - You've got to remember that the State is getting a tremendous amount of revenue 00:10:28.571 --> 00:10:30.780 line:1 from the plantation complex, 00:10:30.780 --> 00:10:34.386 line:1 so they had a very strong, vested interest in the slave trade. 00:10:35.357 --> 00:10:40.151 If you had gone to the king of England in 1680 and said, 00:10:40.151 --> 00:10:41.950 "Look, I'm gonna give you a choice. 00:10:41.950 --> 00:10:46.062 "You can either have these 13 colonies in North America, 00:10:46.062 --> 00:10:48.942 "or you can have this one little island called Barbados." 00:10:48.942 --> 00:10:51.605 He would have taken Barbados in a split second 00:10:51.605 --> 00:10:53.746 because of the sugar revenues. 00:10:53.746 --> 00:10:56.135 And this is something that's going to persist 00:10:56.135 --> 00:10:59.583 as a very important interest for European states 00:10:59.583 --> 00:11:01.830 up until the very end of slavery. 00:11:04.271 --> 00:11:08.333 - (Narrator) To support the sugar war, the city lent money on a colossal scale. 00:11:08.333 --> 00:11:11.642 In the midst of these steel and glass buildings, 00:11:11.642 --> 00:11:15.395 the two pillars of the English economy that financed the slave trade 00:11:15.395 --> 00:11:17.813 are still prominent on the London skyline. 00:11:20.908 --> 00:11:24.754 At the heart of the financial district is the venerable bank of England, 00:11:24.754 --> 00:11:26.528 the world's first central bank. 00:11:27.624 --> 00:11:30.234 A couple of blocks away is Britain's most powerful 00:11:30.234 --> 00:11:33.912 insurance company, the prestigious Lloyd's of London. 00:11:33.912 --> 00:11:37.118 Atlantic slave traders had to take on heavy debts 00:11:37.118 --> 00:11:39.295 to charter their ships. 00:11:39.295 --> 00:11:40.952 Without an insurance company, 00:11:40.952 --> 00:11:43.993 most would risk ruin on their first expedition. 00:11:48.236 --> 00:11:52.509 The slave traders made investments as if playing a game of poker. 00:11:52.509 --> 00:11:55.613 The risks were high, but if successful, 00:11:55.613 --> 00:11:59.865 the return would far outweigh any other type of investment. 00:11:59.865 --> 00:12:02.560 Insurers like Lloyd's had everything to gain 00:12:02.560 --> 00:12:04.788 by participating in this game of chance. 00:12:05.724 --> 00:12:09.680 A successful expedition could yield up to three times the initial stake. 00:12:10.642 --> 00:12:13.443 In the Lloyd's archives, little evidence remains 00:12:13.443 --> 00:12:17.626 of the profits amassed by insuring these high-risk expeditions. 00:12:17.626 --> 00:12:21.629 Most accounting records were lost in a fire in 1838, 00:12:21.629 --> 00:12:25.320 the same year that slavery was abolished in the British Caribbean. 00:12:29.916 --> 00:12:32.794 Ports had to adapt to this initial scramble 00:12:32.794 --> 00:12:35.055 for Africa and the Caribbean. 00:12:35.055 --> 00:12:39.151 In London, Blackwall became the slave trade's principal wharf. 00:12:39.151 --> 00:12:41.863 All manner of goods were sold here. 00:12:41.863 --> 00:12:45.549 Precious fabrics, jewels, porcelain, weapons, and brandy. 00:12:45.549 --> 00:12:48.599 All bought on credit with the bank's money. 00:12:48.599 --> 00:12:51.620 A giant port complex gradually evolved; 00:12:51.620 --> 00:12:55.595 a city within a city, entirely devoted to this new business. 00:12:58.478 --> 00:13:01.311 Following London in 1663, 00:13:01.311 --> 00:13:05.688 other seaports rushed to take advantage of this lucrative trade. 00:13:05.688 --> 00:13:08.756 Lorient, Copenhagen, La Rochelle, 00:13:08.756 --> 00:13:11.109 Bristol, Nantes, Liverpool, 00:13:11.109 --> 00:13:13.055 Bordeaux, Antwerp. 00:13:13.055 --> 00:13:17.195 From all over Europe, slave ships set sail for Africa. 00:13:17.195 --> 00:13:19.740 - When I began to see slave ships leaving 00:13:19.740 --> 00:13:23.518 line:1 from not just Liverpool and Nantes, 00:13:23.518 --> 00:13:25.591 line:1 but from every port in the Atlantic. 00:13:25.591 --> 00:13:31.344 As soon as a port becomes big enough to contemplate a transoceanic voyage, 00:13:31.344 --> 00:13:34.843 there's a good chance that voyage is going to be a slave trade voyage. 00:13:34.843 --> 00:13:39.639 And we've got like 170 separate ports, tiny places. 00:13:39.639 --> 00:13:42.406 Today, they've got no idea that once upon a time, 00:13:42.406 --> 00:13:44.799 they sent out slave voyages. 00:13:44.799 --> 00:13:47.772 Saint Peter's Port in the Channel Islands, charming place. 00:13:47.772 --> 00:13:50.484 And yet, it's a slave trade port. 00:13:50.719 --> 00:13:52.434 [drum cadence] 00:13:55.473 --> 00:13:59.358 Over a period of two centuries, more than 3,500 expeditions 00:13:59.358 --> 00:14:01.926 set sail from French ports. 00:14:01.926 --> 00:14:04.804 More than half of them left from the port of Nantes, 00:14:04.804 --> 00:14:07.165 the main French hub of triangular trade. 00:14:10.667 --> 00:14:14.402 The sculpted figures along the Quai de la Fosse, or Feydeau Island, 00:14:14.402 --> 00:14:15.823 are reminders of an era 00:14:15.823 --> 00:14:19.003 when the great slave trading families displayed their pride 00:14:19.003 --> 00:14:22.055 in being the main architects of the city's wealth. 00:14:22.055 --> 00:14:25.894 It was they who made Nantes France's leading commercial port. 00:14:25.894 --> 00:14:27.309 - [speaking French] 00:14:27.309 --> 00:14:29.638 - (English voiceover) Wealth came from slavery. 00:14:29.638 --> 00:14:33.364 There were negotiators, ship owners, and all those who produced foodstuffs. 00:14:34.354 --> 00:14:39.746 line:1 Vintners, flour producers, fabric producers, hardware producers. 00:14:39.746 --> 00:14:41.096 line:1 [speaking French] 00:14:42.893 --> 00:14:44.296 line:1 - [speaking French] 00:14:44.296 --> 00:14:47.297 line:1 - (English voiceover) The Atlantic ports also generated wealth 00:14:47.297 --> 00:14:49.631 line:1 for areas that stretched very far inland, 00:14:49.631 --> 00:14:52.869 as far as Orléans, in the case of Nantes. 00:14:55.049 --> 00:14:58.223 Goods were also transported along rivers. 00:15:00.310 --> 00:15:04.063 So the wealth that slavery produced was essential for France. 00:15:04.063 --> 00:15:06.173 [speaking French] 00:15:08.418 --> 00:15:13.514 - (Narrator) 1669. From Nantes, Bordeaux, La Rochelle and Le Havre, 00:15:13.514 --> 00:15:15.904 slavery money flowed back up rivers 00:15:15.904 --> 00:15:19.144 to Rouen, Orléans and Angoulême. 00:15:19.144 --> 00:15:24.016 It had such repercussions on inland areas that it became a national objective. 00:15:25.126 --> 00:15:28.118 Louis XIV knew that to win the Sugar War, 00:15:28.118 --> 00:15:29.893 he would need a powerful fleet. 00:15:32.403 --> 00:15:35.486 The king ordered the construction of 500 galleons. 00:15:35.486 --> 00:15:38.151 The Atlantic became the theater of a naval war 00:15:38.151 --> 00:15:40.782 between France, England and the Netherlands. 00:15:40.782 --> 00:15:44.870 A bitter fight, in which each sunken ship was a total loss 00:15:44.870 --> 00:15:46.967 for the respective country's economy. 00:15:48.641 --> 00:15:49.917 - [speaking French] 00:15:49.917 --> 00:15:52.850 - (English voiceover) It was very expensive to build and equip 00:15:52.850 --> 00:15:55.248 a 74-gun ship and pay its crew. 00:15:57.791 --> 00:16:00.185 Ultimately, who bore the cost? 00:16:00.185 --> 00:16:05.237 The bill for financing these wars, the financing of ships and arsenals, 00:16:05.237 --> 00:16:07.692 was mainly footed by French peasants. 00:16:11.187 --> 00:16:13.758 - (Narrator) The slave trade fleets were protected. 00:16:13.758 --> 00:16:17.831 16,000 galleons were already protecting Dutch commercial ships, 00:16:17.831 --> 00:16:21.137 while the 3,000 light and fast Royal Navy cruisers 00:16:21.137 --> 00:16:22.965 terrified their adversaries. 00:16:22.965 --> 00:16:25.737 France paled in comparison to these armadas. 00:16:29.496 --> 00:16:32.104 Each nation needed a fortress in Africa 00:16:32.104 --> 00:16:34.886 if it were to compete in the Atlantic race. 00:16:34.886 --> 00:16:37.064 Just like on the Caribbean islands, 00:16:37.064 --> 00:16:40.307 these forts were the bastions of triangular trade. 00:16:41.321 --> 00:16:43.112 As military bases, 00:16:43.112 --> 00:16:46.790 they offered a secure store for bartered goods and captives 00:16:46.790 --> 00:16:48.348 before departure by sea. 00:16:52.983 --> 00:16:54.738 In less than 80 years, 00:16:54.738 --> 00:16:58.512 43 such forts were built from Senegal to the Niger Delta. 00:16:58.512 --> 00:17:02.106 Every stone, every beam, every element of masonry 00:17:02.106 --> 00:17:04.190 was transported by boat from Europe. 00:17:06.513 --> 00:17:09.554 - Most of these fortresses are built by states. 00:17:09.554 --> 00:17:14.093 line:1 Individual capitalists or even groups of trading capitalists 00:17:14.093 --> 00:17:16.577 line:1 did not have that kind of money 00:17:16.577 --> 00:17:19.234 in order to build those sorts of fortresses. 00:17:20.038 --> 00:17:22.359 - (Narrator) The English already had thirteen, 00:17:22.359 --> 00:17:24.217 the Dutch ten, the Danish five. 00:17:24.217 --> 00:17:26.471 Even the Prussians, with their three forts, 00:17:26.471 --> 00:17:28.102 surpassed the French. 00:17:28.102 --> 00:17:30.754 On the Gold Coast, in today’s Ghana, 00:17:30.754 --> 00:17:35.385 the Fante and Ashanti rented Europeans plots of land to build their forts. 00:17:35.385 --> 00:17:38.868 The Europeans established trading posts and fortresses 00:17:38.868 --> 00:17:40.555 all along the Atlantic coast, 00:17:40.555 --> 00:17:43.223 from the Ewé territory to the Kongo Kingdom. 00:17:44.154 --> 00:17:47.821 Equatorial Africa became the world’s principal source of slaves. 00:17:52.785 --> 00:17:56.830 In this accounting document written in 1688, 00:17:56.830 --> 00:18:02.538 we learn that over an 8-year period, it shipped 60,783 slaves. 00:18:03.480 --> 00:18:08.038 Each cost the Royal African Company 8 to 12 pounds sterling, 00:18:08.038 --> 00:18:13.071 the equivalent of between €950 and €1500 today. 00:18:13.071 --> 00:18:15.343 They were all bought with trade goods. 00:18:15.343 --> 00:18:17.765 The demand for slaves was so high 00:18:17.765 --> 00:18:21.352 that the Europeans pressured their African partners to help them 00:18:21.352 --> 00:18:26.173 plan, rationalize, and industrialize their system of mass deportation. 00:18:30.450 --> 00:18:33.977 line:1 - Slaves were often bought on credit. 00:18:33.977 --> 00:18:38.067 line:1 And so that meant that European ships would come, 00:18:38.067 --> 00:18:42.809 they would have a whole cargo full of textiles, different metal ware, 00:18:42.809 --> 00:18:47.319 rum, tobacco, whatever. 00:18:47.319 --> 00:18:51.201 And these would be given to the local merchants, 00:18:51.201 --> 00:18:53.080 extended to them on credit. 00:18:53.080 --> 00:18:55.733 And then the merchants would go inland with those goods 00:18:55.697 --> 00:18:57.501 and buy slaves and come back. 00:18:57.501 --> 00:19:02.384 line:1 - The biggest impact was the level of violence, 00:19:02.384 --> 00:19:04.263 line:1 the rising level of violence, 00:19:04.263 --> 00:19:09.933 the level of uncertainty that permeated society everywhere, 00:19:09.933 --> 00:19:16.134 and also the opportunity for new "big men" to emerge, 00:19:16.134 --> 00:19:17.930 new powerful leaders. 00:19:17.930 --> 00:19:21.370 Somebody gets a hold of more firearms, somebody gets more aggressive, 00:19:21.370 --> 00:19:24.911 they build their own personal chieftain and, suddenly, they’re powerful. 00:19:27.191 --> 00:19:29.924 - (Narrator) Among these leaders was Antera Duke, 00:19:29.924 --> 00:19:34.161 a major African trader from Calabar in what is now Nigeria. 00:19:34.161 --> 00:19:39.004 In his diary, he spoke of the methods he used to terrorize captives: 00:19:39.004 --> 00:19:42.022 kidnapping, detention, and murder. 00:19:50.179 --> 00:19:52.668 [fire roars and crackles] 00:19:56.872 --> 00:20:00.031 - (Man) "About 4am, I got up. 00:20:00.031 --> 00:20:01.673 "Awful rain. 00:20:01.673 --> 00:20:03.867 "I walked up to the city trading house, 00:20:03.867 --> 00:20:06.379 "where I met all the gentlemen. 00:20:06.379 --> 00:20:08.310 "We got ready to cut off heads. 00:20:16.220 --> 00:20:19.785 "5am, we began decapitating slaves. 00:20:27.379 --> 00:20:29.527 "50 heads fell that day." 00:20:43.460 --> 00:20:48.130 - Very clearly, these sacrifices were intended as a form of terrorism 00:20:48.130 --> 00:20:51.582 that were meant to make it very clear to the population 00:20:51.582 --> 00:20:53.632 who was the boss and who was not, 00:20:53.632 --> 00:21:00.064 in very much the way the Mafioso type organizations behave 00:21:00.927 --> 00:21:04.279 in terms of making sure that the members of the association 00:21:04.279 --> 00:21:06.465 respect whoever the Godfather is, 00:21:06.465 --> 00:21:10.802 and if anybody steps out of line they can be assassinated or killed. 00:21:10.802 --> 00:21:13.408 And so they don't step out of line, obviously. 00:21:14.438 --> 00:21:18.938 - (Narrator) For the benefit of a handful of enterprising & unscrupulous profiteers, 00:21:18.938 --> 00:21:22.613 the entire continental economy was transformed. 00:21:22.613 --> 00:21:26.903 On the coast, African brokers knew all of the inner workings 00:21:26.862 --> 00:21:28.530 of the sugar plantation. 00:21:30.677 --> 00:21:34.044 A slave ship from Saint-Malo, “Le Marie Séraphique”, 00:21:34.044 --> 00:21:36.955 docked at Loango in the Kingdom of Kongo. 00:21:42.395 --> 00:21:45.298 Its captain’s drawings provide exceptional details 00:21:45.298 --> 00:21:49.017 of the negotiations between Europeans and Africans. 00:21:49.017 --> 00:21:51.245 The merchants from the coast knew 00:21:51.245 --> 00:21:54.231 that the Marie Séraphique’s captain was in a hurry: 00:21:54.231 --> 00:21:57.759 he had to arrive in the West Indies before harvest time. 00:21:57.759 --> 00:22:01.062 This was the time of year when slaves sold best, 00:22:01.062 --> 00:22:03.704 and when the best sugar was available. 00:22:03.704 --> 00:22:06.194 So they deliberately prolonged negotiations 00:22:06.194 --> 00:22:08.227 to drive prices up. 00:22:08.227 --> 00:22:12.735 312 captives were rounded up in 116 days. 00:22:15.058 --> 00:22:18.729 The Marie Séraphique arrived in Saint-Domingue, now Haiti, 00:22:18.729 --> 00:22:20.882 one year after leaving France. 00:22:20.882 --> 00:22:23.311 Only nine captives had perished: 00:22:23.311 --> 00:22:26.680 a good ratio for the crew, who celebrated their success. 00:22:27.652 --> 00:22:29.852 In the drawings of the Marie Séraphique, 00:22:29.852 --> 00:22:32.977 no allusion to the slaves’ suffering appears. 00:22:32.977 --> 00:22:35.472 They were dehumanized shadows, 00:22:35.472 --> 00:22:39.338 tallied and lined up like barrels at the bottom of the hold, 00:22:40.382 --> 00:22:44.302 the transportation of human beings turned into a nightmare. 00:22:48.013 --> 00:22:52.063 - It’s very important to understand that violence onboard slave ships 00:22:52.063 --> 00:22:53.806 would be used selectively. 00:22:53.806 --> 00:22:55.406 In other words, no captain 00:22:55.406 --> 00:22:59.829 line:1 wanted to kill the entire allotment of people on board 00:22:59.829 --> 00:23:02.328 because that voyage would then have no profit. 00:23:02.328 --> 00:23:06.248 So when there was resistance, what the captains would do, 00:23:06.248 --> 00:23:09.697 is organize a spectacle 00:23:09.697 --> 00:23:14.378 in which a small number of people would be executed 00:23:14.378 --> 00:23:17.285 in extremely vicious, horrific ways 00:23:17.285 --> 00:23:21.655 as a means of terrorizing everybody else. 00:23:21.655 --> 00:23:24.598 All of the enslaved would be forced to come up on deck 00:23:24.598 --> 00:23:26.636 in order to view these executions. 00:23:26.636 --> 00:23:31.107 One slave ship surgeon said that frequently the decks, NOTE Paragraph 00:23:31.107 --> 00:23:34.875 the main deck of the ship would just be completely awash in blood 00:23:34.875 --> 00:23:37.760 in the aftermath of one of these failed revolts. 00:23:37.760 --> 00:23:41.417 Revolts were common, and they were almost always suppressed. 00:23:41.417 --> 00:23:46.696 But the captains would use that situation to kill a small number, 00:23:46.696 --> 00:23:49.097 in order to intimidate everybody else, 00:23:49.097 --> 00:23:53.502 sending the message that if you resist us, this will be your fate. 00:23:53.801 --> 00:23:56.110 [flute and bass drum playing slowly] 00:24:04.421 --> 00:24:09.443 I’ve also suggested that the slave ship created categories of race. 00:24:10.645 --> 00:24:14.106 For example, the multi-ethnic Africans 00:24:14.106 --> 00:24:17.386 who are loaded on board a slave ship 00:24:17.386 --> 00:24:24.201 go aboard as Ebo or Fante or Mende, 00:24:24.201 --> 00:24:26.300 but when they come off the ship, 00:24:26.300 --> 00:24:31.235 they are unloaded as members of a “negro race”. 00:24:31.236 --> 00:24:35.173 And the same parallel process goes on among the sailors. 00:24:35.173 --> 00:24:41.692 These motley crews, they are English, Irish, also in some cases African. 00:24:41.692 --> 00:24:44.381 They leave their European port, 00:24:44.381 --> 00:24:47.402 but when they arrive on the West coast of Africa, 00:24:47.402 --> 00:24:49.354 they become the White people. 00:24:55.897 --> 00:24:57.840 - (Narrator) On Caribbean beaches, 00:24:57.840 --> 00:25:02.445 captives disembarked as “Blacks” in a world dominated by “Whites”. 00:25:04.780 --> 00:25:06.839 [singing in unison and cracking whips] 00:25:06.839 --> 00:25:10.806 Providing an outlet for a society founded on violence and race, 00:25:10.806 --> 00:25:13.431 the Carnival maintains the memory of the days 00:25:13.431 --> 00:25:17.071 when the sugar industry imposed its rhythms, rites, and seasons, 00:25:17.071 --> 00:25:19.430 and set the pace for island life. 00:25:20.997 --> 00:25:29.925 line:1 [singing in unison] 00:25:29.925 --> 00:25:33.330 It was an era when drummers announced the end of winter 00:25:33.330 --> 00:25:35.435 and the resumption of cutting; 00:25:35.435 --> 00:25:38.268 when fleeing slaves covered themselves in molasses 00:25:38.268 --> 00:25:40.531 to help prevent their re-capture. 00:25:43.061 --> 00:25:45.761 - [speaking French] 00:25:45.761 --> 00:25:49.385 line:1 - (English voiceover) What progressively distinguished Atlantic slavery, 00:25:49.385 --> 00:25:52.139 line:1 what made it different from other systems of slavery, 00:25:52.139 --> 00:25:53.992 was the construction of race. 00:25:57.552 --> 00:26:00.376 It was precisely this superimposition that developed 00:26:00.376 --> 00:26:04.018 between physical appearance, with its own term, and status. 00:26:08.006 --> 00:26:12.287 At the extremities of this continuum of both status and color, 00:26:12.287 --> 00:26:15.578 there was the white master and the black slave. 00:26:24.808 --> 00:26:28.708 The term "White” did not exist prior to slave societies. 00:26:33.166 --> 00:26:36.630 The term "White" developed specifically in the Antilles. 00:26:37.580 --> 00:26:40.900 So you can see how vital this Atlantic slave area was 00:26:40.900 --> 00:26:43.152 to the construction of the racial categories 00:26:43.152 --> 00:26:44.657 that we still use now. 00:26:46.031 --> 00:26:49.404 We use them as though they hadn't changed throughout time, 00:26:49.404 --> 00:26:51.146 when, in fact, they have. 00:26:57.339 --> 00:26:59.814 - (Narrator) Race was a weapon of submission, 00:26:59.814 --> 00:27:04.465 meant to carve into flesh the supposed inferiority of some people, 00:27:04.465 --> 00:27:07.266 and the infinite superiority of others. 00:27:08.368 --> 00:27:10.862 Cut off from their roots and their families, 00:27:10.862 --> 00:27:13.960 the Black slaves were reduced to a servile mass, 00:27:13.960 --> 00:27:16.644 without names and without orientation. 00:27:19.245 --> 00:27:23.326 The plantation was a machine that devoured its workforce. 00:27:23.326 --> 00:27:26.244 It needed a constant supply of new arrivals. 00:27:27.062 --> 00:27:30.797 Landowners wanted to transform the slaves’ bodies into tools. 00:27:31.828 --> 00:27:34.261 On plantations, whipping and torture 00:27:34.261 --> 00:27:36.690 were used to deprive them of their humanity. 00:27:38.433 --> 00:27:43.106 In this garden of torture, the master’s authority was absolute. 00:27:52.649 --> 00:27:56.308 line:1 - So you take, for example, a character like Thomas Thistlewood. 00:27:56.308 --> 00:28:00.261 line:1 And you can almost see in his diaries the escalation in the violence 00:28:00.261 --> 00:28:01.710 that he has to mete out, 00:28:01.710 --> 00:28:04.432 or that he thinks he has to mete out to the enslaved 00:28:04.432 --> 00:28:06.488 to keep them working on the plantation. 00:28:13.970 --> 00:28:17.033 - (Male voice) "I arrived as a foreman on the new plantation 00:28:17.033 --> 00:28:18.445 "barely two weeks ago. 00:28:19.490 --> 00:28:22.653 "We had to carry out justice on a negro who had escaped. 00:28:24.231 --> 00:28:25.756 "We severely whipped him 00:28:25.756 --> 00:28:29.602 "and rubbed pepper, salt, and lime juice into his wounds. 00:28:34.268 --> 00:28:37.879 "Three days later, the body of another slave who had escaped 00:28:37.879 --> 00:28:39.336 "was brought to us. 00:28:39.336 --> 00:28:43.021 "I cut off his head and we burned the body in public. 00:28:43.021 --> 00:28:46.370 "That was the only way to exert our control over the negroes. 00:28:49.241 --> 00:28:53.169 "In this affair, my reasoning was adopted by all the colonies. 00:28:54.200 --> 00:28:58.762 "The unfortunate condition of the Negro naturally led to us being hated. 00:28:58.762 --> 00:29:01.950 "Only strength and violence can hold them back." 00:29:27.108 --> 00:29:30.672 - These kinds of tortures and these kinds of punishments, 00:29:30.672 --> 00:29:32.163 this kind of brutality, 00:29:32.163 --> 00:29:35.051 actually became common-place on these plantations 00:29:35.051 --> 00:29:38.083 where you had white people working out among armies of slaves 00:29:38.083 --> 00:29:40.039 who they feared they could not control. 00:29:40.039 --> 00:29:43.435 The sound of the screaming and the stench of the burning bodies, 00:29:43.435 --> 00:29:47.278 that also became a fundamental feature of the Jamaican landscape, right? 00:29:47.278 --> 00:29:49.493 That is what plantation society is. 00:29:49.493 --> 00:29:52.955 It’s that smell, it’s that sound, it’s that fear and terror 00:29:52.955 --> 00:29:56.392 that’s compelling people to work and to obey their masters. 00:29:56.392 --> 00:29:59.479 There is no way to separate that kind of terror 00:29:59.479 --> 00:30:01.384 from the labor on the plantation, 00:30:01.384 --> 00:30:04.025 from the profits that labor produced. 00:30:05.324 --> 00:30:08.186 - (Narrator) But the plantation owners could not squander 00:30:08.186 --> 00:30:10.388 the slaves they had bought on credit. 00:30:10.388 --> 00:30:12.919 The state had financed the shipment of slaves, 00:30:12.919 --> 00:30:15.249 and wanted its return on investment. 00:30:22.735 --> 00:30:26.310 The plantation society relied solely on market forces. 00:30:26.310 --> 00:30:30.815 Violence was a necessary cost, and thus included in balance sheets. 00:30:31.825 --> 00:30:35.262 It took 4 years to amortize the price of a slave. 00:30:35.262 --> 00:30:39.861 After that, they were valuable only insofar as that they could hold a machete. 00:30:39.861 --> 00:30:43.895 This was the price to pay so that Europe could eat sugar. 00:30:47.715 --> 00:30:49.532 - I don’t think that it’s possible 00:30:49.532 --> 00:30:52.360 to reduce another human being to a mere cypher, 00:30:52.360 --> 00:30:54.246 to a mere extension of your will. 00:30:54.246 --> 00:30:56.550 And that’s where a lot of the tension 00:30:56.550 --> 00:31:00.398 and the possibilities for slave revolt and resistance come in, 00:31:00.398 --> 00:31:05.239 because if my purpose is to subject you absolutely, 00:31:05.239 --> 00:31:08.280 but you can never be subjected absolutely, 00:31:08.280 --> 00:31:10.225 we're always gonna have conflict. 00:31:10.225 --> 00:31:13.361 At the extremes of human domination, even in slavery, 00:31:13.361 --> 00:31:15.646 we find there is always resistance, 00:31:15.646 --> 00:31:18.412 there is always tension, and there is always struggle. 00:31:20.134 --> 00:31:22.078 - (Narrator) Throughout the Caribbean, 00:31:22.078 --> 00:31:26.357 escaped slaves took refuge in the heart of the most remote forests. 00:31:26.357 --> 00:31:29.161 They were called “maroon slaves”, 00:31:29.161 --> 00:31:31.922 in reference to the Spanish word “cimarrón”, 00:31:31.922 --> 00:31:35.655 which originally designated cattle that had escaped into the wild. 00:31:35.655 --> 00:31:40.165 In these isolated places, they began to organize resistance. 00:31:40.165 --> 00:31:41.867 In Jamaica they included 00:31:41.867 --> 00:31:44.831 Captain Leonard Parkinson, the leader of the maroons, 00:31:44.831 --> 00:31:48.757 and Grandy Nanny, an Ashanti, known as the “maroon priestess”; 00:31:49.887 --> 00:31:53.253 in Barbados, Boussa, an Igbo war chief. 00:31:53.253 --> 00:31:57.712 Through rebellion, the insurgents found a name and an identity. 00:32:05.941 --> 00:32:08.614 - All throughout the mountainous areas of Jamaica, 00:32:08.614 --> 00:32:11.885 you have these communities of formerly enslaved people 00:32:11.885 --> 00:32:13.507 who have escaped, 00:32:13.507 --> 00:32:18.288 and they learn the territory, they learn to cultivate crops there, 00:32:18.288 --> 00:32:21.929 and they learn to fight, as well: harassing plantations, 00:32:21.929 --> 00:32:24.379 taking gun powder, getting new recruits, 00:32:24.379 --> 00:32:27.743 and maintaining and building communities in the mountains, right? 00:32:27.743 --> 00:32:30.375 This becomes increasingly a problem for the British, 00:32:30.375 --> 00:32:33.779 and by the second/third decade of the 18th century, 00:32:33.779 --> 00:32:35.769 it breaks out into major war. 00:32:35.769 --> 00:32:38.446 And the British aren’t even sure they're going to be able 00:32:38.446 --> 00:32:39.940 to maintain the Island. 00:32:40.980 --> 00:32:43.449 - (Narrator) The uprisings spread to other islands, 00:32:43.449 --> 00:32:45.676 and then to the coast of Africa. 00:32:45.676 --> 00:32:49.048 Wars raged in the slave capturers' hunting grounds, 00:32:49.048 --> 00:32:52.878 notably in Senegambia, where Muslim religious leaders 00:32:52.878 --> 00:32:56.138 blamed slave-trade goods for corrupting society. 00:32:58.112 --> 00:33:03.038 These outbursts of violence plunged the sugar industry into a crisis, 00:33:03.038 --> 00:33:05.732 which also had an impact in Europe. 00:33:05.732 --> 00:33:08.746 A growing number of voices expressed outrage 00:33:08.746 --> 00:33:10.615 at the horrors of the slave trade. 00:33:12.579 --> 00:33:14.969 - In all of the major slave trading ports, 00:33:14.969 --> 00:33:17.107 line:1 everybody knew the truth of the slave trade. 00:33:17.107 --> 00:33:19.506 line:1 And I’ll tell you one way in which they knew it. 00:33:20.326 --> 00:33:25.433 line:1 Slave-trading vessels had a very specific smell, 00:33:25.433 --> 00:33:29.347 and you could never get the smell out of the wood. 00:33:30.242 --> 00:33:35.605 In fact, it was said in Charleston, South Carolina, 00:33:35.605 --> 00:33:37.361 which was the major port 00:33:37.361 --> 00:33:40.820 for the importation of slaves into North America, 00:33:40.820 --> 00:33:45.146 that when the wind was blowing off the water a certain way, 00:33:45.146 --> 00:33:48.678 you could smell a slave ship before you could see it. 00:33:49.995 --> 00:33:55.346 What that meant was that in every port, these ships, 00:33:55.346 --> 00:34:00.982 these ships of horror that stank of human misery, 00:34:01.923 --> 00:34:04.581 that this was all very well known. 00:34:11.837 --> 00:34:16.231 - Certainly information about the slave trade and its characteristics, 00:34:16.231 --> 00:34:20.333 the experiences of enslaved Africans in the course of the Middle Passage 00:34:20.333 --> 00:34:24.315 line:1 came increasingly to public attention in the late 1780s. 00:34:24.315 --> 00:34:29.237 line:1 Abolitionist campaigners placed particular emphasis on the Middle Passage. 00:34:29.237 --> 00:34:34.306 line:1 - That’s when the polemical arguments begin, 00:34:34.306 --> 00:34:39.069 line:1 and many pamphlets being published, and the case being argued, 00:34:39.069 --> 00:34:42.878 slave owners realizing for the first time, 00:34:42.878 --> 00:34:45.393 that they’re going to have to make an argument 00:34:45.393 --> 00:34:48.437 about the legitimacy of colonial slavery. 00:34:55.758 --> 00:34:58.862 - (Narrator) Within this context, in 1783, 00:34:58.862 --> 00:35:02.055 a court case involving Lloyd's and a slave trade company 00:35:02.055 --> 00:35:04.531 enjoyed significant publicity in Britain. 00:35:05.716 --> 00:35:08.041 Abolitionists used it as a platform 00:35:08.041 --> 00:35:10.963 to reveal the slave traders’ barbaric practices. 00:35:12.645 --> 00:35:18.350 - The so-called Zong Massacre, which took place in the early 1780s, 00:35:18.350 --> 00:35:20.929 was a very important event. 00:35:20.929 --> 00:35:24.777 It basically consisted of a slave ship captain 00:35:24.777 --> 00:35:29.039 throwing a group of living Africans overboard 00:35:29.039 --> 00:35:32.021 in an effort to collect insurance money. 00:35:33.263 --> 00:35:36.394 Now this was...this voyage went on, 00:35:36.394 --> 00:35:40.340 and it only came to court a couple of years later 00:35:40.340 --> 00:35:44.028 because the insurance company refused to pay. 00:35:44.028 --> 00:35:46.521 And when this event came to court, 00:35:46.521 --> 00:35:51.308 an abolitionist named Granville Sharp shows up at this court case, 00:35:51.308 --> 00:35:55.556 and the question being: “Were they actually property or not?” 00:35:55.556 --> 00:35:58.572 and Sharp’s answer is: “This is mass murder. 00:35:59.482 --> 00:36:02.604 "This is just plain mass murder. 00:36:02.604 --> 00:36:04.533 "This is not about property rights. 00:36:04.533 --> 00:36:06.197 "These are human beings.” 00:36:11.831 --> 00:36:15.112 line:1 - The judge actually upheld the insurance companies, 00:36:15.112 --> 00:36:19.691 line:1 which refused to pay insurance on the murdered Africans. 00:36:19.691 --> 00:36:24.497 And it was Vassa who brought this to attention of Granville Sharp, 00:36:24.497 --> 00:36:27.537 and it was Granville Sharp who then turned it into a big issue 00:36:27.537 --> 00:36:30.624 that helped to mobilize public opinion in Britain. 00:36:32.476 --> 00:36:34.842 - (Narrator) Gustavo Vassa was one of England's 00:36:34.842 --> 00:36:36.805 most fervent abolitionists. 00:36:36.805 --> 00:36:41.278 Born in Nigeria, he was deported to the Caribbean at the age of 11. 00:36:41.278 --> 00:36:45.127 At the age of 21, he managed to buy his freedom 00:36:45.127 --> 00:36:47.180 while passing through England. 00:36:47.180 --> 00:36:50.628 In his autobiography published in 1789, 00:36:50.628 --> 00:36:54.878 he recounted his experience of the Middle Passage down in the hold, 00:36:54.878 --> 00:36:58.148 and delivered an impassioned plea against slavery. 00:36:58.148 --> 00:37:00.331 Vassa held up a mirror to the nations 00:37:00.331 --> 00:37:03.863 that had reduced him to the rank of a marketable object. 00:37:03.863 --> 00:37:07.331 - (Male voice) "Gentlemen, such a tendency 00:37:07.331 --> 00:37:09.776 "has the slave-trade to debauch men's minds, 00:37:09.776 --> 00:37:12.724 "and harden them to every feeling of humanity! 00:37:15.511 --> 00:37:18.277 "It is the fatality of this mistaken avarice, 00:37:18.277 --> 00:37:20.742 "that it corrupts the milk of human kindness 00:37:20.742 --> 00:37:22.470 "and turns it into gall. 00:37:24.270 --> 00:37:30.283 "Which violates that first natural right of mankind, equality and independency, 00:37:30.283 --> 00:37:32.865 "and gives one man a dominion over his fellows 00:37:32.865 --> 00:37:35.281 "which God could never intend! 00:37:40.838 --> 00:37:44.440 "Yet how mistaken is the avarice even of the planters? 00:37:44.440 --> 00:37:46.055 "Are slaves more useful 00:37:46.055 --> 00:37:49.361 "by being thus humbled to the condition of brutes, 00:37:49.361 --> 00:37:52.861 "than they would be if suffered to enjoy the privileges of men?" 00:38:07.856 --> 00:38:11.950 - (Narrator) By the time Gustavo Vassa spoke out in 1789, 00:38:11.950 --> 00:38:15.765 7.7 million Africans had been deported: 00:38:15.765 --> 00:38:19.347 1 million from Senegambia, 00:38:19.347 --> 00:38:22.637 3.4 million from Benin and Biafra, 00:38:22.637 --> 00:38:25.763 3.2 million from Central Africa, 00:38:25.763 --> 00:38:28.911 and close to 73,000 from eastern Africa. 00:38:40.994 --> 00:38:44.605 While David Eltis and the Emory University research team 00:38:44.605 --> 00:38:47.415 have established precise deportation figures, 00:38:47.415 --> 00:38:51.621 the income amassed by the slave trade is still being estimated. 00:38:51.621 --> 00:38:56.161 Historians are trying to assess today how much profit the slave trade yielded 00:38:56.161 --> 00:38:59.010 for banks and insurance companies. 00:39:04.441 --> 00:39:07.766 - The slave trade is not only a foundation of American capitalism; 00:39:07.766 --> 00:39:12.265 it is a foundation of all of European and Atlantic capitalism 00:39:12.265 --> 00:39:18.897 because it created this massively profitable economic system 00:39:18.897 --> 00:39:22.017 that linked the countries of Northwestern Europe 00:39:22.017 --> 00:39:25.361 to the Americas through the plantation system. 00:39:25.361 --> 00:39:31.564 The great scholar-activist C. L. R. James pointed out that the slave system 00:39:31.564 --> 00:39:36.734 created the greatest planned accumulation of wealth 00:39:36.734 --> 00:39:40.816 the world had ever seen up to that moment in time. 00:39:40.816 --> 00:39:44.830 And this, of course, is a very important part of Western prosperity. 00:39:46.926 --> 00:39:48.968 - (Narrator) Between 1633 00:39:48.968 --> 00:39:52.434 and Britain's abolition of the slave trade in 1807, 00:39:52.434 --> 00:39:54.375 English and then British companies 00:39:54.375 --> 00:40:00.587 deported 2,755,830 African captives. 00:40:00.587 --> 00:40:03.244 Most of them died on the plantations, 00:40:03.244 --> 00:40:06.085 worn out from working in the sugar cane fields. 00:40:06.085 --> 00:40:08.681 All of this, for the sake of profit. 00:40:10.299 --> 00:40:15.518 In 2007, London's Westminster Abbey hosted a bicentennial commemoration 00:40:15.518 --> 00:40:17.700 of the abolition of the slave trade 00:40:17.700 --> 00:40:20.188 in the presence of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair 00:40:20.188 --> 00:40:22.558 and Queen Elizabeth II. 00:40:22.558 --> 00:40:25.825 One guest, human rights activist Toyin Agbetu, 00:40:25.825 --> 00:40:27.359 disrupted the ceremony. 00:40:27.359 --> 00:40:30.114 line:1 - (Toyin Agbetu, angrily)... 00:41:23.160 --> 00:41:25.718 The plantation owners and slave traders 00:41:25.718 --> 00:41:28.646 could not accept losing the hard-won Caribbean, 00:41:28.646 --> 00:41:33.484 the immensely lucrative driving force behind the rise of global capitalism. 00:41:34.711 --> 00:41:36.712 At the beginning of the 19th century, 00:41:36.712 --> 00:41:40.089 they sought to thwart the wave of protest in civil society. 00:41:41.078 --> 00:41:42.907 By that time, slavery, 00:41:42.907 --> 00:41:45.596 a practice that dated back to the dawn of humanity, 00:41:45.596 --> 00:41:48.590 seemed immoral, and to belong to the past. 00:41:49.313 --> 00:41:51.994 Britain had understood this before the others, 00:41:51.994 --> 00:41:54.987 and was thus one step ahead of its rivals. 00:41:55.894 --> 00:41:59.470 It was preparing itself for world domination. 00:42:05.097 --> 00:42:08.685 [slow string music with heavy bass drum]