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Slavery routes – a short history of human trafficking (3/4) | DW Documentary

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    - (Narrator) This is the story of a world
    whose borders and territories
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    were drawn by the slave trade,
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    where violence, subjugation,
    and profit imposed their own routes.
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    This criminal system shaped our history,
    and our world.
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    On São Tomé, the Portuguese
    invented an economic model
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    with unprecedented profitability:
    the sugar plantation.
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    - (English voiceover) This was
    the first black colony,
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    the first slave society.
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    - (English voiceover) We witnessed
    the marriage of the black men
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    with sugar cane.
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    - (Narrator) In the 16th century,
    other European powers
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    were eager to follow their model.
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    Their greed would plunge
    an entire continent
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    into chaos and violence.
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    Nearly 13 million Africans were cast onto
    new slavery routes to the new world,
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    where the English, the French,
    and the Dutch hoped to become wealthy;
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    immeasurably wealthy.
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    [intense music with strong bass drum beat]
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    Because the Caribbean
    has similar climatic features to São Tomé,
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    it eventually became
    the principal crossroads
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    of the slave trader's routes.
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    For people in the western world,
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    these islands are today
    associated with vacation.
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    Guadeloupe offers tourists
    a dream destination.
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    Sunshine and pristine nature,
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    rekindling myths of a lost paradise.
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    Holidaymakers tend to confine themselves
    to the beaches of Le Gosier,
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    Sainte-Anne, and Saint François.
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    But as this sign indicates,
    they are all-too-close
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    to another side of the island's heritage
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    that was anything but a paradise.
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    Just a few meters away from the bathers
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    is a burial site where countless
    skeletons were discovered.
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    Between 500 and 1,000 graves
    are still buried beneath the sand.
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    The Raisins Clairs beach is one of 15
    slave cemeteries that have been excavated.
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    15, among the 1,000
    that exist in the Caribbean.
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    89 skeletons have been exhumed
    by French archaeological research experts.
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    Judging by the state of the bones,
    they concluded that these men and women
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    had not reached the age of 30.
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    By the time of their death,
    the toll from working on the plantations
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    had so deformed their bodies
    that they seemed more like 75 year olds.
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    These people were human guinea pigs
    for the sugar experiment,
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    the collateral damage
    of an unprecedented trade war:
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    The Sugar War.
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    - 74% of all slaves carried off,
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    were carried off because of sugar.
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    If you want to understand the slave trade,
    you just need to know about sugar.
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    Sugar proved more addictive
    than pepper or cinnamon.
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    From the 17th century onward,
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    Europeans craved this rare
    and expensive commodity.
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    In London, Amsterdam, and Paris,
    sugar fever was rampant,
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    prompting a new generation of adventurers
    to go to any extremes to get it.
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    Shipowners and fitters,
    merchants and pirates,
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    all knew that to produce sugar,
    you needed a lot of slaves.
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    John Hawkins was one of these
    new entrepreneurs
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    for whom profit reigned supreme.
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    The English privateer was a pioneer
    in understanding that a fortune
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    could be made by shipping Black captives
    to the New World.
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    In the mid 16th century,
    he convinced Queen Elizabeth I
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    to lend him a ship, The Jesus of Lubec.
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    For the expedition,
    Hawkins conspicuously set the tone
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    by choosing a trussed up Black man
    on his emblem.
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    - (Male speaker) "I do confirm
    to your highness
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    "that I will bring home 40,000 marks
    without any offense of the least
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    to any of Your Highnesses,
    allies, or friends.
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    "I will conduct this enterprise
    and turn it to the benefit
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    "of your whole realm,
    with Your Highness' consent.
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    "The voyage I propose
    is to load negroes in Guinea
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    "and sell them in the West Indies,
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    "in truck of pearls, gold, and emeralds
    that I will bring back in abundance."
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    - (Narrator) 1620,
    a century after sugar plantations
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    were introduced in Brazil.
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    The Atlantic became the battleground
    for the sugar war.
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    England, The Netherlands, and France
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    wanted to break Spain
    and Portugal's hegemony.
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    In the Caribbean,
    the Dutch took control
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    of Curaçao, Sint Eustatius,
    and Saint Martin.
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    The French: Guadeloupe, Martinique,
    Grenada and Saint-Domingue.
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    The English occupied The Bahamas,
    Jamaica, Antigua, Barbados and Dominica.
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    Only Cuba and Puerto Rico
    remained under Spanish rule.
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    After the extermination
    of the native Arawak people,
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    the first sugar canes flourished
    on this fertile land.
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    - The Caribbean became
    a space of conquest
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    for the Europeans very early on.
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    Really, it was the first place
    that Columbus landed in the new world,
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    the first place that the Spanish
    began to search for gold,
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    and the first place they began
    to enslave the Indians.
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    So they were thoroughgoing
    colonial spaces
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    created by design of European planters
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    and imperial policy makers.
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    and for their profit, right?
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    There aren't so many places
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    where you can completely
    overlay a territory like that.
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    So, in some ways, the Caribbean
    is the space where you find
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    the purest of Colonial territories.
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    Where the masters of the space
    actually get to create the space
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    to suit their own needs.
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    - (Narrator) In Guadalupe,
    every plot of land,
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    every single square inch of ground,
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    is connected to this violent
    and deeply rooted history.
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    Today, all that is left of sugar war
    is a field of ruins.
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    Of the 250 sugar refineries active
    in the late 19th century,
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    only two remain in operation.
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    In 2017, experts from France's
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    National Institute of Preventive
    Archeological Research
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    exhumed the remains of the Saint Jacques
    residence and sugar refinery
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    in Anse-Bertrand:
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    A mill, stock rooms,
    and three rows of so-called "negro huts"
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    where hundreds of slaves
    were penned up together.
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    In this brutal work camp, human beings
    were but one tool among others.
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    Each became a mechanized, emaciated body,
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    consumed by work until their final breath.
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    - Both the time in which the slaves
    were digging the cane holes
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    and the times in which they're harvesting
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    were really the peak of the labor
    on a plantation.
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    You could almost see the slaves
    wasting away
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    when they were digging these cane holes
    because the work was so strenuous
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    and they were getting fed so poorly.
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    You found women in all of the gangs,
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    often times doing the hardest,
    dirtiest labor on the plantation.
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    Alongside the men, or even before the men.
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    And one of the things that means,
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    when you find young women doing
    this quite debilitating labor,
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    is that the birth rates are very low
    and the mortality rates,
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    the infant mortality
    rate is shockingly high.
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    In the mid-18th century,
    people talked about
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    9 out of 10 infants born
    to enslaved Jamaican women
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    dying, right, within the first year.
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    So, there's no way in which the plantation
    can reproduce itself
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    under those kinds of conditions.
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    - (English voiceover) The plantations
    were managed by overseers
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    who saw the slaves
    in purely functional terms.
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    [speaking French]
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    This was absolute exploitation
    of the workforce.
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    It was a very particular society
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    because the average rate
    of life expectancy on a plantation
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    was extremely low,
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    about 8 to 10 years after arriving.
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    [speaking French]
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    - (English voiceover)
    The logic of the slave system
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    was one where the availability
    of the workforce had to be absolute.
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    And for this, man was conceived
    as an accessory of the land.
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    He appeared as such in house inventories.
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    Slaves are listed next to records
    for livestock or manufacturing implements.
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    That's the archaic aspect,
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    which was put to use
    by a capitalist system,
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    and which largely met
    market supply and demand,
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    with its fluctuations, needs,
    and competition:
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    Free competition.
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    - (Narrator) The sugar plantations
    saw slavery enter a new era.
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    The stronger the demand for sugar,
    the more the slave trade expanded,
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    and the more the slave traders
    sought support from banks
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    to finance their expeditions.
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    London is one of the oldest centers
    of global finance.
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    The city of London was the first
    to create a commodities exchange,
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    to develop credit markets,
    and to issue banknotes on a massive scale.
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    Without the invention
    of a centralized banking system,
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    the explosion of the slave trade
    in the 17th century
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    would not have been possible.
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    Preparing for a slave expedition
    was expensive,
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    and having a financial arsenal
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    gave England a decisive advantage
    over its competitors.
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    - You've got to remember that the State
    is getting a tremendous amount of revenue
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    from the plantation complex,
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    so they had a very strong,
    vested interest in the slave trade.
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    If you had gone to the king of England
    in 1680 and said,
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    "Look, I'm gonna give you a choice.
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    "You can either have these 13 colonies
    in North America,
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    "or you can have this one little island
    called Barbados."
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    He would have taken Barbados
    in a split second
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    because of the sugar revenues.
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    And this is something
    that's going to persist
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    as a very important interest
    for European states
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    up until the very end of slavery.
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    To support the sugar war,
    the city lent money on a colossal scale.
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    In the midst of these
    steel and glass buildings,
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    the two pillars of the English economy
    that financed the slave trade
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    are still prominent on the London skyline.
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    At the heart of the financial district
    is the venerable bank of England,
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    the world's first central bank.
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    A couple of blocks away
    is Britain's most powerful
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    insurance company,
    the prestigious Lloyd's of London.
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    Atlantic slave traders
    had to take on heavy debts
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    to charter their ships.
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    Without an insurance company,
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    most would risk ruin
    on their first expedition.
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    The slave traders made investments
    as if playing a game of poker.
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    The risks were high, but if successful,
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    the return would far outweigh
    any other type of investment.
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    Insurers like Lloyd's
    had everything to gain
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    by participating in this game of chance.
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    A successful expedition could yield
    up to three times the initial stake.
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    In the Lloyd's archives,
    little evidence remains
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    of the profits amassed by insuring
    these high-risk expeditions.
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    Most accounting records were lost
    in a fire in 1838,
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    the same year that slavery
    was abolished in the British Caribbean.
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    Ports had to adapt
    to this initial scramble
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    for Africa and the Caribbean.
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    In London, Blackwall became
    the slave trade's principal wharf.
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    All manner of goods were sold here.
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    Precious fabrics, jewels, porcelain,
    weapons, and brandy.
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    All bought on credit
    with the bank's money.
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    A giant port complex gradually evolved.
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    A city within a city,
    entirely devoted to this new business.
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    Following London in 1663,
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    other seaports rushed to take advantage
    of this lucrative trade.
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    Lorient, Copenhagen, La Rochelle,
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    Bristol, Nantes, Liverpool,
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    Bordeaux, Antwerp.
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    From all over Europe,
    slave ships set sail for Africa.
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    - When I began to see slave ships leaving
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    from not just Liverpool and Nantes,
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    but from every port in the Atlantic.
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    As soon as a port becomes big enough
    to contemplate a transoceanic voyage,
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    there's a good chance that voyage
    is going to be a slave trade voyage.
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    And we've got like 170 separate ports,
    tiny places.
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    Today, they've got no idea
    that once upon a time,
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    they sent out slave voyages.
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    Saint Peter's Port in the Channel Islands,
    charming place.
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    And yet, it's a slave trade port.
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    [snare drum cadence]
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    Over a period of two centuries,
    more than 3,500 expeditions
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    set sail from French ports.
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    More than half of them
    left from the port of Nantes,
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    the main French hub of triangular trade.
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    The sculpted figures along
    the Quai de la Fosse, or Feydeau Island,
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    are reminders of an era
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    when the great slave trading families
    displayed their pride
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    in being the main architects
    of the city's wealth.
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    It was they who made Nantes
    France's leading commercial port.
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    [speaking French]
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    - (English voiceover)
    Wealth came from slavery.
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    There were negotiators, ship owners,
    and all those who produced foodstuffs.
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    Vintners, flour producers,
    fabric producers, hardware producers.
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    [speaking French]
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    [speaking French]
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    - (English voiceover) The Atlantic ports
    also generated wealth
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    for areas that stretched very far inland,
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    as far as Orléans, in the case of Nantes.
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    Goods were also transported along rivers.
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    So the wealth that slavery
    produced was essential for France.
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    [speaking French]
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    - (Narrator) 1669. From Nantes,
    Bordeaux, La Rochelle and Le Havre,
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    slavery money flowed back up rivers
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    to Rouen, Orléans and Angoulême.
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    It had such repercussions on inland areas
    that it became a national objective.
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    Louis XIV knew that to win the sugar war,
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    he would need a powerful fleet.
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    The king ordered the construction
    of 500 galleons.
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    The Atlantic became the theater
    of a naval war
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    between France, England and
    the Netherlands.
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    A bitter fight, in which each sunken ship
    was a total loss
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    for the respective country's economy.
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    [speaking French]
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    - (English voiceover) It was
    very expensive to build and equip
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    a 74-gun ship and pay its crew.
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    Ultimately, who bore the cost?
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    The bill for financing these wars,
    the financing of ships and arsenals,
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    was mainly footed by French peasants.
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    The slave trade fleets were protected.
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    16,000 galleons were already protecting
    Dutch commercial ships,
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    while the 3,000 light and fast
    Royal Navy cruisers
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    terrified their adversaries.
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    France paled in comparison
    to these armadas.
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    Each nation needed a fortress
    in Africa
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    if it were to compete
    in the Atlantic race.
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    Just like on the Caribbean islands,
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    these forts were the bastions of
    triangular trade.
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    As military bases,
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    they offered a secure store
    for bartered goods and captives
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    before departure by sea.
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    In less than 80 years,
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    43 such forts were built
    from Senegal to the Niger Delta.
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    Every stone, every beam,
    every element of masonry
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    was transported by boat from Europe.
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    - Most of these fortresses
    are built by states.
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    Individual capitalists
    or even groups of trading capitalists
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    did not have that kind of money
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    in order to build
    those sorts of fortresses.
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    - (Narrator) The English
    already had thirteen,
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    the Dutch ten, the Danish five.
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    Even the Prussians,
    with their three forts,
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    surpassed the French.
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    On the Gold Coast, in today’s Ghana,
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    the Fante and Ashanti rented Europeans
    plots of land to build their forts.
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    The Europeans established
    trading posts and fortresses
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    all along the Atlantic coast,
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    From the Ewé territory
    to the Kongo Kingdom.
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    Equatorial Africa became
    the world’s principal source of slaves.
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    In this accounting document
    written in 1688,
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    we learn that over an 8-year period,
    it shipped 60,783 slaves.
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    Each cost the Royal African Company
    8 to 12 pounds sterling
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    the equivalent of between
    €950 and €1500 today.
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    They were all bought with trade goods.
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    The demand for slaves was so high
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    that the Europeans pressured their
    African partners to help them
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    plan, rationalize, and industrialize
    their system of mass deportation.
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    - Slaves were often bought on credit.
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    And so that meant that European ships
    would come,
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    they would have a whole cargo
    full of textiles, different metal ware,
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    rum, tobacco, whatever.
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    And these would be given
    to the local merchants,
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    extended to them on credit.
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    And then the merchants
    would go inland with those goods
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    and buy slaves and come back.
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    - The biggest impact
    was the level of violence,
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    the rising level of violence,
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    the level of uncertainty
    that permeated society everywhere,
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    and also the opportunity
    for new "big men" to emerge,
  • 19:16 - 19:18
    new powerful leaders.
  • 19:18 - 19:21
    Somebody gets a hold of more firearms,
    somebody gets more aggressive,
  • 19:21 - 19:25
    they build their own personal chieftain
    and, suddenly, they’re powerful.
  • 19:27 - 19:30
    - (Narrator) Among these leaders
    was Antera Duke,
  • 19:30 - 19:34
    a major African trader
    from Calabar in what is now Nigeria.
  • 19:34 - 19:39
    In his diary, he spoke of the methods
    he used to terrorize captives:
  • 19:39 - 19:42
    kidnapping, detention, and murder.
  • 19:50 - 19:53
    (fire roars and crackles)
  • 19:58 - 20:00
    - (Man) "About 4am, I got up.
  • 20:00 - 20:01
    "Awful rain.
  • 20:01 - 20:04
    "I walked up to the city trading house,
  • 20:04 - 20:06
    "where I met all the gentlemen.
  • 20:07 - 20:08
    "We got ready to cut off heads.
  • 20:16 - 20:20
    "5am, we began decapitating slaves.
  • 20:27 - 20:30
    "50 heads fell that day."
  • 20:44 - 20:48
    - Very clearly, these sacrifices
    were intended as a form of terrorism
  • 20:48 - 20:52
    that were meant to make it very clear
    to the population
  • 20:52 - 20:55
    who was the boss and who was not,
  • 20:55 - 21:00
    very much the way
    the Mafioso type organizations behave
  • 21:01 - 21:04
    in terms of making sure
    that the members of the association
  • 21:04 - 21:07
    respect whoever the Godfather is,
  • 21:07 - 21:11
    and if anybody steps out of line
    they can be assassinated or killed.
  • 21:11 - 21:13
    And so they don't
    step out of line, obviously.
  • 21:14 - 21:19
    - (Narrator) For the benefit of a handful
    of enterprising & unscrupulous profiteers,
  • 21:19 - 21:22
    the entire continental economy
    was transformed.
  • 21:23 - 21:27
    On the coast, African brokers
    knew all of the inner workings
  • 21:27 - 21:29
    of the sugar plantation.
  • 21:31 - 21:34
    A slave ship from Saint-Malo,
    “Le Marie Séraphique”,
  • 21:34 - 21:37
    docked at Loango in the Kingdom of Kongo.
  • 21:42 - 21:45
    Its captain’s drawings provide
    exceptional details
  • 21:45 - 21:49
    of the negotiations
    between Europeans and Africans.
  • 21:49 - 21:51
    The merchants from the coast knew
  • 21:51 - 21:54
    that the Marie Séraphique’s captain
    was in a hurry:
  • 21:54 - 21:57
    he had to arrive in the West Indies
    before harvest time.
  • 21:58 - 22:01
    This was the time of year
    when slaves sold best,
  • 22:01 - 22:03
    and when the best sugar was available.
  • 22:04 - 22:07
    So they deliberately
    prolonged negotiations
  • 22:07 - 22:08
    to drive prices up.
  • 22:08 - 22:13
    312 captives were rounded up
    in 116 days.
  • 22:15 - 22:19
    The Marie Séraphique arrived
    in Saint-Domingue, now Haiti,
  • 22:19 - 22:21
    one year after leaving France.
  • 22:21 - 22:23
    Only nine captives had perished:
  • 22:23 - 22:27
    a good ratio for the crew,
    who celebrated their success.
  • 22:28 - 22:30
    In the drawings of the
    Marie Séraphique,
  • 22:30 - 22:32
    no allusion to the
    slaves’ suffering appears.
  • 22:33 - 22:35
    They were dehumanized shadows,
  • 22:36 - 22:39
    tallied and lined up like barrels
    at the bottom of the hold;
  • 22:40 - 22:44
    the transportation of human beings
    turned into a nightmare.
  • 22:48 - 22:52
    - It’s very important to understand
    that violence onboard slave ships
  • 22:52 - 22:54
    would be used selectively.
  • 22:54 - 22:55
    In other words, no captain
  • 22:55 - 23:00
    wanted to kill the entire allotment
    of people on board
  • 23:00 - 23:02
    because that voyage
    would then have no profit.
  • 23:02 - 23:06
    So when there was resistance,
    what the captains would do,
  • 23:06 - 23:10
    is organize a spectacle
  • 23:10 - 23:14
    in which a small number of people
    would be executed
  • 23:14 - 23:17
    in extremely vicious, horrific ways
  • 23:17 - 23:22
    as a means of terrorizing everybody else.
  • 23:22 - 23:25
    All of the enslaved would be forced
    to come up on deck
  • 23:25 - 23:26
    in order to view these executions.
  • 23:27 - 23:31
    One slave ship surgeon
    said that frequently the decks,
  • 23:31 - 23:35
    the main deck of the ship
    would just be completely awash in blood
  • 23:35 - 23:38
    in the aftermath of one of these
    failed revolts.
  • 23:38 - 23:41
    Revolts were common, and they were
    almost always suppressed.
  • 23:42 - 23:47
    But the captains would use that situation
    to kill a small number,
  • 23:47 - 23:49
    in order to intimidate everybody else,
  • 23:49 - 23:54
    sending the message that if you resist us,
    this will be your fate.
  • 24:05 - 24:09
    I’ve also suggested that the slave ship
    created categories of race.
  • 24:11 - 24:14
    For example, the multi-ethnic Africans
  • 24:14 - 24:17
    who are loaded on board a slave ship
  • 24:17 - 24:24
    go aboard as Ebo or Fante or Mende,
  • 24:24 - 24:26
    but when they come off the ship,
  • 24:26 - 24:31
    they are unloaded as members
    of a “negro race”.
  • 24:31 - 24:35
    And the same parallel process
    goes on among the sailors.
  • 24:35 - 24:41
    These motley crews, they are English,
    Irish, also in some cases African.
  • 24:42 - 24:45
    They leave their European port,
  • 24:45 - 24:48
    but when they arrive
    on the West coast of Africa,
  • 24:48 - 24:49
    they become the White people.
  • 24:56 - 24:58
    - (Narrator) On Caribbean beaches,
  • 24:58 - 25:02
    captives disembarked as “blacks”
    in a world dominated by “whites”.
  • 25:05 - 25:07
    [singing in unison and cracking whips]
  • 25:07 - 25:11
    Providing an outlet for a society
    founded on violence and race,
  • 25:11 - 25:13
    the Carnival maintains
    the memory of the days
  • 25:13 - 25:17
    when the sugar industry imposed
    its rhythms, rites, and seasons,
  • 25:17 - 25:19
    and set the pace for island life.
  • 25:21 - 25:24
    [singing in unison]
  • 25:31 - 25:33
    It was an era when drummers
    announced the end of winter
  • 25:33 - 25:36
    and the resumption of cutting;
  • 25:36 - 25:39
    when fleeing slaves
    covered themselves in molasses
  • 25:39 - 25:41
    to help prevent their re-capture.
  • 25:43 - 25:45
    [speaking French]
  • 25:45 - 25:49
    - (English voiceover) What progressively
    distinguished Atlantic slavery,
  • 25:49 - 25:52
    what made it different
    from other systems of slavery,
  • 25:52 - 25:54
    was the construction of race.
  • 25:58 - 26:00
    It was precisely this superimposition
    that developed
  • 26:00 - 26:04
    between physical appearance,
    with its own term, and status.
  • 26:08 - 26:12
    At the extremities of this continuum
    of both status and color,
  • 26:12 - 26:16
    there was the white master
    and the black slave.
  • 26:24 - 26:28
    The term "white” did not exist
    prior to slave societies.
  • 26:33 - 26:37
    The term "white" developed
    specifically in the Antilles.
  • 26:38 - 26:41
    So you can see how vital
    this Atlantic slave area was
  • 26:41 - 26:43
    to the construction
    of the racial categories
  • 26:43 - 26:45
    that we still use now.
  • 26:46 - 26:50
    We use them as though they hadn't
    changed throughout time,
  • 26:50 - 26:51
    when, in fact, they have.
  • 26:58 - 27:02
    Race was a weapon of submission,
    meant to carve into flesh
  • 27:02 - 27:07
    the supposed inferiority of some people,
    and the infinite superiority of others.
  • 27:09 - 27:11
    Cut off from their roots
    and their families,
  • 27:11 - 27:14
    the Black slaves were reduced
    to a servile mass,
  • 27:14 - 27:17
    without names and without orientation.
  • 27:19 - 27:23
    The plantation was a machine
    that devoured its workforce.
  • 27:23 - 27:26
    It needed a constant supply
    of new arrivals.
  • 27:27 - 27:31
    Landowners wanted to transform
    the slaves’ bodies into tools.
  • 27:32 - 27:34
    On plantations, whipping and torture
  • 27:34 - 27:37
    were used to deprive them
    of their humanity.
  • 27:39 - 27:43
    In this garden of torture,
    the master’s authority was absolute.
  • 27:53 - 27:56
    - So you take, for example,
    a character like Thomas Thistlewood.
  • 27:56 - 28:01
    And you can almost see in his diaries
    the escalation in the violence
  • 28:01 - 28:02
    that he has to mete out,
  • 28:02 - 28:05
    or that he thinks he has to mete out
    to the enslaved
  • 28:05 - 28:06
    to keep them working on the plantation.
  • 28:14 - 28:17
    -(Male voice) "I arrived as a foreman
    on the new plantation
  • 28:17 - 28:18
    "barely two weeks ago.
  • 28:20 - 28:23
    "We had to carry out justice
    on a negro who had escaped.
  • 28:25 - 28:26
    "We severely whipped him
  • 28:26 - 28:30
    "and rubbed pepper, salt,
    and lime juice into his wounds.
  • 28:34 - 28:38
    "Three days later, the body
    of another slave who had escaped
  • 28:38 - 28:39
    "was brought to us.
  • 28:39 - 28:43
    "I cut off his head
    and we burned the body in public.
  • 28:43 - 28:46
    "That was the only way
    to exert our control over the negroes.
  • 28:50 - 28:53
    "In this affair, my reasoning
    was adopted by all the colonies.
  • 28:54 - 28:58
    "The unfortunate condition of the Negro
    naturally led to us being hated.
  • 28:59 - 29:02
    "Only strength and violence
    can hold them back."
  • 29:28 - 29:31
    - These kinds of tortures
    and these kinds of punishments,
  • 29:31 - 29:32
    this kind of brutality,
  • 29:32 - 29:35
    actually became common-place
    on these plantations
  • 29:35 - 29:38
    where you had white people
    working out among armies of slaves
  • 29:38 - 29:40
    who they feared they could not control.
  • 29:40 - 29:44
    The sound of the screaming
    and the stench of the burning bodies,
  • 29:44 - 29:48
    that also became a fundamental feature
    of the Jamaican landscape, right?
  • 29:48 - 29:50
    That is what plantation society is.
  • 29:50 - 29:53
    It’s that smell, it’s that sound,
    it’s that fear and terror
  • 29:53 - 29:56
    that’s compelling people to work
    and to obey their masters.
  • 29:57 - 30:00
    There is no way to separate
    that kind of terror
  • 30:00 - 30:01
    from the labor on the plantation,
  • 30:01 - 30:04
    from the profits that labor produced.
  • 30:06 - 30:08
    - (Narrator) But the plantation owners
    could not squander
  • 30:08 - 30:11
    the slaves they had bought on credit.
  • 30:11 - 30:13
    The state had financed
    the shipment of slaves,
  • 30:13 - 30:15
    and wanted
    its return on investment.
  • 30:23 - 30:26
    The plantation society relied
    solely on market forces.
  • 30:26 - 30:31
    Violence was a necessary cost,
    and thus included in balance sheets.
  • 30:32 - 30:35
    It took 4 years to amortize
    the price of a slave.
  • 30:35 - 30:40
    After that, they were valuable only
    insofar as that they could hold a machete.
  • 30:40 - 30:44
    This was the price to pay
    so that Europe could eat sugar.
  • 30:48 - 30:52
    - I don’t think that it’s possible to reduce
    another human being to a mere cipher,
  • 30:53 - 30:54
    to a mere extension of your will.
  • 30:54 - 30:57
    And that’s where a lot of the tension
  • 30:57 - 31:01
    and the possibilities for slave revolt
    and resistance come in,
  • 31:01 - 31:05
    because if my purpose
    is to subject you absolutely,
  • 31:05 - 31:09
    but you can never be subjected absolutely,
  • 31:09 - 31:10
    we're always gonna have conflict.
  • 31:11 - 31:14
    At the extremes of human domination,
    even in slavery,
  • 31:14 - 31:16
    we find there is always resistance,
  • 31:16 - 31:18
    there is always tension,
    and there is always struggle.
  • 31:21 - 31:22
    - (Narrator) Throughout the Caribbean,
  • 31:22 - 31:26
    escaped slaves took refuge
    in the heart of the most remote forests.
  • 31:26 - 31:29
    They were called “maroon slaves”,
  • 31:29 - 31:32
    in reference to the Spanish word
    “cimarrón”,
  • 31:32 - 31:36
    which originally designated cattle
    that had escaped into the wild.
  • 31:36 - 31:40
    In these isolated places,
    they began to organize resistance.
  • 31:41 - 31:42
    In Jamaica they included
  • 31:42 - 31:45
    Captain Leonard Parkinson,
    the leader of the maroons,
  • 31:45 - 31:49
    and Grandy Nanny, an Ashanti,
    known as the “maroon priestess”;
  • 31:50 - 31:53
    in Barbados, Boussa, an Igbo war chief.
  • 31:54 - 31:58
    Through rebellion, the insurgents
    found a name and an identity.
  • 32:06 - 32:09
    - All throughout the mountainous areas
    of Jamaica,
  • 32:09 - 32:12
    you have these communities
    of formerly enslaved people
  • 32:12 - 32:14
    who have escaped,
  • 32:14 - 32:18
    and they learn the territory,
    they learn to cultivate crops there,
  • 32:18 - 32:22
    and they learn to fight, as well:
    harassing plantations,
  • 32:22 - 32:25
    taking gun powder, getting new recruits,
  • 32:25 - 32:28
    and maintaining and building communities
    in the mountains, right?
  • 32:28 - 32:30
    This becomes increasingly
    a problem for the British,
  • 32:30 - 32:34
    and by the second/third decade
    of the 18th century,
  • 32:34 - 32:36
    it breaks out into major war.
  • 32:36 - 32:38
    And the British aren’t even sure
    they're going to be able
  • 32:38 - 32:40
    to maintain the Island.
  • 32:41 - 32:43
    - (Narrator) The uprisings
    spread to other islands,
  • 32:44 - 32:46
    and then to the coast of Africa.
  • 32:46 - 32:49
    Wars raged in the slave capturers'
    hunting grounds,
  • 32:49 - 32:53
    notably in Senegambia,
    where Muslim religious leaders
  • 32:53 - 32:56
    blamed slave-trade goods
    for corrupting society.
  • 32:58 - 33:03
    These outbursts of violence
    plunged the sugar industry into a crisis,
  • 33:03 - 33:06
    which also had an impact in Europe.
  • 33:06 - 33:09
    A growing number of voices
    expressed outrage
  • 33:09 - 33:11
    at the horrors of the slave trade.
  • 33:13 - 33:15
    - In all of the major slave trading ports,
  • 33:15 - 33:17
    everybody knew the truth
    of the slave trade.
  • 33:17 - 33:20
    And I’ll tell you one way
    in which they knew it.
  • 33:20 - 33:25
    Slave-trading vessels
    had a very specific smell,
  • 33:26 - 33:30
    and you could never
    get the smell out of the wood.
  • 33:30 - 33:36
    In fact, it was said
    in Charleston, South Carolina,
  • 33:36 - 33:38
    which was the major port
  • 33:38 - 33:41
    for the importation of slaves
    into North America,
  • 33:41 - 33:46
    that when the wind was blowing
    off the water a certain way,
  • 33:46 - 33:49
    you could smell a slave ship
    before you could see it.
  • 33:50 - 33:55
    What that meant was that
    in every port, these ships,
  • 33:56 - 34:01
    these ships of horror
    that stank of human misery,
  • 34:02 - 34:05
    that this was all very well known.
  • 34:12 - 34:17
    - Certainly information about
    the slave trade and its characteristics,
  • 34:17 - 34:21
    the experiences of enslaved Africans
    in the course of the Middle Passage
  • 34:21 - 34:24
    came increasingly to public attention
    in the late 1780s.
  • 34:25 - 34:29
    Abolitionist campaigners placed
    particular emphasis on the Middle Passage.
  • 34:29 - 34:35
    - That’s when
    the polemical arguments begin,
  • 34:35 - 34:39
    and many pamphlets being published,
    and the case being argued,
  • 34:39 - 34:43
    slave owners realizing for the first time,
  • 34:43 - 34:46
    that they’re going to have
    to make an argument
  • 34:46 - 34:49
    about the legitimacy of colonial slavery.
  • 34:56 - 34:59
    - (Narrator) Within this context,
    in 1783,
  • 34:59 - 35:02
    a court case involving Lloyd's
    and a slave trade company
  • 35:02 - 35:05
    enjoyed significant publicity in Britain.
  • 35:06 - 35:08
    Abolitionists used it as a platform
  • 35:08 - 35:11
    to reveal the slave traders’
    barbaric practices.
  • 35:13 - 35:18
    - The so-called Zong Massacre,
    which took place in the early 1780s,
  • 35:18 - 35:21
    was a very important event.
  • 35:21 - 35:25
    It basically consisted
    of a slave ship captain
  • 35:25 - 35:29
    throwing a group
    of living Africans overboard
  • 35:29 - 35:32
    in an effort to collect insurance money.
  • 35:33 - 35:37
    Now this was...this voyage went on,
  • 35:37 - 35:41
    and it only came to court
    a couple of years later
  • 35:41 - 35:44
    because the insurance company
    refused to pay.
  • 35:44 - 35:47
    And when this event came to court,
  • 35:47 - 35:51
    an abolitionist named Granville Sharp
    shows up at this court case,
  • 35:51 - 35:55
    and the question being:
    “Were they actually property or not?”
  • 35:55 - 35:58
    and Sharp’s answer is:
    “This is mass murder.
  • 35:58 - 36:03
    "This is just plain mass murder.
  • 36:03 - 36:05
    "This is not about property rights.
  • 36:05 - 36:06
    "These are human beings.”
  • 36:12 - 36:15
    - The judge actually upheld
    the insurance companies,
  • 36:15 - 36:20
    which refused to pay insurance
    on the murdered Africans.
  • 36:20 - 36:25
    And it was Vassa who brought this
    to attention of Granville Sharp,
  • 36:25 - 36:27
    and it was Granville Sharp
    who then turned it into a big issue
  • 36:27 - 36:31
    that helped to mobilize
    public opinion in Britain.
  • 36:32 - 36:35
    - (Narrator) Gustavo Vassa
    was one of England's
  • 36:35 - 36:37
    most fervent abolitionists.
  • 36:37 - 36:41
    Born in Nigeria, he was deported
    to the Caribbean at the age of 11.
  • 36:41 - 36:45
    At the age of 21,
    he managed to buy his freedom
  • 36:45 - 36:47
    while passing through England.
  • 36:47 - 36:51
    In his autobiography published in 1789,
  • 36:51 - 36:55
    he recounted his experience
    of the Middle Passage down in the hold,
  • 36:55 - 36:58
    and delivered an impassioned plea
    against slavery.
  • 36:59 - 37:00
    Vassa held up a mirror to the nations
  • 37:00 - 37:03
    that had reduced him
    to the rank of a marketable object.
  • 37:04 - 37:07
    - (Male voice) "Gentlemen, such a tendency
  • 37:07 - 37:10
    "has the slave-trade
    to debauch men's minds,
  • 37:10 - 37:13
    "and harden them
    to every feeling of humanity!
  • 37:15 - 37:18
    "It is the fatality
    of this mistaken avarice,
  • 37:18 - 37:21
    "that it corrupts the milk
    of human kindness
  • 37:21 - 37:22
    "and turns it into gall.
  • 37:25 - 37:31
    "Which violates that first natural right
    of mankind, equality and independency,
  • 37:31 - 37:33
    "and gives one man
    a dominion over his fellows
  • 37:33 - 37:35
    "which God could never intend!
  • 37:41 - 37:44
    "Yet how mistaken is the avarice
    even of the planters?
  • 37:44 - 37:46
    "Are slaves more useful
  • 37:46 - 37:49
    "by being thus humbled
    to the condition of brutes,
  • 37:49 - 37:53
    "than they would be if suffered to enjoy
    the privileges of men?"
  • 38:08 - 38:12
    - (Narrator) By the time Gustavo Vassa
    spoke out in 1789,
  • 38:12 - 38:16
    7.7 million Africans had been deported:
  • 38:16 - 38:19
    1 million from Senegambia,
  • 38:19 - 38:23
    3.4 million from Benin and Biafra,
  • 38:23 - 38:26
    3.2 million from Central Africa,
  • 38:26 - 38:29
    and close to 73,000 from eastern Africa.
  • 38:42 - 38:45
    While David Eltis
    and the Emory University research team
  • 38:45 - 38:48
    have established
    precise deportation figures,
  • 38:48 - 38:52
    the income amassed by the slave trade
    is still being estimated.
  • 38:52 - 38:57
    Historians are trying to assess today
    how much profit the slave trade yielded
  • 38:57 - 38:59
    for banks and insurance companies.
  • 39:05 - 39:08
    - The slave trade is not only
    a foundation of American capitalism;
  • 39:08 - 39:12
    it is a foundation of all of European
    and Atlantic capitalism
  • 39:12 - 39:20
    because it created
    this massively profitable economic system
  • 39:20 - 39:22
    that linked the countries
    of Northwestern Europe
  • 39:22 - 39:25
    to the Americas
    through the plantation system.
  • 39:26 - 39:32
    The great scholar-activist C. L. R. James
    pointed out that the slave system
  • 39:32 - 39:37
    created the greatest
    planned accumulation of wealth
  • 39:37 - 39:40
    the world had ever seen
    up to that moment in time.
  • 39:41 - 39:45
    And this, of course, is a very important
    part of Western prosperity.
  • 39:48 - 39:50
    - (Narrator) Between 1633
  • 39:50 - 39:53
    and Britain's abolition
    of the slave trade in 1807,
  • 39:53 - 39:54
    English and then British companies
  • 39:54 - 40:00
    deported 2,755,830 African captives.
  • 40:01 - 40:03
    Most of them died on the plantations,
  • 40:03 - 40:06
    worn out from working
    in the sugar cane fields.
  • 40:07 - 40:09
    All of this, for the sake of profit.
  • 40:11 - 40:16
    In 2007, London's Westminster Abbey
    hosted a bicentennial commemoration
  • 40:16 - 40:18
    of the abolition of the slave trade
  • 40:18 - 40:20
    in the presence of
    then-Prime Minister Tony Blair
  • 40:20 - 40:22
    and Queen Elizabeth II.
  • 40:23 - 40:26
    One guest,
    human rights activist Toyin Agbetu,
  • 40:26 - 40:27
    disrupted the ceremony.
  • 40:27 - 40:30
    - (Toyin Agbetu, angrily)...
  • 41:23 - 41:26
    The plantation owners and slave traders
  • 41:26 - 41:29
    could not accept losing
    the hard-won Caribbean,
  • 41:29 - 41:34
    the immensely lucrative driving force
    behind the rise of global capitalism.
  • 41:35 - 41:37
    At the beginning of the 19th century,
  • 41:37 - 41:40
    they sought to thwart
    the wave of protest in civil society.
  • 41:41 - 41:43
    By that time, slavery,
  • 41:43 - 41:46
    a practice that dated back
    to the dawn of humanity,
  • 41:46 - 41:49
    seemed immoral,
    and to belong to the past.
  • 41:50 - 41:52
    Britain had understood this
    before the others,
  • 41:52 - 41:55
    and was thus one step
    ahead of its rivals.
  • 41:56 - 41:59
    It was preparing itself
    for world domination.
  • 42:08 - 42:12
    [slow string music with heavy bass drum]
Title:
Slavery routes – a short history of human trafficking (3/4) | DW Documentary
Description:

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Video Language:
English
Team:
Captions Requested
Duration:
42:26

English subtitles

Incomplete

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