US History Before 1865

Reception, Perception and Deception: The Genesis of Slavery

Progress has a way of making itself known to the world, even in a situation where there exists resistance. Considering Olaudah Equiano's "The Interesting Narrative, the issue of slavery throughout the colonial world was as much about assimilation as it was oppression. The conflict between cultures is shown in the nature of the cultural assumptions each makes concerning the other. The British are caught in a tunnel vision that doesn't allow for any considerations outside the belief that their way of life is superior and assume that the tribal culture will logically want to adapt to fit into the more modern way of life. They cannot accept the natives as equals, even as they verbalize their intention as one of attempting to create a hybrid culture. The Ibo, for their part, assume that the British will recognize and honor the way of life they have perfected and which is in harmony with their past and their environment. They are equally as unwilling to recognize the reality of the other's perceptions

There existed slavery within the African culture before the coming of the Europeans. Between the Essaka community and its slaves "there was scarcely any other difference... than a superior degree of importance" (Equiano 19). The slaves of the African community were viewed as human beings rather than as commodities to be bought and sold. The coming of European slavery brought with it a new view, one where the slave became an object and was "chained together" in "a multitude" (Equiano 33) and "all pent up together like so many sheep in a fold, without regard to sex or age" (Equiano 37). The roles that were previously established in the power structure of the tribal society are no longer cogent and can no longer meet the needs of the people. The process of assimilation leaves the Africans with the choice between acceptance and rebellion of the European culture. Equiano chooses the way of the European in his acceptance of Christianity. This provides a 'third' view of slavery, from the vantagepoint of a conjoined cultural perspective.

Many of the slaves were brought to the American colonies by way of the Atlantic slave trade, which was operational from the early sixteenth century until the late nineteenth century. The slave trade's primary role was economical - it provided the labor by which a majority of the agricultural product could be exported. The second and equally profound effect the Atlantic slave trade had was a dispersal of the African populations among the Western world.

Reading the section on the kidnappings in Africa, the middle passage to the Americas and the establishment of an economic system based on slavery was similar to reading or watching the story of the Amistad Africans. It was frightening that Americans could, on the one hand, believe so strongly in the principles of freedom that they would go to war and yet would not listen to the legitimate arguments of a subjugated population who lived among them.

It is as William W. Freehling explains in his essay, "the ideological stance of Jefferson and other Founding Fathers on slavery, then, was profoundly ambivalent. On the one hand they were restrained by their overriding interest in creating the Union, by their concern for property rights, and by their visions of race war and miscegenation. On the other hand they embraced a revolutionary ideology that made emancipation inescapable" (Internet source). From the perspective of the enslaved, the British concept of slaves as a market commodity had gone one step further from the idea of slaves as human. In the American colonies slaves were thought of as not much more than animals - farm animals of a certain value, to be sure, but animals nonetheless. Equiano explains the process by saying: "I will not suppose that dealers in slaves were born worse than other men... But the slave-trade... debauch [es] men's minds, and harden [s] them to every feeling of humanity" (80).

Daniel K. Richter points out that the Native American culture was treated in many of the same ways as the slave population. The English, having come as permanent settlers, were not interested in establishing trade or intermixing with the Native Americans. They were utilized by the Dutch and French as a means to survival and integrated as opposed to the English process of assimilation. They intermarried and established trade relationships with the natives while the English chose to view them as 'savages'.

The relationship between the French and the Native American was much stronger than between the English and the French and so it made sense that the Indians would side with the French during the Seven Years War and other altercations of which the English took part. The native Americans were, for the most part, curious as well as willing to assist the newcomers with materials and ideas.