Document 20-5: Transportation of Slaves in Africa (ca. 1800–1900)

Enslaved Africans March to the Sea

This nineteenth-century painting depicts the dynamics of the African slave trade and particularly the internal conditions of that trade through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The painting highlights not only the brutal conditions under which Africans were enslaved and transported to the coast, but also the multiple and diverse roles played by Africans in the slave trade. The slavers (the figures holding rifles, a hatchet, or a pistol) are guarding or visibly threatening the enslaved Africans, some of whom are yoked together with a forked wooden device. Victims of violence or deprivation are left alongside the trail, and women and children are clearly visible among the slave ranks.

image
Scala/White Images/Art Resource, N.Y.

READING AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. What differences and similarities are discernible between the traders and the captured slaves? What do their garments, postures, and expressions reveal?
  2. What might the artist have intended to communicate with this illustration? To whom?
  3. Note that at least two of the figures in the image are holding firearms. What, if anything, does the presence of firearms indicate about the nature of African slavery?
  4. The line of enslaved Africans stretches into the far distance and blurs as it recedes. What impression is created by this visual effect, and what does it communicate about the nature of African slavery?