Slave Ship And Rice Slaves

6 Pages 1473 Words

Slave Ship and Rice and Slaves
The film “Slave Ship” seems to align significantly with the modern day view of how slaves were both treated and recognized. It shows the harshness of the delivery methods used, the ethnocentric belief system, and the all-together inhumane techniques practiced at the times of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. This video is basically pointing at the inhumane efforts of the Europeans and it follows more closely the belief system of most Americans that all slave traders treated slaves terribly and the distinctiveness of each African was not a concern but, were really looked at as all alike. Dr. Littlefield’s Rice and Slaves contradicts this modern day belief system in many ways. He comes to prove that buyers of slaves were indeed very specific on which slaves they were buying according to many qualities such as color, labor skills, mentality, etc. all of which are rooted to the region in which they came. Also in the final chapter of his novel called Perceptions and Social Relations he uses statistics and recordings of ones involved in the slave ship to show that certain types of slaves ran-off more commonly then others. This shows little similarity to Slave Ship since the facts are counting mostly runaways from the plantations of the West Indies and the colonies rather then the newly acquired Africans aboard the Amistad.
What both Rice and Slaves and “Slave Ship” do recognize is the involvement of both European and African parties in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. A big misperception in the modern time of the slave trade is the idea that Europeans rampaged into Africa and captured Africans like rabid dogs. Even though this may be true in a few cases involving illegal slave ships such as the Amistad, but mostly this is untrue. There was much involvement by African royalty when concerning the slave trade. This was necessary because it was highly unlikely the Europeans could just conquer th...