transatlantic slave trade

How the Fear of Being Eaten Prompted Many Enslaved Africans to Rebel Aboard Slave Ships

The transatlantic slave trade, one of history’s darkest chapters, was marked not only by brutality and dehumanization but also by resistance, which was often sparked by the terrifying unknowns that Africans faced once captured and placed aboard European slave...

Mary Prince: The First Black Woman to Publish an Autobiography of Her Life in Slavery

Mary Prince was the first Black woman to publish an autobiography detailing her experiences in slavery. Born into slavery in Bermuda, she was sold multiple times and endured severe hardships across the Caribbean. In 1828, she traveled to England,...

George Case: The Slave-Trading Mayor Whose Crew Drowned 130 Enslaved Africans for an Insurance Payout

George Case was a British slave trader, businessman, and politician who played a key role in Liverpool’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. He was responsible for at least 109 slave voyages, transporting thousands of enslaved Africans to the...

The New Britannia Uprising of 1773: The Untold Story of When Enslaved Africans Blew Up a Slave Ship to Escape Slavery

The transatlantic slave trade was built on extreme violence, but it was never without resistance. From the moment of capture to the brutal conditions aboard slave ships, enslaved Africans fought back in every way they could. Revolts were frequent,...

The Jesuits and Their Involvement in Slavery in the 18th Century

Every generation of humans somehow figured out ways to make God in their image. The heart of man is desperately wicked, and what better way to justify this than to have God on his side. In God's name, everything...

The Slave Experience of Christmas

The Christmas holiday, a time typically associated with joy and festivity, held a complex and multifaceted significance for enslaved Africans across the Americas and the Caribbean. While some slaves embraced the brief moments of relaxation and celebration, others saw...

Ne Buela Muanda: The Prophet Who Predicted the Physical and Spiritual Enslavement of Africans

Ne Buela Muanda was a prophet in the spiritual history of the Bakongo people who, around the 1450s, foretold the arrival of the Portuguese and the subsequent spiritual and physical enslavement that the Bakongo and other African tribes would...

Derby’s Dose: The Extremely Vile Torture Method Used to Punish Enslaved Africans in Jamaica

Thomas Thistlewood was an 18th-century British plantation overseer and slave owner, notorious for his brutal treatment of enslaved Africans in Jamaica. Among the numerous atrocities recorded in his diaries, which he kept meticulously from 1750 to 1786, one of...

Harry Washington: The Slave Who Escaped George Washington’s Plantation, Fought for the British, and Eventually Settled in Africa

Harry Washington was an African who was enslaved by none other than George Washington, the future first President of the United States. However, Harry’s story transcends the chains of slavery, as he not only fought for his own liberation...

Zephaniah Kingsley: The British Slave Trader Who Married a 13-Year-Old Enslaved African Girl

Zephaniah Kingsley Jr was a slave trader and planter who was well known for his advocacy for a more lenient and humane treatment of the enslaved and his unconventional relationship with an enslaved girl named Anna Madgigine. Born in Bristol,...
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“Teach Them to Love Poverty”: King Leopold II’s 1833 Letter to Colonial Missionaries and the Mental Enslavement of Africa

In the year 1883, as European empires tightened their grip on Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium issued a...