The Middle East is regarded as the cradle of civilization, whereas Africa is the cradle of humankind. Approximately 60,000 years ago, Homo sapiens started leaving northeast Africa, crossing the Middle East and populating Eurasia (Hawley para. 1). The African region has a long and eventful history, one of the most dreadful epochs of which was slavery. The sorrows experienced by African slaves of the 19th century are reflected in the poem Middle Passage written by Robert Hayden. The present essay analyzes the Middle Passage and discusses the issue of slavery from different perspectives.
The starting point for the slave trade is the expansion of Portugal into western Africa in the 15th century. Interestingly enough, Portuguese invaders treated slaves as goods, and enslavement was regarded by their Church leaders as an attempt to eradicate the barbarous behavior of the Africans and civilize them (Lowcountry Digital History Initiative para. 3). However, transportation to Europe was not treated as a gift by the slaves. Instead, the poem of Hayden reflects that some of them went crazy, prayed for death, and were “sick with fear” (para. 3, 8). By the way, the hardships slaves experienced during the transportation described in the Middle Passage raises the question of whether the conquerors indeed were less barbaric than the Africans.
It is also curious to notice that when authors are talking about Africa as the cradle of humankind, they usually claim that people left this region because of climate change, migration of herds, encroachment of neighbors (Hawley para. 6, 14, 17). However, scholars and writers rarely mention the phenomenon of trade with African slaves. Furthermore, when the slave trade is mentioned, it generally depicts slaves as items, not as people. For example, Cartwright notes that slaves were merely commodities that could be exchanged for gold (para. 1). From this, one could infer that slavery was not an invention of European invaders but existed and flourished long before their arrival. This point is also reflected in Hayden’s poem. In the Middle Passage, the narrator claims that he has “seen the nigger kings whose vanity and greed turned wild black hides of Fellatah, Mandingo, Ibo, Kru to gold for us” (Hayden para. 17). Fellatah, Mandingo, Ibo, Kru, mentioned by Hayden, are African ethnic groups.
The fact that slavery existed on the African continent before the discovery of the Americas highlights the issue of racism from another perspective. Nowadays, everyone accuses white people of enslavement of black ones, but everyone forgets that there were times when some black people were slaves of other black people. Undoubtedly, this point is not discussed in the assigned readings. Nonetheless, the poem and the articles provoke the discussion of the idea of slavery in Africa mentioned above.
To conclude, Hayden’s poem Middle Passage is an immensely illustrative poem dedicated to the issue of slavery in Africa. The information provided in the articles of Cartwright, Hawley, and the one published on the website of Lowcountry Digital History Initiative provides the broad context that helps to understand the peculiarities of times discussed in the poem. The analysis of the assigned readings reveals that even though African people tried to rebel, they could not suppress the might of Europeans. Besides, slaves traveling from home to the New World were betrayed not by Europeans but by their powerful compatriots who had greed for profit.
Works Cited
Cartwright, Mark. The Gold Trade of Ancient & Medieval West Africa. World History Encyclopedia, 2019, Web.
Hawley, Jesse. Why Did Early Humans Leave Africa? Discover, 2021, Web.
Hayden, Robert. Middle Passage. Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1985.
Lowcountry Digital History Initiative. Pope Nicolas V and the Portuguese Slave Trade, Web.