For the midterm, bring a large blue book to write your answers.
In the first part, you will have to identify ONE out of TWO of the paintings that we analyze at the beginning of lecture (look at each powerpoint uploaded in the “Lectures” tab). Describe what you know about the painting and how it relates to the subject of the course in 5 to 6 lines (ten points).
In the second part, you will have to identify FOUR terms out of EIGHT terms. Each identification should be between 5 and 6 lines. All IDs (terms) are located under the tab “Lectures” in this website. (Forty points)
In the third, you will be given TWO fragments or quotations from the primary and/or secondary sources we have worked in-class. All of the quotations will be below. You will be asked to identify ONE of the quotations (author, type of document, all to the best of your ability); and discuss the significance of the quotation, that is, how does the quotation tells us something about the larger historical context or subject. Write approximately one single-spaced page. (Fifty points)
On identifications: Identification questions are used to test your basic understanding of the material covered in the course. Do not produce answers that are too detailed, as this should not be a fully developed essay. On the other hand, take care not to write too little. Identification questions ask you to note the significance of the person, event, or concept. Think that you are asked to provide an identification of the term that strictly relates to the lectures and readings of the course. The number of points identification answers are worth provides a clue to how much time you should spend writing your response. Overall, spend half of the time writing all of your identifications, and the other half writing the essay.
On the Essay: The essay you write for an exam is shorter than the papers you write for this course, but the basic format is basically the same. The difficulty of, course, is that you will be writing this essay under pressure, in a limited period of time, and without the opportunity to check the accuracy of your data.
Do not begin to write right away. Before you write, do the following: 1) Make sure you work on the quotation that you can identify and write about at its best -the one that you know best. 2) Make sure you can identify author and type of document to the best of your ability and also, that you can write about the significance of this quotation for the course. 3) Take time to organize your thoughts. Write a quick outline for your essay, stating a thesis statement and listing the parts from the quotation that will provide the key support for your argument.
Begin by writing an introductory paragraph where you identify the source and introduce your thesis statement, your main point about the source. Make sure that each subsequent paragraph support your thesis, you can use specific parts of the source here. Be sure to stick to the point. Do not go off on interesting tangents that are irrelevant to your point. Referring frequently to your outline will help keep you on track. Tie your essay together by stating your conclusions.
EXTRACTS
Eugene Genovese, Roll Roll Jordan: The World the Slaves Made (1974).
“Cruel, unjust, exploitative, oppressive, slavery bound two peoples together in bitter antagonism while creating an organic relationship so complex and ambivalent that neither could express the simplest human feelings without reference to the other. Slavery rested on the principle of property in man –of one man’s appropriation of another as well as of the fruits of his labor.”
Saidiya Hartman, Lose your mother (2007), 5
THE MOST UNIVERSAL DEFINITION of the slave is a stranger. Torn from kin and community, exiled from one’s country, dishonored and violated, the slave defines the position of the outsider. She is the perpetual outcast, the coerced migrant, the foreigner, the shamefaced child in the lineage. Contrary to popular belief, Africans did not sell their brothers and sisters into slavery. They sold strangers: those outside the web of kin and clan relationships, nonmembers of the polity, foreigners and barbarians at the outskirts of their country, and lawbreakers expelled from society. In order to betray your race, you had first to imagine yourself as one. The language of race developed in the modern period and in the context of the slave trade.
Adam Smith (1723-1790), An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations [1776] (Canaan edition, 1904).
III.2.10 The pride of man makes him love to domineer, and nothing mortifies him so much as to be obliged to condescend to persuade his inferiors. Wherever the law allows it, and the nature of the work can afford it, therefore, he will generally prefer the service of slaves to that of freemen.
III.2.12 Land occupied by … tenants is properly cultivated at the expence of the proprietor as much as that occupied by slaves. There is, however, one very essential difference between them. Such tenants, being freemen, are capable of acquiring property, and having a certain proportion of the produce of the land, they have a plain interest that the whole produce should be as great as possible, in order that their own proportion may be so. A slave, on the contrary, who can acquire nothing but his maintenance, consults his own ease by making the land produce as little as possible over and above that maintenance.
Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship. p. 9
“What each of them found in the slave ship was a strange and potent combination of war machine, mobile prison, and factory”
Karl Marx, Capital, 1867. (Penguin Edition, 1995 Vol. 1, 925)
“In general, the concealed slavery of wage workers in Europe required, as a prop, slavery sans phrase — in the New World,”
Narrative of Chisi, slave (Central Africa, 1890). Story recorded in the 1920s in Oral Interview
“I went to the hut, which belonged to Ndeye. […] The wife of Ndeye went to the chief and said: ‘A girl has come to my hut. She says she was traveling with the coast people and run away from them’ [The chief replied]. ‘Do not let her leave the hut. Keep her hidden there until Ndeye comes back’. When Ndeye came back, he said, ‘It is well; my ancestors have sent this girl to my hut.” [Chisi stayed with him for some time and then the chief summoned both] The chief said ‘Look after the girl as though she were your own child. Let men woo her, and who wants her must work for her. But Ndeye replied, Not so, Oh Chief, If I keep this girl she shall be my wife.’ So I stayed in the hut of Ndeye and grew up there. After four years, when I was fully grown, I became the wife of Ndeye and bore him a son.”
Extracts of letters from Afonso I, King of Kongo (West-Central Africa), to the King of Portugal, 1526
Your Highness should know how our Kingdom is being lost in so many ways that it is convenient to provide for the necessary remedy since this is caused by the excessive freedom given by your factors and officials to the men and merchants who are allowed to come to this Kingdom to set up shops with goods and many things which have been prohibited by us, and which they spread throughout our Kingdoms and domains in such an abundance that many of our vassals, whom we had in obedience, do not comply because they have the things in greater abundance than we ourselves; and it was with these things that we had them content and subjected under our vassalage and jurisdiction, so it is doing a great harm not only to the service of God, but to the security and peace of our Kingdom and States as well. [July 6]
The Diary of Antera Duke, an Eighteenth Century African Slave Trader (Oxford Univ. Press, 2011)
February 5, 1785 About 6 a.m. at Aqua Landing, a little morning fog. I went down to the land. After … o’clock in the afternoon we 3 went to Egbo Young [Ofiong’s] house Liverpool Hall to share 3 kegs of gunpowder. Soon we heard news that a ship was coming up river so we ran to the landing to get 5 great guns ready to fire. At the same time we saw a little canoe coming and he told us that he was Captain Langdon’s tender.
“Kpele” Dirge memorializing the Effects of the Atlantic Slave trade, Ghana, (collected 1970)
Does man have anyone at all? / They snatched all man’s children; / you snatched all man’s children; / you snatched all man’s children; / Sakumo, men have no one at all. / They snatched all Olila’s children. / Lo, Olila has no one. / They snatched all Sakumo’s children […] Lo, you snatched all Great Accra. / You let uncircumcised people empty / All Great Accra; / Our Akims have empty Accra; / They emptied all the people of Accra; / So Accra is empty.
Extrat from Togbui Awusa’s Narrative, Oral Tradition, Ghana, (collected ca. 2002)
One day group of drummers, famous drummers from the area, were playing their drums on the shore of Atorkor. […] On this day the group included two of Togbui’s relatives –Ndorkutsu’s grandson and his grandfather. As the drummers played, the Europeans came to collect the slaves. As he was preparing to go, the captain of the ship invited these drummers to come aboard and play. He offered them barrels of drink, giving them the same to the row and had begun to assemble on the Atorkor shore. An atmosphere of merriment ensued, and many became drunk. Thus were the drummers lure onto the European ship. Before they knew what was happening, the ship set sail, taking them away.
Narrative of Ali Eisami, 1818, as told to S.W. Koelle, African Native Literature..Historical Fragments in the Kanuri or Bornu Language (1854)
“The Yoruban who bought me was a son of the Katunga King; he liked me, and called me to sit down before him, and, on seeing my tattoo-marks, he said to me, “Was you the son of a King in your country?” To this I replied, “My father, as for me, I will not tell lies, because times are evil, and our Lord has given me into slavery: my father was a scholar”. […] In this place [Sai, today’s Nigeria], I remained a long time, so that I understood their language. After I had been there four years, a war arose: now all the slaves who went to the war became free…”
Olaudah Equiano,The Interesting Narrative of the life of Oluadah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789), Bight of Biafra
“When I looked round the ship too and saw a large furnace or copper boiling, and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted my fate; and quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted. When I recovered a little I found some black people about me, who I believed were some of those who brought me on board, and had been receiving their pay; they talked to me in order to cheer me, but all in vain. I asked them if we were not to be eaten by those white men with horrible looks, red faces, and loose hair. They told me not.”
Oluadah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the life of Oluadah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789), Bight of Biafra
We have also markets, at which I have been frequently with my mother. These are sometimes visited by stout mahogany-colored men me from the south west of us […] They generally bring us fire-arms, gunpowder, hats, beads, and dried fish. […] They always carry slaves through our land; but the strictest account is exacted of their manner of procuring them before they are suffered to pass. Sometimes indeed we sold slaves to them, but they were only prisoners of war, or such among us as had been convicted of kidnapping or adultery. This practice of kidnapping induces me to think that, notwithstanding all our strictness, their principal business among us was to trepan our people.
Extract from Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972) in David Northrup (editor), The Atlantic Slave Trade (1994).
“The truth is that a developing Africa went into slave trading and European commercial relationships as into a gale-force wind, which shipwrecked a few societies, set many other off course, and generally slowed down the rate of advance.”
Extract from an Akan speaker of Gold Coast in Ludvig Roemer, A reliable account of the Coast of Guinea (1760), 35.
It is you, you Whites, who have brought all the evil among us. Indeed would we have sold one another if you, as purchasers, had not come to us? The desire we have for your fascinating goods and your brandy, bring it to pass that one brother cannot trust the other, nor one friend another. Indeed, a father hardly his own son! We know from our forefathers that only those malefactors who had thrice committed murder were stoned or drowned. Otherwise the normal punishment was that anyone who had committed a misdeed had to carry to the injured party a large piece of firewood for his house or hut, and ask on his knees for forgiveness, for one, two, or three days in a row. In our youth, we knew many thousands of families here and at the coast, and now not a hundred individuals can be counted. And what is worse, you have remained among us as a necessary evil, since if you left, the Negroes up-country would not let us live for half a year, but would come to kill us, our wives and our children. That they bear this hatred for us is your fault.