2.3 - Capture and the Impact of the Slave Trade on West African Societies
The Three-Part Journey of Enslaved Africans
The journey enslaved Africans were forced into wasn't a single trip, it unfolded in three distinct, brutal stages, and conditions varied throughout each one.
The first part of the journey involved being captured and then marched from interior regions out to the Atlantic coast, a trek that could last several months. Once captives reached the coast, some were held for extended periods in crowded, unsanitary dungeons while awaiting transport.
The second part, known as the Middle Passage, was the ocean crossing itself, lasting up to three months. For most captives, this leg of the journey meant permanent separation from their home communities. Conditions aboard slave ships were horrific: people were humiliated, beaten, tortured, and raped, and disease and malnourishment were widespread. Roughly 15 percent of captive Africans died during the Middle Passage alone.
The third part, sometimes called the "final passage," began once ships reached ports in the Americas. Survivors were quarantined, resold, and then transported domestically to wherever they'd ultimately be enslaved, a process that could take just as long as the first two legs of the journey combined.
How the Slave Trade Destabilized West African Societies
The slave trade didn't just take people away, it actively destabilized the societies they were taken from. The financial incentives tied to selling captives made violence more profitable, and wars between kingdoms were often made worse by the flow of firearms that came through trade with Europeans.
This created a real imbalance across the region. Some coastal states grew wealthy from trading both goods and people, while interior states often became less stable, living under the constant threat of raids and capture.
To maintain their own power and grow their wealth, some African leaders sold soldiers and war captives taken from rival ethnic groups, a strategy that helped consolidate their local dominance even as it fed the larger trade system.
The long-term cost of all this was steep. African societies suffered from lasting instability and the loss of people who, under different circumstances, would have gone on to lead their communities, raise families, and carry forward their cultural traditions. In other words, the slave trade didn't just remove individuals, it removed future generations of leadership and cultural continuity.
Slave Narratives: Writing as History, Literature, and Political Argument
Many formerly enslaved Africans documented their experiences directly, through poetry and a distinct literary genre known as slave narratives.
These narratives hold a foundational place in early American writing, and they work on multiple levels at once: as historical accounts, as literary works in their own right, and as political texts. As political documents specifically, slave narratives were written with clear purpose, to help end slavery and the slave trade, to demonstrate the full humanity of Black people to often-skeptical readers, and to argue for the inclusion of people of African descent in American society.
Required Sources
"On Being Brought from Africa to America" by Phillis Wheatley, 1773
'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, Taught my benighted soul to understand That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too: Once I redemption neither sought nor knew. Some view our sable race with scornful eye, "Their colour is a diabolic die." Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain, May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train. "On Being Brought from Africa to America," Phillis Wheatley, 1773. Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (London: A. Bell, 1773), p. 18 (Public Domain)
Phillis Wheatley holds a historic distinction as the first African American to publish a full book of poetry. Her portrait, attributed to fellow enslaved African American painter Scipio Moorhead, is also notable as the first known individual portrait of an African American. This poem fits squarely into the tradition described above, using literary craft to assert Black humanity and intellect at a time when that humanity was constantly being denied, all while being written by someone who had personally lived through forced removal from Africa.
Wheatley was kidnapped from West Africa as a young child (about seven or eight years old) and sold in Boston in 1761 to the Wheatley family, who named her after the ship that carried her, the Phillis. Her book of poems was published in London in 1773 with a signed statement from a group of prominent Boston men confirming that she had really written the poems, because many white readers doubted that an enslaved African could write poetry. In this poem, she calls her capture a kind of "mercy" because it led her to Christianity, but the last lines turn on her readers: she reminds Christians that Black people "may be refin'd, and join th' angelic train," insisting that Black people are their spiritual equals.
Excerpt from Chapter 2 of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself, 1789
One day, when all our people were gone out to their works as usual, and only I and my dear sister were left to mind the house, two men and a woman got over our walls, and in a moment seized us both, and, without giving us time to cry out, or make resistance, they stopped our mouths, and ran off with us into the nearest wood. Here they tied our hands, and continued to carry us as far as they could, till night came on, when we reached a small house, where the robbers halted for refreshment, and spent the night. We were then unbound, but were unable to take any food; and, being quite overpowered by fatigue and grief, our only relief was some sleep, which allayed our misfortune for a short time. The next morning we left the house, and continued travelling all the day. For a long time we had kept the woods, but at last we came into a road which I believed I knew. I had now some hopes of being delivered; for we had advanced but a little way before I discovered some people at a distance, on which I began to cry out for their assistance: but my cries had no other effect than to make them tie me faster and stop my mouth, and then they put me into a large sack. They also stopped my sister's mouth, and tied her hands; and in this manner we proceeded till we were out of the sight of these people. When we went to rest the following night they offered us some victuals; but we refused it; and the only comfort we had was in being in one another's arms all that night, and bathing each other with our tears. But alas! we were soon deprived of even the small comfort of weeping together. The next day proved a day of greater sorrow than I had yet experienced; for my sister and I were then separated, while we lay clasped in each other's arms. It was in vain that we besought them not to part us; she was torn from me, and immediately carried away, while I was left in a state of distraction not to be described. [...] The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea, and a slave ship, which was then riding at anchor, and waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror when I was carried on board. I was immediately handled and tossed up to see if I were sound by some of the crew; and I was now persuaded that I had gotten into a world of bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me. Their complexions too differing so much from ours, their long hair, and the language they spoke, (which was very different from any I had ever heard) united to confirm me in this belief. Indeed such were the horrors of my views and fears at the moment, that, if ten thousand worlds had been my own, I would have freely parted with them all to have exchanged my condition with that of the meanest slave in my own country. 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 of my fate; and, quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself, Olaudah Equiano, 1789. Volume 1, Chapter 2, pp. 48 to 50 and 70 to 71 (London, 1789) (Public Domain)
Equiano's narrative is one of the most detailed firsthand accounts we have of the three-part journey described earlier, capture, the Middle Passage, and eventual sale in the Americas. Because it's told in his own words, it gives readers direct access to the lived experience behind the historical statistics, functioning simultaneously as personal history, literary achievement, and a political argument against the very system Equiano survived.
Equiano wrote that he was born in an Igbo village in what is now southeastern Nigeria and was kidnapped at about eleven years old. After years of enslavement, including service on British ships, he bought his own freedom in 1766 and settled in England, where he joined the campaign against the slave trade. His Interesting Narrative (1789) went through many editions and gave British abolitionists a powerful firsthand account to use in their fight to end the slave trade.