The Slave Ship Questions and Answers
The Slave Ship
How did the slave ship captains conduct themselves aboard the ships in The Slave Ship?
Unsurprisingly, Rediker's finds indicate that the conduct of the captains involved in the British slave trade was cruel beyond reckoning. The captains worked directly with African leaders, who sold...
The Slave Ship
What is chapter 8 of The Slave Ship about?
Chapter 8 of The Slave Ship is titled "The Sailor's Vast Machine," and itdescribes everyday life for both captives and crew aboard a ship transporting slaves to the New World. Rediker points out...
The Slave Ship
What are some common questions asked after reading The Slave Ship?
Marcus Rediker’s The Slave Ship is an extensively detailed account of the horrors of the West-African slave trade. Rediker uses a compilation of historical evidence to humanize understandings about...
The Slave Ship
According to The Slave Ship, how were the slave ships like factories?
Forced to become human cogs in the machinery of economic exploitation, African slaves became part of the trade industry. They were brought in on ships in which they were chained and scarcely had...
The Slave Ship
How was the manning of the slave ship a “hustle”?
The Slave Ship was written by Marcus Rediker. In the book, he describes how slave ship captains and members of their crew worked with African leaders to procure slaves. Based on a lot of evidence...
The Slave Ship
Which of the following animals was used as a form of “terror” against the slaves on the slave ship?
The Slave Ship contains a thorough and eerie study of the transatlantic slave trade, the largest forced migration in the history of humanity. Many terrors awaited the slaves on board, including...
The Slave Ship
What kind of background did the sailors in the book have? What were general characteristics of the crew members...
The crew members of the ships were cruel and mean as one would expect. Since no records were kept for slaves who dies during transportation, it is impossible to account for the lives lost. While...
The Slave Ship
How was the cruelty of the slave ship born from the economic imperatives of the slave ship and what that does...
There were (and are) costs associated with any trip across the ocean and the necessity that the trip be completed as quickly as possible because time is money for seafaring concerns. When your...
The Slave Ship
In the book, how did slaves typically resist the captains/being captured?
Some newly captured slaves, like Captain Tomba, resisted violently. They killed their captors, even though they knew their odds of escape were virtually nonexistent. Others went on hunger strikes...
The Slave Ship
In The Slave Ship, what are some aspects of Rediker's approach that are criticized?
The Slave Ship was very well received, and it remains an important work in the literature on the slave trade and the Atlantic World more generally. Rediker's approach was to focus on the slave ship...
The Slave Ship
How was the American slave trade bound up within a larger macro-economic context?
Rediker argues that the slave industry was a manifestation of the worst elements of capitalism; capitalism itself was the driving force which kept the slave trade alive. Many merchants who...
The Slave Ship
How was the cruelty of the slave ship born from the economic imperatives of the slave ship? What does that...
The slave trade was part of a profitable "triangular" trade in which the English shipped finished goods to Africa, picked up loads of slaves, transported the slaves to the United States, and then...
The Slave Ship
In The Slave Ship, how does Rediker lay bare the differing perspectives of captain, crew, and enslaved?
To be fair, I think the compelling factual description that Rediker provides us with in his work of non-fiction does focus on the perspective of the slaves more than that of the crew and the...