Making Slaves

Cameron, C; Gijanto, L; Noy, D; Webster, J

doi:10.1093/9780197551295.003.0005

Making Slaves

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Abstract

The four authors of this chapter explore the making of slaves in a sample of societies of different scales and in different times and places. The first section, by Catherine M. Cameron, presents a global look at how slaves were created in small-scale societies. David Noy uses inscriptions, especially epitaphs, written by or for ex-slaves or slaves in the Roman Empire to reconstruct how their origin or ‘natio’, their occupations as slaves, and other factors shaped their identity as slaves. In the third section, Liza Gijanto describes the trading system that operated from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries along the Gambia River, funnelling slaves from the African interior to the ships that took them to the Americas. She also considers the ‘castle slaves’ who remained. In the final section, Jane Webster describes practices employed on the British ships that took captives from Africa to the Caribbean: surveillance, restraint, punishment, branding of the body, shouted English words, and the pealing of bells. These actions prefigured the ‘slave seasoning’ endured by newly arrived captives in the Caribbean.