Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora

A diaspora is a group of people with a common homeland who are dispersed across the globe. Saltwater Slavery describes the process of enslavement by which an African diaspora was established in the Americas. Smallwood explores the social challenges that came with Establishing Social Structure and Community Amid Forced Displacement since enslaved people from Africa had to establish a new social order that was different from what they had known.

The Gold Coast references the area that is now present-day Ghana. It was previously divided into several states controlled by different indigenous ethnic groups. The first European explorers to reach it were the Portuguese, who claimed it for their gold mines. The Dutch and the British also had significant activity there. These activities were precursors to colonialism.

The Middle Passage is the journey that African people were forced to take when they were trafficked across the Atlantic to be sold into enslavement. It is called the “middle” passage because it is the part of the journey between being kidnapped and taken to West African ports and being taken from a port in the Americas to a plantation on which they would be enslaved. Smallwood focuses on the traumatic and disorienting aspects of this journey in the text.

The Royal African Company (RAC) was an English mercantile company set up by the royal Stuart family that engaged in the trade of enslaved people. Smallwood uses documentation generated by the Royal African Company as references for her book.

This was a pejorative term used by American-born enslaved people to describe inexperienced and uninformed enslaved people who were newly arrived from Africa. “Saltwater” references the constant forward motion of the ship carrying enslaved people through the Atlantic and how it ties the African roots of these people to the institution of slavery in the Americas.