Classic slave narratives
...g taken away. The European slave traders were the back bone to the institution of modern slavery. Henry the Navigator from Portugal was the first slave trader. In 1442 two of Henry’s ships returning to Lisbon from the west coast of Africa brought back dozen’s of Africans. The African’s made great laborers and so the Europeans returned to Africa to get more slaves. When laborers were needed in the Americas, Spaniards commissioned the Portuguese to capture and sell African slaves to them. The Spaniards finally cut out the middle man and started enslaving and selling African’s on their own. In the late 17th century the British got in the game and between 1680 and 1700 they imported 300,000 slaves in to the West Indies and the European mainland. From the mid 1700’s and on the British had almost total control over slave trade business including exportation to the Americas. For a short period of time the American market feed the need for African slaves but, the U.S. finally illegalized the importation of slaves. The Africans who enslaved their own only accounted for a small portion of the slave trade industry and compared to the British, Spanish, and Portuguese, they were “small timers”. The events in the book: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl seem possible and common in the 19th century. Many slave women of that time were treated as child bearers. The Male slave masters would often force the women to have their children and then sell them to save the reputation of their wives. Linda’s fight to keep her children seems very realistic in conjunction to today’s women’s bonds with their children. The stories in the book show that the author was a true slave in the 19th century, and that she was eventually a free women due to her literacy which was often used a metaphor for freedom. Many white women in the antebellum south had very little sexual control over their bodie...