History

The mastery of Stephanie Smallwood lies in the fact that in her book she restrains to present the readers numeric information regarding the study of Middle Passage, which can be read from the chronicles as well. It is interesting to read the journals, letters and stories about the trade to have a close look at the issue of slavery rather than using account books. The narrative of African slaves brought to America, saltwater slaves, presents the brutality hidden under the ignominious cycle of slavery drawn brilliantly by Smallwood. The book focuses on the British slave trade from the Gold Cost during a period ranging from 1675 to 1725 while presenting her exploration of the processes of forced migration. Smallwoods book, says Ira Berlin (author of Many Thousands Gone), is a new starting point for the studies of the Middle Passage. The narrative is different from the other studies of the Atlantic slave trade that Smallwood enters into the minds of the petty slaves in a way that we see the things from their perspective while sympathizing with them. It is really moving to read the account of the origin of African-America in the global market that was violent. It is an account of the way the brutal act of slavery was seen by Europeans and the Africans and also criticizes historical accounts simultaneously.  

Smallwoods repaints the route from Africa to America in a new way from the perspective of the African migrants through a strong argument. She meditates on the processes of commoditization in Atlantic markets as the book is seen by the author herself as a history of economic systems. Her argument is well conveyed in the book as she argues that the Atlantic trade had been different from the 17th century slavery of Africans because it perpetuated the process of slavery and the vicious cycle of injustice by making the human beings commodities through an organized and institutionalized system. Her emphasis on the importance of the process of commoditization in the slave trade is made evident as she spends four chapters just discussing the process. They choose them as they do horses (Smallwood, 2007,158).

The readers are detached from the central argument as they go on to read pages and pages about the process of commoditization. She shows how West African slave factories required the slave traders to collect men before going to Americas sea voyage. While she moves from the process of commoditization to the question of having and building separate identity of the Africans in America. She goes on to explore the identity of Akin speaking community while stating that the  assumption about the formation of community on the basis of shared culture traits is open to challenge as one tends to comprehend identity. In the regime of market the prominent feature of the Africans was their exchangeability and as migrants was isolation (Smallwood, 2007,189). Smallwood presents her view that a herd of people women, men and children can not be called a group or a crowd but only a mutilated assemblage, a novel and problematic social configuration and an antithesis of community  of people who are alienated and dissociated with each other and do not share any common thing except being chained. It was difficult to thinking to return to their own country to face the problem of integration (Smallwood, 2007, 183). She supports her argument while referring to Birth of African American Culture by Sydney Mints and Richard Price. In the final chapter of the book she calls for the need to reverse the process of commoditization by denouncing it in order to assert a social position in the American society. In her book Smallwood does not write pages for the things that had been a focus of studies for many historians rather she gives evidences for her arguments as she gives the true experience of Charles Ball who used to be a slave himself, Consider the scene ex-slave Charles Ball witnessed in South Carolina (Smallwood, 2007, 189), of an African-born man who put a canoe on his sons grave for allowing him to go back to Africa.

Smallwood makes her argument strong by the anecdote of saltwater that implied the obligation for the slaves to perform ritual to meet the needs during slavery on Atlantic system. Smallwood wants the readers to see the damage done by the Atlantic system that turned the human beings into commodity snatching them of their identity and individuality and alienated them from the external world that looked at them as an alien community or a herd of chained slaves. It questions the issue of African identity in the American society. The fact is evident that Smallwood fails to answer the issues raised through her arguments but the enquiry that she made in order to rediscover the issue makes the readers to accept and comprehend her arguments and they tend to sympathize with the slaves. There was a need of more data in the first chapter about the role of the Dutch in the vicious slave trade and it could be better if Smallwood would have traced the history of slavery from 15th to 17th century but the most important point is that the author conveys her message successfully.   She suggests that Diasporas Africa is constellation of discrete ethnic and linguistic groups (Smallwood, 2007, 189) so the question is of the shared culture of the Africans.