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2015 Abstracts

Profiting from the Middle Passage

Michael Jurgensmeier, Dixie State University

Humanities

The voyage of slaves from Africa to the Americas is a part of Atlantic World history that is infamous for its brutal treatment of human cargo. The recorded history of men, women and children placed in cargo ships, chained together, lying in the same spot, often for months at a time without seeing the light of day, has been met with a mix of horror and shock. The specific details of the slave trade have been well recorded and the role of the human cargo has been emphasized in the majority of records that fill history books. What about the role of the slave trader? When a person takes into account all the added stress and special-needs of carrying a ship filled with human cargo, one can’t help but ask, from an economic perspective, was it worth it? Was it exceptionally profitable? In answering that question perhaps a light will be shed on the motivation of one of history’s iniquitous periods. This paper will give a few, short examples of what slave traders had to consider and the types of problems they may have had to overcome in order to be successful.