The Middle Passage: The Great Age Of Discovery

More than six centuries ago, European civilizations stood at the threshold of a new era. This era was called the Age of Discovery. That era was a time in which Europeans dared to venture beyond the Old World. Before this time, most people knew little information outside of their community no matter if the people lived in Europe, Asia, or Africa. But by the end of the 1400s, knowledge of the world grew rapidly. The increasing of trade, the desire to learn more about the Earth, new inventions, and a more rapid flow of information all combined to make the Great Age of Discovery. But along with all the great things that was traded between the New and Old Worlds there had to be people to do the hard labor in the midst of this period, this is what …show more content…
This voyage is referred to as the Middle Passage because it was the middle leg of the trade route that developed between North America, Europe, and Africa. The journey of the Middle Passage was one of the most horrific aspects of the morally deplorable system of slavery. One cannot mention the Middle Passage without eliciting the horrors of tightly packed naked men, women and children chained together, to keep them from rebelling, or from choosing the suicidal fate of jumping overboard. Death was one of the constant threats as disease, murder, starvation, suicide, asphyxiation, and severe depression rampantly claimed the lives of both African slaves along with white crewman. Olaudah Equiano, lived in Nigeria when he was kidnapped from his homeland, recalls in his memoir, “I was immediately handled and tossed up to see if I were sound by some of the crew; and I was now persuaded that I had gotten into a world of bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me.” He said, “ The closeness of the place, which was to crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us.” Other observers attest to this as well exclaiming, “They are often heard, on such occasions, to cry out in their own language, “We are dying, we are …show more content…
During this time, slavery in the Caribbean was a popular topic in Europe. Countries such as England and France benefited from the morally destitute system that were hidden of domestic civility. Europe remained primarily ignorant and unaware of what their economic system entailed during the slave trade. The citizens were uninformed of the chains, shackles, whips and guns, or perhaps did not simply care to know. They blinded themselves against the despair, disease, suffocation, and suicide. Europe has seemed to be suffering from the Ostrich Syndrome, which is “if you don’t see it, it isn’t