“How did the black experience shape your life?”
Researching African diaspora for the past three years of my undergraduate education has altered my perspective on the meaning of resilience and defiance in the face of unimaginable oppression. I remember noticing that my high school history teachers never really expressed the full magnitude and severity of the trans-Atlantic slave trade voyages. I decided to explore the middle passage voyage topic in further detail when I entered community college to understand why so many of my teachers seemed to draw little attention to this part of history. I learned that the social dynamics aboard slave ships were complex and deeply rooted in acts of enslaved resistance despite the spatial limitations of the vessels. My research interests led me to start a history senior thesis once I transferred to UT Austin on the subject of slave resistance and social interactions aboard maritime vessels …show more content…
Taylor’s study aimed to “bring the much-neglected history of shipboard rebellion to greater light and to challenge the assumption that it was merely a minor, rare, and relatively insignificant aspect of the broader history of slave resistance.” (Taylor 13) The author emphasized that captives were able to refute subjugation despite their limited spatial environment and brutal oppression by enslavers. In addition, Taylor fights passionately against the writings of historian Stanley Elkins who essentially wrote that the traumatic experiences of captives aboard slave vessels “crushed the spirit of rebelliousness and led to a mere ‘cargo’ of broken and largely passive slaves.” (Taylor 13) Taylors scholarship is a great addition to the Middle Passage scholarship because it provided perhaps the most vigorous and extensive examination of shipboard
Researching African diaspora for the past three years of my undergraduate education has altered my perspective on the meaning of resilience and defiance in the face of unimaginable oppression. I remember noticing that my high school history teachers never really expressed the full magnitude and severity of the trans-Atlantic slave trade voyages. I decided to explore the middle passage voyage topic in further detail when I entered community college to understand why so many of my teachers seemed to draw little attention to this part of history. I learned that the social dynamics aboard slave ships were complex and deeply rooted in acts of enslaved resistance despite the spatial limitations of the vessels. My research interests led me to start a history senior thesis once I transferred to UT Austin on the subject of slave resistance and social interactions aboard maritime vessels …show more content…
Taylor’s study aimed to “bring the much-neglected history of shipboard rebellion to greater light and to challenge the assumption that it was merely a minor, rare, and relatively insignificant aspect of the broader history of slave resistance.” (Taylor 13) The author emphasized that captives were able to refute subjugation despite their limited spatial environment and brutal oppression by enslavers. In addition, Taylor fights passionately against the writings of historian Stanley Elkins who essentially wrote that the traumatic experiences of captives aboard slave vessels “crushed the spirit of rebelliousness and led to a mere ‘cargo’ of broken and largely passive slaves.” (Taylor 13) Taylors scholarship is a great addition to the Middle Passage scholarship because it provided perhaps the most vigorous and extensive examination of shipboard