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• Between 1500 and 1800, around 12-15 million people were taken by force from Africa to be used as enslaved labour in the Caribbean, North, Central and South America. Some historians suggest the number of people transported may have been higher.
• Despite enslavement and the extreme brutality of plantation life, people found ways to empower themselves. Through religion, language, culture, music and revolution, enslaved individuals and communities resisted against plantation owners and European powers.

Between 1500-1800, European traders were involved in buying and shipping enslaved African people to work in the Americas. This became the largest forced migration in history and is known as the transatlantic slave trade.

Following their arrival in the Americas, many enslaved Africans would have been sold in auctions - a further dehumanising act. Often traders and plantation owners would subject them to humiliating and degrading checks. Traders would also place oil upon enslaved people's skin to make them look healthier and increase their sale price.

During this process enslaved people were often branded and the majority were sent to work on plantations, producing labour intensive crops such as sugar, cotton and tobacco.

Many enslaved people died early of exhaustion, injury or disease. Between 1748 and 1788, traders brought 335,000 enslaved people to the island of Jamaica. Yet in 1788, only 226,432 enslaved people were recorded on the island.

In 1798 the British Parliament passed the Amelioration Act, which applied to the British Caribbean colonies. This meant that enslaved people could only be forced to work for fourteen hours a day. The Amelioration Act aimed to protect enslaved people from cruel punishments by introducing fines for owners who mistreated them.

In reality, the act did little to protect the rights of enslaved populations. Many historians believe that the purpose of the act was to benefit plantation owners, and appease those enslaved following a series of large-scale uprisings from enslaved people in Barbados, Jamaica and Demerara between 1816 and 1832.

The process of producing sugar

The majority of enslaved people worked on sugar plantations, where the work was incredibly difficult. The sugar crop needed a lot of labour and taking too long to harvest the cane could spoil a whole crop.

The ground on the sugar plantation had to be dug over, and holes to for planting the cane had to be made. Once planted, the cane had to be fertilised with animal manure. The working day was at least 18 hours long, in scorching conditions.

Constant weeding was needed to protect the cane as it grew. At harvest time, sugar cane was cut and loaded onto carts. This was back-breaking work and involved twenty-four-hour labour. The harvested cane was taken to the sugar mill, where it was crushed and boiled to extract the juices. Large rollers were used to do this. It was dangerous work. Many people had to have their arms amputated following accidents using the machinery.

At every stage of enslavement, people found ways to resist and empower themselves against plantation owners. Resistance occurred in everyday ways; for example, deliberately working slowly or damaging tools. Resistance was made up of individual and collective acts.

Resistance at work

Enslaved people were forced to work long hours in gruelling conditions. Some enslaved people would show their resistance at work by breaking tools or working at a slow pace.

Attempting freedom

Whilst working on the plantations, many enslaved people would run away from the cruel and brutal treatment that they faced. They risked severe punishments if they were caught and many had been branded, making it difficult to disguise themselves. Plantation owners would display notices in newspapers offering rewards for the return of enslaved people who had run away.

Families and communities

Despite the confinements and brutal hardships of plantation life, many enslaved communities developed. Enslaved people married and created family units despite the threat of being broken up by plantation owners.

Religion

Despite attempts to ban West African beliefs amongst the enslaved population, many communities continued to practise their religions. On the island of Jamaica traditional beliefs were maintained including the traditional belief in Obeah and Vodun. The legends of duppies – spirits – within Caribbean communities can be traced back to West African Obeah beliefs surrounding death.

British plantation owners forced their own Christian beliefs on enslaved people in an attempt to prevent them from rebelling. Enslaved people were forced to convert to Christianity and attend church services on Sundays. Services would often include sermons from the Bible about obeying orders. Over time, Christianity was blended with African music and culture to create forms of religious expression such as praise singing and shouting, and a later genre of religious music, which became known as the ‘Spiritual’.

Language

Many plantation owners attempted to reduce enslaved workers' ties to their homelands to maintain order and obedience. However, one way enslaved people resisted their situation was through the survival of their cultures and languages. Historians who have analysed the language of the Gullah and Geechee people, who live in the southern states of America, have found that their language features surviving aspects of Yoruba, a language of modern-day Nigeria, and Wolof, a language in modern-day Mauritania, Senegal and the Gambia. In Jamaica, there is evidence of Nigerian Igbo words such as ‘Buckra’, which came to refer to the white owner of the plantation or the other white employees.

In Jamaica, maroon communities would speak Kromanti, a language originally linked to Akan, a region in West Africa. As many enslaved people spoke different languages, over time maroon communities developed their own way of communicating using body language and gestures. Over time, communities used their own language, which was mixture of African dialects, broken English and Spanish.

Music

Traditional African instruments were also re-made in the Americas using calabash squashes and other materials. In the southern states of America, a form of dance called the Juba involved patterns of clapping body parts which replicated the ways in which drumming was used to confer messages in cultures such as the Yoruba of Nigeria and Asante of Ghana.

During the 1739 Stono Rebellion in South Carolina, enslaved people used rhythmic drumming as a way to communicate with one another. Following the rebellion an Act was introduced in 1760, outlawing the use of drums by enslaved people. A plaque located in South Carolina, reads ‘The rebels marched South towards promised freedom in Spanish Florida, waving flags, beating drums, and shouting ‘freedom.’

Markets

The market was important as it was an opportunity for enslaved people to sell produce, make some money, socialise with other enslaved and free people from different plantations, share information and have some leisure time, away from the gaze of their enslavers. Many of the rebellions that occurred in the Caribbean were linked to white officials trying to clamp down on or influence market days, which gives a sense of how important they were to people.

On many Caribbean islands, ‘maroon’ communities developed. These communities were made up of formerly enslaved people who had escaped slavery and lived freely away from plantations, often in mountainous regions. The term ‘maroon’ was used by Europeans to describe those who escaped from plantations. However, African ‘maroon communities’ would refer to themselves using different terms, such as “Nyankipong Pickibu,” which is Ghanaian for “Children of the Almighty.”

African techniques for basket weaving were used across the Americas and studies of surviving quilts made by enslaved women for their homes have been found to show evidence of West African designs and techniques.

In Nevis and Jamaica archaeologists have also found evidence of African style pottery close to what had been the homes of enslaved peoples. Cooking pots, plates and other forms of pottery were made by hand using African techniques. In Jamaica, yabba pots, which enslaved people made to cook with, are still made.

Knowledge of herbs and African medicinal practices were also bought to the Americas. For example, Guinea Hen Weed was used to stop animals getting ticks and bitter cucumbers were boiled down to make tonics.

Skills in agriculture were also used to provide extra food. Enslaved peoples worked on Sundays on their own small plots of land growing sweet potatoes, yams and plantains. Excess produce as well as pottery, basketwork and quilting were sold and traded at Sunday markets and could be a way to save up to buy freedom.

Following the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, many enslaved people believed they would be granted their freedom. The act made it illegal to buy and sell people. It did not, however, provide freedom for those already enslaved. In response, and despite the punishment for open rebellion being death, enslaved people regularly rose up in large-scale attempts to overthrow slavery. In Saint-Domingue the enslaved population overthrew the French and developed a maroon community. There are also many documented instances of resistance and mutinies on the Middle Passage. Over 50 instances of mutinies were recorded between 1699 and 1845.