Spirits of the Passage
Chat
with Madeleine Burnside
16
December 2003 9PM Eastern Time
AfriGeneas
Chat Center Dee Woodtor Lecture Hall
George
Geder, Book Forum Manager, Moderating
Geder: .
Hello
to all!
From
the cover: In a watery grave off the coast of Florida lies the earliest slave
ship ever recovered. The English owned - Henrietta Marie - plied the waters
from Europe to Africa and the New World, sinking in the year 1700. She has
waited three hundred years to reveal her story.
Taking
the wreck of the ship as its dramatic heart, ëSpirits of the Passageí presents
the first general-interest history of the early years of the slave trade.
Tonight,
we have Madeleine Burnside, author of ëSpirits of the Passage - The
TransAtlantic Slave Trade in the Seventeenth Centuryí. Iím here to tell you that this book belongs
in every genealogistís library whose ancestry and research touches upon the
ëpeculiar institutioní.
Ms.
Burnside joined the MelFisher Maritime Heritage Society in 1991 as its
executive director. Born in London, she holds a Ph.D. in the history of
consciousness from the University of Santa Cruz, where her speciality was the
history of art and science from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries.
Burnside has spent twenty years in the museum field, receiving a postdoctoral
fellowship at the Whitney Museum in New York City and an N.E.A fellowship in
creative writing in 1980.
Please
welcome Madeleine Burnside!
M_Burnside:
Thanks
so much for inviting me.
Geder:
At
the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society,
there are displays of artifacts from two famous Spanish galleons, the
Nuestra Senora De Atocha and the Santa Margarita. Later, there was another group of artifacts
that included possible slave trade materials. Tell us what happened when you
saw what appeared to be an extremely
small pair of shackles.
M_Burnside:
When
I went for the job interview, I was given the tour of the permanent collection,
which mostly comprised 17th century Spanish artifacts, but there was one case
that hinted at something else. I saw a
large ship's bell with and inscription in English
Whan
I asked what this case was about, I was told that Mel FIsher had also found a
slave ship but no one knew much about it.
I immediatley thought that this was something very worthwhile and I knew
I wanted the job.
After
I got the job, I went almost immediately to talk to our archaeologist, COrey
Malcom, and to ask him about the ship.
He told me that they had conserved the Spanish materials first
This
was because they had concentrated on what was at the time, Mel's famous find,
the Atocha. He then told me that he was planning to make sure the Society
started on the slave ship objects immediately and he agreed with me that they
were probably very important--little did we know!
It
turned out we had the only excavated slave ship in the Americas and one of the
very few world wide that has any shackles left. As we started to conserve the
almost 100 pairs of shackles on board, it was clear that they were of all
diffeerent sizes, to fit different people's stature
Eventually
Corey came across three pairs that really seemed much too small
When
we first looked at them we went into denial immediately--it didn't make
sense. Everything we had read--even the
most racist stuff--stated that there was no need to shackle women or childre. Basically they were just so unlikely to fight
back
Then
we thought about small men--pigmies might have been a possibility
There
was also a huge trade that specialized in teenaged boys, but even for them, the
shackles were too small
Basically,
these are meant to be leg shackles, locking two people together so that it's
hard to get around This implied six small people or six slight people who had
to have wrist and leg shackles. It took
me years--literally--to get a sense of these people.
Of
course, everyone was much smaller but even so--we had the other shackles for
comparison and they were much bigger. Finally I realised that what the shackles
meant was less that there was someone who was carelessly restrained along with
a bunch of other pople, but that there were some small people--I think of them
as young girls--who just would not give up
They
must have been such a problem that custom small shackles had to be made.
Terrible
as the thought is, it is also testament to the human spirit. These people had no real hope of winning but
they would not give up
It's
a mistake to just look back and feel pity, I think. You have to grasp the enormous inner
fortitude of the survivors. These
shackles did it for me. Even thinking
about them gives me chills
I'm
not saying that pity is not part of it, just that folks like this would spit in
our 21st century eyes if that was all we were able to figure out about them
from artifacts like these. That was kind of a long answer, but I think about
this alot Tough people, brave people.
Great ancestors to have
Geder:
Thë
Spirits of the Passageí is so rich with information, I hardly know what
questions to ask; I'll leave that to our audience. Did it turn out as you
originally planned it or did it change as you proceeded deeper into your
research?
M_Burnside:
Well,
the book was based on our exhibition, which is touring nationally. There was so much research that we did for
that and it just would not all fit in an exhibition, so the book was a must.
There certianly were more facts that came to light in the course of writing
it--we are still gathering information.
I hope it never stops
Geder:
How
did Dr. Cornel West, of Princeton University and Rosemarie Robotham,
editor-at-large of Essence magazine become involved in this project?
M_Burnside:
As
far as Dr. West went, we were looking for an important scholar to contribute in
some way. No one had heard of me or
Rosemary and we thought that the subject was so important, we needed some help
Rosemary
came on originally as an editor but really wound up doing much more. She combed the research materials so extra
facts and really bolstered what I wrote Plus Rosemary did several sections by
herself. A lot of the sidebars are hers,
as is the introduction. I only met Rosemary once before we started working
together and then we began to be on the phone almnost every day. The book would look very different if it were
not for her huge efforts. We became
great friends
Geder:
Everyone
who I show this book to comments on how wonderful it is (and they want buy
it!). I think it should be REQUIRED READING IN AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOLS. Are there
any efforts to get it into the school curriculums?
M_Burnside:
Not
at this time. Feel free to lobby!
Geder:
Careful
what you wish for :)
Because
of our late start, let me get out of the way for a moment, Madeleine, and let
you have the floor to tell us what you will about The Henrietta Marie and the
Transatlantic Slave Trade in the Seventeenth Century.
M_Burnside:
Well,
the interesting thing about the Henrietta Marie is that it sank in 1700, really
before the trade got going on the continental US that there were still choices
at this point--people could have decided not to take part or to set the
Africans free after 7 years, as they did with European indentured
servants. But they didn't.
Some
African countries did try to take a stand and refuse to sell even their enemies
into slavery, but that did not work--the European instigated wars between the
different nations and armed the ones who favored the trade
There
were choices, but the window was closing.
Fifty years later, the trade was an unstoppable machine
Another
interesting thing is that it is clear from the trade goods that are left that
the consortium who owned the HM did not really know what they were doing. It was all very hit or miss. Lots of pewter,
trade beads, and so on were found on the wrecksite, indicating that the slaving
part of the voyage was much less successful than the investors had hoped. But they would still have made considerable
profits/ Later this was all systematized
It's not until the end of the Industrial Revolution, when you get some idea of
worker's rights and also of the real capability of machines that anyone really
dares to say that this could end.
Geder:
Amazing
stuff......
Let's
open it up for questions from the audience.
M_Burnside:
Open
for questions
naima52:
Question,
what ship logs, if any survived?
M_Burnside:
There
are ship's logs--not from the HM of course, those went down with the chip--you
can read them in the Public Records Office in London Much of our information
about the ship came from tax documents, detailing cargoes and the sale of the
Africans. These still exist in London and Jamaica Tue Dec 16 21:58:14
2003:M_Burnside: A couple of other
ships mention seeing the HM, that's how we know where she was and when
ET:
In
the book "History of the First Council Of Nice by Dean Dudley...It explains that early-on
the Catholic Church forbade the enslavement of Christians...so that contributed
to why the Europeans went elsewhere looking for people to enslave rather than
other Europeans, because it was made illegal
M_Burnside:
However,
when the King of the Congo, who had converted to Catholicism asked the Pope to
end the trade early on, he got no answer Plus, when Queen Isabella of Spain
told Columbus not to enslave any of her new subjects (American Indians) he blew
her off--the stakes were too high. There
are a lot of back and forth Spanish documents on this
Plus
the whole thing was pretty subjective.
During the mid-1600s the English sold Scots into slavery--not
indentureship-- because they regarded them as heathens. This is a bit of history usually swept under
the British rug and of course the English and the French Hugenots did not
consider African Catholics as fellow Christians
ET:
Oh,
I certainly agree...I was just mentioning that book because the First Council
was held in 325 A.D.
M_Burnside:
It
just all shows that the trade, transatlantic or not, was an endless subject of
debate. I do not know much about 325 AD
k_wyer_lane:
A
great deal of Spirits of the Passage focus on the English slave trade. Were the
English more culpable and European and African nations less culpable? Of all
nations which shipped the most to the Americas and where?
M_Burnside:
We
really focused on the Brits because the ship came from London. There is so much more of the story to tell,
but we had to stop somewhere
Everyone
is equally culpable on some level. It's
as much about the spirit of the times as anything. The Africans did not know what they were
condemning their people to, the Europeans treated everyone including each other
horribly, The early colonists had the same life expectancy as the Africans, and
they knew it -- 8 years. Everyone seems
pretty desperate Most Africans were sent to Brazil--many more than to here. As
bad as anything is what the trade did to the population of Africa--i think
Europeans are very much culpable in that.
Just about everything right down to AIDS comes out of the decimation of
African nations to my mind
k_wyer_lane:
I
was intrigued by the number of Africans in Bristol. Were they all slave?
M_Burnside:
No
they weren't. Many AFricans in early
days were "left over" from slave ships and got dumped in English
cities. Plus many AFricans came to
ENgland in the 50s and 60s
ET:
Well...man's
inhumanity to man will surely cause much more harm than good. Maybe humans will
get it right before we self-destruct?!
M_Burnside:
I really wonder. Current politics do not seem to suggest that
ET:
Agreed, M_Burnside .
Art:
HM
shipped to the Caribbean & S. America and not the contenetal U,S. ....right?
M_Burnside:
Yes,
Art, to Jamaic and Barbados
Geder:
We
have exceeded the time
M_Burnside:
Thanks
so much for having me in your chat room.
I really enjoyed this.
Art:
Thanks to you !!!!
Geder:
Thank
you very much!
k_wyer_lane:
I
hope that you will come back and share
more with us.
ET:
Thank
you, M_Burnside
:
M_Burnside:
My
pleasure, this was great
VKN:
THANX MUCH TO YOU!!!!!
RonenaS:
Thank
you. It was a very interesting
discussion.
veekayinn:
Hope
you can come again
M_Burnside:
Any
time, I would love to
naima52:
Very
interesting, thank you
M_Burnside:
Thanks
George for a great interview and to Kathleen for setting this up
Geder:
Please
visit Afrigeneas.com soon!
veekayinn:
Thanx
muchly to George and Kathleen for helping us getting to know Dr
Burnside!!!!!
RonenaS:
Yes,
much thanks to George for facilitating this chat discussion.
veekayinn:
Will
try and have transcript by Thursday Noon
M_Burnside:
Goodnight
Geder:
Thank
you and goodnight! :)