Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of Slavery

by Ana Lucia Araujo

A sweeping narrative history of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the Americas.

During the era of the Atlantic slave trade, more than twelve million enslaved Africans were forcibly transported to the Americas in cramped, inhuman conditions. Many of them died on the way, and those who survived had to endure further suffering in the violent conditions that met them on shore. Covering more than three hundred years, Humans in Shackles grapples with this history by emphasizing the lived experience of enslaved people in tracing the long, complex history of slavery in the Americas.

Based on twenty years of research, this book not only serves as a comprehensive history; it also expands that history by providing a truly transnational account that emphasizes the central role of Brazil in the Atlantic slave trade. It is also deeply informed by African history, and it shows how African practices and traditions survived and persisted in the Americas among communities of enslaved people. Drawing on primary sources including travel accounts, pamphlets, newspaper articles, slave narratives, and visual sources including both artworks and artefacts, Araujo illuminates the social, cultural, and religious lives of enslaved people working in plantations and urban areas; building families and cultivating affective ties; congregating and recreating their cultures; and organizing rebellions.

Humans in Shackles puts the lived experiences of enslaved peoples at the center of the story and investigates the heavy impact these atrocities had on the current wealth disparity of the Americas and rampant anti-Black racism.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Africa

690 pages, Hardcover

First published October 19, 2024

About the author

Ana Lucia Araujo (PhD in History, Université Laval, Canada) is a social and cultural historian writing transnational and comparative history and serves as Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of History at Howard University.

Her work explores the history of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade and their present-day legacies, including the long history of demands of reparations for slavery and colonialism. She has a particular interest in memory, heritage, and visual culture of slavery.

Reviews

[Cherise · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew there was a lot I didn’t know much about when it came to transatlantic slavery outside of the United States, but I could never have guessed just how much. I found this to be incredibly eye opening and well researched, and appreciated the author’s commitment to exploring the multidimensional lives led by the people who were captured and enslaved. It’s definitely a dense book and oriented towards an arcade mic audience, but I think virtually everyone would find value in reading it.

[Humaira Fathiyannisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

i read this for work purposes... and it is gut-wrenching. the scale, the devastation, the unimaginable pain. and knowing that this is not even a fraction of all the suffering the enslaved people went through... i can't wrap my head around how evil people can be...

[Logan Kedzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Humans in Shackles is a linear history of the Atlantic slave trade. It starts with Portuguese raids along the West African coast and the situation of slavery in African nations at the time that became embroiled with European adventurers. It walks through the process of people becoming property: the trade ports on the African coast where enslaved people were collated and traded, the middle passage, and the marketplace (physical and metaphorical) in the Americas where the enslaved were sold.

The book then broadens to discuss the conditions of slavery. Some of these, like the family lives of the enslaved are more conceptual. Others, like the look at the enslaved in urban settings, are more comparative between different material or cultural contexts. Discussing the the fits and starts of the abolition of slavery in the Americas and elsewhere, it concludes on different efforts to deal with formerly enslaved people, usually in the form of their moving, or being moved, back to nations or colonial interests in Africa. Notably, this last bit allows for a much more expansive view on the legacy of the Atlantic system slavery and the many cultural effects that took place outside of the Americas.

A particular highlight of the text is in its focus on Brazil in specific and slavery in South America in general. For many reasons, starting with oceanography and including civil vs. common law, there is much that is noteworthy about how slavery was practiced and ended in Brazil. I was wary about the author including this, in how the introduction suggests that it lacks a lot of the type of first-hand accounts that we have for slavery and the slave trade for for North America and the West Indies. Yet by the end of the book I wanted more. It is difficult to talk about comparable with slavery, a long standing human institution that has had many different variations, but being able to compare the different European implementations within the Americas is fruitful to understanding the nuance of the history in general.

Overall it is an excellent read. My primary complaint is that occasionally would lose the thread. The material was good, and I particularly liked the section on religion, but sometimes the author's desire to be comprehensive overrules the otherwise superior structure of the writing. It may be that it is a better textbook than a book, but give me that problem any day. Other than that, there was a stylistic tic in the way that the author discussed references that persistently distracted me, but minor, and more to do with being a person particularly sensitive to how authors talk about their sources.

Something that I particularly liked is what the book considered impossible to represent. The trend is to allow a greater fluidity in composition of narratives about enslaved people's lives in order to make up for the absence of reliable or comprehensive primary material. I usually defend this practice - I mean, Thucydides, right? - but I feel nervous about it in a Red Team sense of seeing how it could be abused.

This book gets in front of that by asserting the inscrutability of the middle passage in specific and of the Atlantic system of slavery in general. We can make artistic representations, learn all there is to know, and bring full bore all the empathy and imagination that we can muster, but the thing itself remains fundamentally unknowable with meager analogy at best. We advance our knowing best by accepting that. That is a striking claim, and one that makes the book stronger for it.

Overall, a great read, and already something that I think about as what as I would suggest as a general reference to the curious.

My thanks to the author, Ana Lucia Araujo, for writing the book, and to the publisher, University of Chicago Press, for making the ARC available to me.

[Janalyn, the blind reviewer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Humans In Shackles by Anna Lucia Araujo, I really was excited to read this book about a subject I wasn’t well-versed in, unfortunately soon after I started reading I started picking up vibes from the book such as when she referred to Abraham Lincoln in the British lord who abolished slavery there a’s great white hopes and set it in a way that leads the reader to believe she is over such things. She also referred to Quakers as slaveowners which made me wonder if she was even familiar with Quakers but then again it could’ve just been an oversight. I did enjoy the chapter on all the rebellions, i’ve heard of a few of these rebellions but some I had not known, for example I didn’t know they publicly punished Nat turners wife for his uprising she also mentioned in the book that she believes African-Americans and Africans from other enslaved nations should get reparations but in my opinion that is a little like taking a murderer‘s ancestor to court and making them serve the time their ancestor could not I mean America and Europe owned slaves that is a fact and a horrible ugly time in our history but in the words of Maya Angelou when you know better you do better I think the majority of Americans or of the live and let live variety but there are some white and black that want to hold on to someone else’s trauma or their own notion of superiority in either one is outdated and only brings out negative feelings.
I thought this book was well researched but could’ve definitely lived without her opinions but having said that I did find this book had fascinating and interesting stories I didn’t know and would definitely recommend it.

[Morgan Shae]

Received via Netgalley.

This isn't a book for me. I loved the content, but it was so dense that I really struggled to continue. I stopped about a third of the way through.

It is a history of the Gold Coast slave trade as it pertains to the U.S., Portugal, Brazil, etc. I definitely learned a lot and will be trying this again once it comes out in hard copy. I realize I struggle with dense nonfiction in ebook form because then I can't tab and note things.

[Linsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book opened my eyes to the realities of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. I thought I knew about the history of enslaved peoples from Africa, but what I knew before reading this book was primarily focused on enslaved peoples in the United States. The biggest takeaway I got from this book is that nearly half (4.8 million of the total 10.7 million) of the enslaved Africans who survived the journey to the Americas became the property of slaveowners in Brazil. Further, even today more than half of the current Brazilian population is of African descent, and Brazil is the country with the largest Black population outside of Africa. I simply didn’t know that the history of this horrific forced migration and human enslavement was so heavily concentrated in Brazil.

In addition, this book covers several topics in depth regarding this atrocity. From the kidnapping of African peoples, to the Middle Passage, discarding of deceased bodies, slave markets, plantation life, urban life, sexual violence, women and motherhood, families created and destroyed, resistance to bondage, congregating, rebellions, freedom at last, the return of some previously enslaved peoples (forced and voluntary) to Africa, and the after effects of slavery, this book covers it all in great detail. The book is very throughly researched, as proven by the nearly 100 pages of citations, which is amazing. Though difficult to take in, the illustrations and photographs were a nice touch to bring the book to life and remind readers that the stories being told (even about specific enslaved peoples in their own words) were very true realities not that far from the present.

I applaud Ana Lucia Araujo for writing such an in-depth history of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, and I encourage taking the chance the read this incredible work.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This text by Ana Lucia Araujo describes the Atlantic history of slavery from start to end, following the slave trade from West Africa to the Americas and Europe. As you move through the book, the lens is focused on emphasising the importance of Brazil, West Africa and West Central Africa, and the stories of enslaved women across centuries. It details the memories and lived experiences of the men, women and children who were victims of these atrocities.

[Alexander B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably the best English-language general history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade with a focus on Brazil. Very accessible, supported by lots of data and personal accounts, and doesn’t have any unnecessary philosophizing that often happens in fields of history that have to work with extremely limited historical records.

[Jbondandrews · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an important book as it is mostly about slavery in Brazil as well as other Latin American countries. It also focuses on the Portuguese as slave owners and the affect they had on West and West Central Africa.

[Sequella Coleman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very detailed history of the Atlantic slave trade. Annotated, pictures and subtitled to assist the researcher.

Hard topic!