Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora

by Stephanie E. Smallwood

This bold, innovative book promises to radically alter our understanding of the Atlantic slave trade, and the depths of its horrors. Stephanie E. Smallwood offers a penetrating look at the process of enslavement from its African origins through the Middle Passage and into the American slave market. Smallwood's story is animated by deep research and gives us a startlingly graphic experience of the slave trade from the vantage point of the slaves themselves. Ultimately, Saltwater Slavery details how African people were transformed into Atlantic commodities in the process. She begins her narrative on the shores of seventeenth-century Africa, tracing how the trade in human bodies came to define the life of the Gold Coast. Smallwood takes us into the ports and stone fortresses where African captives were held and prepared, and then through the Middle Passage itself. In extraordinary detail, we witness these men and women cramped in the holds of ships, gasping for air, and trying to make sense of an unfamiliar sea and an unimaginable destination. Arriving in America, we see how these new migrants enter the market for laboring bodies, and struggle to reconstruct their social identities in the New World. Throughout, Smallwood examines how the people at the center of her story--merchant capitalists, sailors, and slaves--made sense of the bloody process in which they were joined. The result is both a remarkable transatlantic view of the culture of enslavement, and a painful, intimate vision of the bloody, daily business of the slave trade.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Africa, American History, Grad School, Race, College

288 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2007

Reviews

[JRT · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Saltwater slavery brings the people aboard slave ships to life as subjects in American social history.” It discusses the process of turning African captives into slave commodities, detailing the battle between the physical and ontological violence of colonial dehumanization, and radical humanization via resistance.

Smallwood spends a significant amount of time depicting the “social death” of Africans who went from captive to commodified. It was in this process of commodification where the Africans were cut-off from their kinship ties and alienated from their cultures. While Smallwood stresses the permanence of social death, arguing that there is no real rebirth, she acknowledges diasporic attempts to refashion kinship ties to fit the “New World” context. Nevertheless, she concludes that what was lost can never truly be regained.

Smallwood does a phenomenal job depicting the physical and metaphysical terror of the slave ship. The destruction of African personhood via the severing of kinship ties, along with the “incomplete death” African captives were subjected to when they died at sea, combined to deny Africans humanity in the African sense of the term. This is separate and apart from the sheer physical destruction of African social orders and people. Obviously, this book can be extremely depressing to read, especially for Afro-descended people. There is an unmistakable scent of Afro-pessimism, which is both a positive and negative depending on one’s perspective of this meta-theory. However, this book is valuable for the information it provides on the pre-colonial societies in the “Gold Coast,” and how they were transformed by the Atlantic slave trade.

[Nick Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

Utterly failing to fulfill its promise of humanizing African slaves in their travel across the Atlantic, Saltwater Slavery vacillates between banal recitations of slavers' logbooks to ridiculous attempts at melodramatic prose meant to show off the author's newfound discovery of thesaurus dot com. A great number of broad generalizations cast African captives as a monolithic group with the same psychological and spiritual base, despite their coming from a large swath of disparate African locales. Often, the information given is so dry and technically specific that the humanity of the people involved is lost, and far too much time is spent on details that are totally irrelevant to the overall points allegedly being made.

Also, Smallwood needs to lose the irritating habit of dropping ", however," into the middle of a sentence when reading flow would be vastly improved by its omission and other terrible style bugaboos that make plodding through this book a chore despite its short length.

[Ai Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I will say that I think I didn't like this more because of the time pressures under which I had to read it, but I often found it hard to follow and in some ways it must have really been fundamental to the field because I wasn't entirely sure what about it was new? There were definitely parts that were important, and I think Smallwood's framework of tracing this shift from person to commodity to slave is important but to me it just sort of jumbled together a lot and I wasn't sure exactly what she was getting at at different points. Again, I think more of that has to do with the way that I experienced this book than the book itself, but that's where it left me at the end. I would like to go back some day and reread it with a bit more care, it just wasn't a possibility at this time.

[Letitia · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Saltwater" explores in more detail facts and figures and history that is more or less common knowledge among the educated. It also attempts to delve into the minds of Africans who were victims of the transatlantic slave trade, but, in my opinion, with too much familiarity. The author assumes knowledge and makes assumptions for which there is little or no evidence. Surely we can suppose a certain trauma occurred, and most certainly the societal structure of displaced Africans had to change. Without question. But Smallwood attempts to extrapolate psychological explanations that simply cannot be verified. I imagine the experience differed greatly by individual and their respective culture.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saltwater Slavery offers an important contribution to studies of African American slavery. Smallwood’s attention to the Atlantic slave trade disrupts many popular assumptions about how the trans-Atlantic slave trade functioned as well as pushes back against the emphasis on the quantification of the trade. Likely most useful to readers will be the discussion of creolization. Where many have argued and assumed that a distinct, African American culture that melds various African cultures emerged in the new world, Smallwood highlights the cultural mixing that took place prior to arrival in the Americas. Different ethnic groups were held in coffles and factories on the cost for anywhere from weeks to months. Smallwood also points out that the trip from the African west coast was not linear. Slavers moved along the coast as they sought out additional slaves to maximize profits. This process further contributed to the cultural diffusion.

[Madeleine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book, you have to appreciate the effort of Smallwood to bring the human aspect of the Transatlantic Slave Trade back into the narrative. With her knowledge she pushes for the need to remember that people made up the Middle Passage; and more than simply a transport of enslaved Africans to the Americas. A job that is very difficult to accomplish, and she succeeds in doing so. It needs to be written this way That message of needing to have history of slavery look at the people is important. She repeats multiple times over the course of the book. That may be so the reader does not lose it in her analysis of the sources she uses. The book is very graphic in terms of topics such as suicide. That graphic nature is needed as it appears that we have sugar coated it in teaching it. Slavery is something that very much bleeds and is a wound you cannot turn away from.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very strong book, and does a wonderful job of discussing an American diaspora that is born of an experience crafted by white Europeans - it humanizes the process of how people become a commodity and does a great job of exploring and pushing back against narratives of community building in the aftermath of trauma. I highly recommend this book for anyone looking to learn more about the trans Atlantic slave trade. The use of sources is particularly impressive to me in particular.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

I appreciated how Smallwood integrates theorizing enslavement as commodification with narrative that humanizes her subjects.

[Alexander Skezas · Rating 4 out of 5]

For Saltwater Slavery, Smallwood provides an insight on the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade ranging from several topics throughout the book. These topics include economics of slavery, commodification, trauma and a lot more that occurred for Africans in the Middle Passage. Although Smallwood is trained as a scholar, she promised throughout the book to humanize the victims that suffered in the Trans-Atlantic Slave and struggled a little bit. The only slave narratives she analyzes are of individuals of Olaudah Equiano and Sibell, which is not enough to humanize them overall. Mainly she focuses on the perspectives of Europeans that traveled the Middle Passage and what they encountered rather than the slaves that much. Despite this complaint of mine, one thing I will give credit to is her ability to explain the idea of trauma Africans encountered during the Middle Passage along with what occurred on slave ships. Overall, I recommend this book for those who wish to dive into the history of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, considering that this book is a bit more accessible.

[NicoleKat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I do admit to preferring some other Atlantic slavery books over this one, you cannot deny the essential foundation that this book lays down for other historians. The seemingly simple concept of slavery beginning at sea and not on the coast changes the whole dynamic that we were once taught in our high school classrooms; I would say it is a book for someone who wants to dip their toes in history before jumping into the pool. The part of the book that I appreciated the most was her seamless incorporation of primary sources throughout, especially the ship logbooks. The writing keeps you on a clear path across the Atlantic, exposing not only the tragedy but also the new "saltwater" culture born of shared adversity.

[David York · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have now read Saltwater Slavery from Stephanie Smallwood twice, for two separate college courses. And both times, I have walked away enjoying the reading that Smallwood offers, but at the same, not finding a feature that truly pushes this book into the upper echelon of academic literature in the field. In my opinion, the book is well written and sound, and gives a great narrative and overview of the Middle Passage and the horror's that were underwent aboard those ships. However, where other books can go in a more radical direction and look at areas more specifically, I feel like Saltwater Slavery did not take me to that next level reading that one comes to expect in these college level courses.

[Kereesa · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting, if somewhat convoluted, look at the transatlantic slavery root that combines anthropological aspects of both slavers and slaves along with a nice bout of historical context and wayyy too many examples, and some theoretically, metaphorical weirdness. Seriously, I get it, it was nice, but it was kind of weird.

It put me to sleep (once-literally) more times than I could count, and I definitely had to re-read several passages because my attention definitely drifted.

So...I don't think I'd recommend this.

Unless you have to read it for class. Which I do.

Damn. 2.5/5

[Haley Whitehall · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hoping for more personal narratives. The few narratives that were included were not dated. This did not help my research. I was also expecting the book to go through the end of the Atlantic slave trade into the 1800s. Most of the data was from the 1600s and early 1700s. It was a limited and impersonal view. I wanted something more than facts and figures.

[Cheyenne Turner · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first deep book this year was Saltwater Slavery by Stephanie E. Smallwood. This book was published in 2007 and the 2008 winner of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize. This book follows the violence inflicted on enslaved Africans, and it takes a look at the trading of enslaved people and what life was like from capture, to on the ship, to arriving in the Americas. This book tries to tell the story of enslaved Africans through the accounts of the Royal Africa Company from 1675 to 1725. It describes the process of turning African captives into slave commodities and the conflict between colonial dehumanization and existential and physical violence and radical humanization by rebellion.
Smallwood sheds light on the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Saltwater Slavery by covering a variety of issues. The economics of slavery, commodification, trauma, and many other issues that affected Africans throughout the Middle Passage are included in this book. Although Smallwood has academic training, she struggled to fulfill her promise to her readers that she would give the victims of the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade some humanity throughout the novel. She solely examines the individual slave tales of Olaudah Equiano and Sibell, which is insufficient to humanize the victims as a group adequately. Smallwood relies on expertise and makes claims for which there is minimal or no supporting data. The societal structure of the displaced Africans had to shift, thus we can assume that some trauma happened. Without a doubt. However, Smallwood makes efforts to deduce psychological theories that are indisputable. According to the individual and their culture, I imagine the experience varied greatly. She focuses less on the slaves and more on the journey of Europeans who traveled the Middle Passage and what they experienced. Despite my criticism, she did a good job explaining the agony Africans experienced during the Middle Passage and what happened aboard slave ships.
The introduction, where she creates a path the reader should anticipate following, is where the book has the most flaws. She gives the impression that the book will be jam-packed with eyewitness accounts and concentrate more on real slaves who were repeatedly subjected to exploitation throughout their journey, when in fact she tends to favor the English side of transactions and problems that arise along the way. Although not to the extent that the introduction would have the reader believe, the novel does depict the emotions of slaves and their passing. On the other hand, Smallwood's arguments are well supported by evidence. She explores the numerous invoices, diaries, ledgers, and records of slaves, European purchasers, sellers, and occasionally travelers like John Ford. Smallwood examines the works of other historians who have studied the Atlantic region and slavery, such as Orlando Patterson's The Sociology of Slavery and David Eltis' The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas. She backs up her claims by pointing out details and statistics, and she works to shed light on the pain, destruction, alienation, and displacement that slaves experienced during their voyage, and she is successful in doing so, not just via the cold, hard facts of papers but also through first-person experiences like 'Sibell's.
Smallwood spends a lot of time illustrating the "social death" of Africans who were transformed from enslaved people to commodities. The Africans were cut off from their cultural links and estranged from them during this process of commodification. Smallwood accepts diasporic attempts to reshape kinship relationships to match the "New World" environment, but she emphasizes the permanence of social death, contending that there is no true rebirth of the original culture of the Africans, and she comes to the realization that the culture that was lost can never really be truly recovered. Smallwood does a good job of capturing the physical and metaphysical terror of the slave ship. Africans were denied their humanity and culture due to the severing of kinship links that destroyed African personhood and the "incomplete death" that African prisoners experienced when they died at sea. This is distinct from the blatant physical destruction of African social structures and populations.
Although I do admit to preferring some other Atlantic slavery books over this one, you cannot deny the essential foundation that this book lays down for other historians. The seemingly simple concept of slavery beginning at sea and not on the coast changes the whole dynamic that we were once taught in our high school classrooms. This book is written for both regular people and academics who study the Atlantic world and slavery. This book would be a good choice for anyone attempting to understand the foundation of slavery in America as well as students looking for a fresh perspective on the history of slavery from Africa to America. Overall, this was a very informative and insightful read. This book didn’t provide as much empathy for the enslaved Africans, but the information was well put together.

[Liam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora, is a book that sought to explore and give new insight into the horrors of slavery. Smallwood sought to give a new history of American Slavery starting in Africa, and detailing how the horrors of crossing the Atlantic, the “commodification” of slaves, and the captivity led to the creation of a diaspora. She does this not through numbers and statistics, but through documents such as ledgers, diaries, and narratives to give a personal, social view of the Middle Passage.
Her book flows nicely, starting with the Gold Coast, so named at first due to the gold ore that was salvaged. However, Smallwood notes that, due to the sudden demand for slaves coming from the American Colonies, the gold coast slowly transformed from a commercial hub to a slave-trading region. In subsequent chapters, Smallwood shows how, in the process of transforming slaves into a commodity (and the loss of personhood), the need for profit outweighed all else. This resulted in ships that were crowded with upwards of 450 slaves for transport across the Atlantic. Smallwood uses these numbers to show the concept of “social death”, which resulted in being removed from a culture to which one could never return, that she put forward. This particular point reminded me of simple remembrances in Mexican culture. If no one remembered you, you simply didn’t exist. In doing so, she gives us a parallel history to the Colonies by showing us where the journey of slaves began in Africa; particularly along the Gold Coast, which consists of present day Ghana, Benin, and Sierra Leone. Her final two chapters finally begin to explore the overseas journey. Here, she draws on Oladuah Equiano’s narrative to illustrate the harsh conditions under which slaves, here simply commodities, traveled. It was poignant to see slavery in a new light. To the traders, the slaves were not people, but commodities. They only became chattel once they reached America, and were sold.
Smallwood’s last chapter shows how slavery led not only to the creation of a diaspora, but also, in a small sense, community. Though the slaves came from many different regions, in this new role, social death wasn’t an end. They were able to create a new Africa in their diaspora, one where individual tribal traditions coalesced into one melting pot of African Cultures. To many, the term middle passage was no such thing. This implied that there was something more beyond their eventual confinement and slave status in the Americas. To many Africans, then, the Middle Passage, as Smallwood states, “was an antithesis.” This was the final leg in a journey that severed ties between them, the slave, and everything they had known. It is in this way that Smallwood accomplishes her goal. She doesn’t talk about what we should know. She makes the connection, through narratives and diaries, through accounts and ledgers, that the middle passage was nothing more than an exchange for commodities on the three legged Columbian Exchange for Slavers. For Slaves, however, the Middle Passage, inevitably, was the end.

In the end, it seems that Smallwood's writing, while it does serve its purpose, also seems jumbled and off at times. Still, a recommended read.

[Taylor Fritz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Smallwood's book, Saltwater Slavery is one for those who tend to get emotional easily, is not an easy read to get through. It is so important to note just how detailed the events written about are. It's certainly enough to make anyone cry, especially those who tend to be overly empathetic such as myself. This is certainly a compliment to Smallwood's detail in her writing. Through reading this book I learned so much more of the atrocities that actually happened on the cargo ships. In high school all I learned about the ships was that people were packed in with no moving room, and that it smelled horrible, and smelled like death. What I didn't learn in high school that I did learn from Smallwood's book, was details such as people getting thrown overboard and left to drown in the ocean for any reason, and that there were actually uprisings on the ships, and that these people were not necessarily passive victims, but fought against their aggressors. Smallwood explains this depressing and beyond ugly part of the history enslavement in a way that is still respectful of the victims of these atrocities. Overall, if you are looking for a solid book that will explain what happened on cargo ships in the triangular trade, and make up for what your teachers missed in high school this is it — I highly recommend this book. If you are a professor or teacher deciding on what books to use for your class 100% check this one out!

[Tara Wilson]

Saltwater Slavery helps reveal how the African people were commofided and forced to migrate to the New World. Personally, I feel that within the K-12 education system that I experience failed to uncover in depth the “Transatlantic slave trade” or “Middle Passage” besides breifly examining the horror outlines of slave ships and some descriptions of the brutality these men and women faced. Smallwood helps develop a narrative of how Africans were captured and began their dehumanized enslaved status in Africa and on these ships. I agree that there was a lack of personal narratives that I felt was promised in the introduction. However, Smallwood’s call for changing the way we talk about the “Transatlantic slave trade” or “Middle Passage” to be known as “Saltwater slavery” is an important contribution to learn and to stop the continuing oppression of the stories of enslaved people. “Trade” contributes to the commodification of these people as well as provide a positive economic connotation, and the “Middle Passage” fails to address the truth of the forced migration and dehumanization that takes place. As I study to become a history teacher, I believe that it is important to critically think about the language we use to discuss the history of the past and how language is purposefully used; ultimately I think that it is a major contribution that Saltwater Slavery makes.

[Chelsea · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The "saltwater" defined the relentless rhythm of the slave ships. But its pejorative connotation also hinted at what was problematic about the perennial appearance of newcomers in immigrant communities seeking stability and coherence. One could never completely escape the saltwater, for even once an African captive's own middle passage had ended, the communities where that slave's life played out in the colonial Americas continued to be molded by the rhythm of ships returning to deposit still more bodies.” (7)

“Traders reduced people to the sum of their biological parts, thereby scaling life down to an arithmetical equation and finding the lowest common denominator. This was especially, painfully, evident with regard to captives’ need for food. European accounts describe a wide variety of plant and animal foods supported by the landscape of the Gold Coast littoral, including maize, millet, yams, bananas, pineapples, peas and legumes, goat, fowls, chickens, oxen, buffalo, pork, fish, and shellfish. Commodification removed captives from that landscape of abundance and put them into a situation of unmitigated poverty.” (48)

[Tammy · Rating 2 out of 5]

While it contained some thought provoking details and ideas, Smallwood's book was largely a chore that missed the mark. She repeats that her mission is to give a voice to people who crossed the Atlantic as slaves, but failed. She did not give any of these people voices until the very end, and it was just one person. If anything, she just further commodified these people. I could write for pages, but there is really nothing more to say than that. Smallwood uses charged vocabulary and phrasing in a surprisingly amateur way to express her points. 'Terror' and 'horror' and repeated endlessly throughout. To my way of thinking, if you have to tell your reader that a ship passage across the Atlantic in which one is packed like a sardine with no access to a toilet is full of 'terror', 'horror' and is generally an unpleasant experience, you're either really not doing your job as a writer, or are insulting your reader's intelligence. I would take her bibliography as a starting point, and just give this one a pass. Unfortunately, I had to read it, otherwise I would have given up on this one.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smallwood's work centers on the commodification of enslaved Africans during their capture, imprisonment, aboard the slave ships, and during the auctions in the Americas. She offers a fascinating take on the Atlantic slave trade as she analyzed the economic perspective of the European merchant companies and ship captains. While some readers may complain about her lessened focus on the slaves experience I believe that her focus on the way in which the slave traders prepared the ships for the journey across the Atlantic, and the way in which they viewed slaves who had died during the journey truly showed the way in which Europeans viewed these enslaved people. Overall, this book read well and was very interesting.

[RLC]

If you are looking for a new way to think about the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade this is a good place to start. Though I do not necessarily agree with the way in which the author employs some of her sources, I believe that this book serves a great purpose in the revision of the history of slavery that is being done by contemporary historians.  Historians today are moving away from statistical evidence in order to provide us with a more personal narrative of what the experiences of the enslaved actually was. Interestingly, Smallwood is able to use the statistics to aide her in this process. Smallwood is one of the pioneers of this sub-field of history and therefore should be read in order to understand the subject and the way in which the writing of history is changing.

[Eliya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smallwood aims to provide a broad analysis of the process by which enslaved Africans were commodified throughout each part of the transatlantic slave trade in this book. Smallwood tends to focus on the economic aspects of the slave trade but does include some narrative perspectives. Ultimately, Smallwood’s argument delineates two perspectives on what defined the experience of the Middle Passage: one in which the Atlantic was a familiar space defined as a commercial opportunity for Europeans, and one in which Africans were set on an indiscernible course where they would undergo a process of commodification that would make them vulnerable to all manners of exploitation. Overall, the book was interesting and easy to read.

[Mariel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Smallwood argues that the experience of the Middle Passage has a profound and lasting impact on survivors and influenced the subsequent development of African-American culture. She uses the records and diaries of trading companies to account for what happened on voyages, then rereads those events from the perspective of captives. Smallwood makes a compelling argument that is closely tied to Patterson’s slavery and social death- that agents of the Middle Passage dehumanized and commodified Africans, and then continued the process through enslavement. There’s probably more psychology in the argument than would have passed muster with some of my grad school profs and classmates, but I think it’s worth exploring and will definitely engage my high school students.

[John McElligott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stephanie Smallwood provides an excellent narrative into slave ships in the text. I especially enjoyed her idea of calling slaves aboard these ships, “the living dead.” Smallwood describes them as such essentially because once slaves were on board, in some capacity they were dead. This is due to the slaves being stripped of their livelihoods and being forced onto a ship with dreadful conditions to be sold to a complete stranger in a new country without any hope of returning home. While this is well written, it is nothing groundbreaking or extraordinary. It is a good read but not something that was necessary.

[Megan Goff · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was like...very difficult to read. And I don't mean it was jarring and disturbing. I mean I read whole paragraphs at times and had absolutely no concept what I had read. The author constantly states themes or ideas, then 3 pages later finally begins talking about them. The writing is extremely wordy and at times just doesn't make sense. A 5 word idea often blooms into a dozen or more words. Could use some editing in a big way. The last chapter is the first time an actual account of an enslaved person is really discussed in depth.

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Smallwood is adding to the conversation only as much as you haven't been paying attention. For a college student like myself that will still a lot but what I got out of this book was simply less than other things I have been reading on the same subject. It occupies no definitive niche and while some portions (particularly those relating to the mental experiences of captives) caught my attention by and large the book did not leave a lasting impact on how I would approach or teach the subject.

[Jenna Geraghty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Smallwood’s goal in writing this book is to incorporate multiple perspectives regarding the slave trade. Smallwood offers the perspectives of both the “traders and the traded” and the sharp contrasts between them as it examines sources that will bring these stories to life amidst many sources that offer primarily numerical data. However, I wish Smallwood incorporated more personal accounts and narratives in order to truly achieve this goal.

[Elisabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book displayed the authors thorough research into the area, but the reading remains aloof. It is not as personal as the author makes it sounds. It takes a very traditional course when describing slavery, pulling from slaver sources and framing slavery from the point of view of Europeans. While it does utilize some personal stories from those enslaved, it falls short of creating a story that focuses on the personal aspects of slavery.

[Victoria McGuigan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A rather late review of Stephanie Smallwood's research into the accounts of the Royal Africa Company from 1675 to 1725. Smallwood draws on a collection of West African belief systems to show how enslaved persons may have conceptualized their enslavement and forced migration across the Atlantic Ocean.

Smallwood continuously draws on the narratives of the trans-Atlantic slave trade's captives and places them in conversation with the quantitative data, stored in the Royal Africa Company archives. A true emulation of Saidiya Hartman, Smallwood is proof that the strategies named in "Venus in Two Acts" are able to produce a cohesive and inclusive body of work that adds dimension to a previously dimension-less historical narrative.

Solid 10/10. Highly recommend for folks, who may not have received a comprehensive education on the history of chattel slavery.

[Cabot · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to read a chapter for class, and ended up reading the rest of the book as well. I didn’t love this work, perhaps just because I wasn’t in the right state of mind. The chapter on commodification is really valuable to read, although Smallwood leans perhaps too far into the social death theory (when slavery as perpetual war is, in my eyes, more accurate). Otherwise, the book makes a number of good points that are dragged down somewhat by the writing.