In this excerpt from A new account of some parts of Guinea, and the slave-trade, published in London in 1734, the former slave-ship captain William Snelgrave tells of an insurrection by enslaved Africans aboard a slave ship in 1722. Unlike many accounts of the so-called Middle Passage, Snelgrave’s book was not critical of the slave trade, and this account in particular suggests that a captain’s kindness might precipitate rebellion. It also recalls one of the dubious justifications for slavery: that it saved African prisoners from certain death. Some spelling has been modernized.
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