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In order to analyze the way that slaves were transported across the Atlantic and how they dealt with the situations they were placed in, we need to look at the relationships they had with each other and the English sailors who captured and took them across. Smallwood dives into the different ways that slaves were treated during the long voyage across the Atlantic, suggesting that some slaves were chosen to be “guardians.(Smallwood, 683).” This sheds some light on the types of relationships that these English sailors had to develop in order to maintain control.
Matthew talks about this in his response of the reading where he states: “the camaraderie between guardians and slaves can be the must powerful weapon because it brings people together and forms bonds.” One would think that with the trust that is placed in these slave guardians that there was often struggles on the voyages, but according to Smallwood there is not much evidence to suggest that. Smallwood suggests that these guardians worked to help their captors rather than those they were enslaved with(Smallwood, 685). This sort of social control seems opposite to the type of “naked physical force” that Smallwood talks about in the early parts of the article.
This opens up different ways of looking at how slaves interacted with their captors and how they handled being given power themselves in new situations. It reinforces the idea that human relationships are complex and more complicated than the binaries we tend to confine them to be when thinking historically.