Seasoning, or the Seasoning, was the
period of adjustment that slave traders and slaveholders subjected
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...
n
slave
Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...
s to following their arrival in the
Americas
The Americas, sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North America and South America.''Webster's New World College Dictionary'', 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio. When viewed as a sing ...
. While modern scholarship has occasionally applied this term to the brief period of acclimatization undergone by European immigrants to the Americas,
[ it most frequently and formally referred to the process undergone by enslaved people. Slave traders used the term "seasoning" to refer to the process of adjusting the enslaved Africans to the new climate, diet, geography, and ecology of the Americas. The term applied to both the physical acclimatization of the enslaved person to the environment, as well as that person's adjustment to a new ]social environment
The social environment, social context, sociocultural context or milieu refers to the immediate physical and social setting in which people live or in which something happens or develops. It includes the culture that the individual was educated ...
, labor regimen, and language. Slave traders and owners believed that if slaves survived this critical period of environmental seasoning, they were less likely to die and the psychological element would make them more easily controlled. This process took place immediately after the arrival of enslaved people during which their mortality rates were particularly high. These "new" or "saltwater" slaves were described as "outlandish" on arrival. Those who survived this process became "seasoned", and typically commanded a higher price in the market. For example, in eighteenth century Brazil, the price differential between "new" and "seasoned" slaves was about fifteen percent.
Regional variance
Atlantic Creoles made up the first generations of enslaved people. Atlantic creoles were often mixed-race, integrated into and familiar with European society and gained freedom at higher rates prior to the eighteenth century. The first half of the 18th century saw a shift in Atlantic slavery. While tobacco, sugar, and rice took root in the Caribbean and North American colonies, the enslaved population of the New World shifted from a "society with slaves" to a "slave society" with the predominance of "saltwater slavery" -- enslavement through the Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of Slavery in Africa, enslaved African people to the Americas. European slave ships regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Pass ...
. With the expansion of the slave trade in the mid-eighteenth century, the nature of slavery changed. Operating on a larger scale, slave traders transported enslaved Africans to various European colonies throughout the Americas (both before and after the decolonization of the Americas
The decolonization of the Americas occurred over several centuries as most of the countries in the Americas gained their independence from European rule. The American Revolution was the first in the Americas, and the British defeat in the Amer ...
), systematizing both the voyage and the process of seasoning, though it varied locationally and temporally. While slave traders and owners practiced seasoning in both North and South America, it was not practiced consistently in the Southern Colonies
The Southern Colonies within British America consisted of the Province of Maryland, the Colony of Virginia, the Province of Carolina (in 1712 split into North and South Carolina), and the Province of Georgia. In 1763, the newly created colonies ...
where planters often forced "new" slaves to work immediately upon their arrival to the colonies.
Slave traders and slaveowners adopted the term "seasoning" during the transatlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of Slavery in Africa, enslaved African people to the Americas. European slave ships regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Pass ...
when newly arrived slaves died at high rates in the years following disembarkation. Death rates differed among regions in the Americas, though both the Middle Passage
The Middle Passage was the stage of the Atlantic slave trade in which millions of Africans sold for enslavement were forcibly transported to the Americas as part of the triangular slave trade. Ships departed Europe for African markets with manu ...
and the seasoning period were exceptionally deadly across the Americas. A "Dr. Collins" writing in 1803 attributed the high mortality rates to disease, change in climate, diet, labor, "severity", and suicide. In the Thirteen Colonies
The Thirteen Colonies were the British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America which broke away from the British Crown in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), and joined to form the United States of America.
The Thirteen C ...
, death rates during seasoning were at an estimated 25 to 50 percent. In Cuba
Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...
, deaths in a single year were between 7 and 12 percent while the mortality rate reached as high as 33 percent in Jamaica
Jamaica is an island country in the Caribbean Sea and the West Indies. At , it is the third-largest island—after Cuba and Hispaniola—of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean. Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, west of Hispaniola (the is ...
. In Brazil, an estimated 25 percent of enslaved people died during the seasoning process, where the law also required that slaves be baptized during their first year in the country.
Diet
A contemporary observer noted that seasoning was a "training not only to hard work, but to scanty diet." Slaveowners drastically limited the slaves' diets, both in breadth and depth, to the diet of the plantations, which was chiefly composed of maize, rice, or flour. Battered by this inadequate diet, enslaved people often suffered "dropsies" (edema
Edema (American English), also spelled oedema (British English), and also known as fluid retention, swelling, dropsy and hydropsy, is the build-up of fluid in the body's tissue (biology), tissue. Most commonly, the legs or arms are affected. S ...
) and "fluxes" (diarrhea
Diarrhea (American English), also spelled diarrhoea or diarrhœa (British English), is the condition of having at least three loose, liquid, or watery bowel movements in a day. It often lasts for a few days and can result in dehydration d ...
), compounding their severe and widespread malnutrition
Malnutrition occurs when an organism gets too few or too many nutrients, resulting in health problems. Specifically, it is a deficiency, excess, or imbalance of energy, protein and other nutrients which adversely affects the body's tissues a ...
.
Disease
Newly arrived slaves experienced high rates of disease and death during the seasoning process. During the Middle Passage
The Middle Passage was the stage of the Atlantic slave trade in which millions of Africans sold for enslavement were forcibly transported to the Americas as part of the triangular slave trade. Ships departed Europe for African markets with manu ...
, slave traders forced enslaved Africans to live in tight quarters without ventilation, sufficient food, or water, and with no opportunity for hygiene. In such conditions, enslaved people often contracted scurvy
Scurvy is a deficiency disease (state of malnutrition) resulting from a lack of vitamin C (ascorbic acid). Early symptoms of deficiency include weakness, fatigue, and sore arms and legs. Without treatment, anemia, decreased red blood cells, gum d ...
or amoebic dysentery
Amoebiasis, or amoebic dysentery, is an infection of the intestines caused by a parasitic amoeba '' Entamoeba histolytica''. Amoebiasis can be present with no, mild, or severe symptoms. Symptoms may include lethargy, loss of weight, coloni ...
; of which amoebic dysentery, or the "bloody flux", claimed the most lives. Once ashore, enslaved people lived in appalling conditions similar to those of the Middle Passage
The Middle Passage was the stage of the Atlantic slave trade in which millions of Africans sold for enslavement were forcibly transported to the Americas as part of the triangular slave trade. Ships departed Europe for African markets with manu ...
. Underfed and exposed to a new ecology, enslaved people then had to battle the new climate and forced hard labor. Weakened by the voyage and immediate brutality of slavery, many enslaved people died of smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by Variola virus (often called Smallpox virus), which belongs to the genus '' Orthopoxvirus''. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (W ...
, measles
Measles (probably from Middle Dutch or Middle High German ''masel(e)'', meaning "blemish, blood blister") is a highly contagious, Vaccine-preventable diseases, vaccine-preventable infectious disease caused by Measles morbillivirus, measles v ...
, influenza
Influenza, commonly known as the flu, is an infectious disease caused by influenza viruses. Symptoms range from mild to severe and often include fever, runny nose, sore throat, muscle pain, headache, coughing, and fatigue. These sympto ...
, and unidentified diseases at high rates in the first several years after arrival.
Labor and violence
Though it took many different forms, seasoning universally involved the further commodification of human beings and their preparation by enslavers for the marketplace and labor. Enslavers accomplished this preparation by treating their slaves harshly, subjecting them to a brutal regimen of training and violence. Lasting between one and three years, this process of adjustment was physically and psychologically taxing, and marked by brutality and coercion. Slaveholders resorted to force and violence in order to subdue the "saltwater" slaves and extract their labor. Enslavers regularly beat slaves, maimed them, and placed them in stocks or solitary confinement. In one particularly cruel practice, the slaveholder would whip a naked woman, often pregnant, and pour salt, pepper, or wax into her open wounds. In addition to violence, enslaved people had to adjust to hard labor over the seasoning period. In the Caribbean, newly arrived slaves were given baskets for fertilizing the sugar fields the week they arrived. This was the first step in the essential process of training the new arrivals in the technologies of sugar cultivation. Elsewhere, too, enslaved people were taught how to cultivate and process crops, often including the ones meant to sustain the enslaved population during the seasoning. Over the seasoning period, slaveowners wanted their slaves to acquire both knowledge of the labor and to become accustomed to the extreme workload. Training did not only take the form of labor. Enslaved people were also taught the language of the colony either by other slaves who had already undergone the seasoning process or by the white overseers of the plantation.
Resistance
Though constantly threatened with beatings and further ill-treatment, enslaved people resisted their enslavement in the seasoning in several visible ways. Scholars have considered widespread suicide among newly enslaved people an act of resistance. Indeed, enslavers feared suicide alongside disease, and contemporary manuals for the seasoning included recommendations for improving an enslaved person's "disposition" to best avoid suicide. Hunger plagued enslaved people during and after the seasoning and reports of food theft at any opportunity -- and the beatings from enslavers that followed such thefts -- were common. Still others refused to eat entirely and were similarly punished. Runaway attempts were common, though these recently enslaved arrivals rarely escaped successfully, as they had little familiarity with their surroundings and were isolated on the major plantations of the Americas.
See also
* ''Biography and the Black Atlantic
''Biography and the Black Atlantic'' is a book edited by Lisa A. Lindsay and John Wood Sweet and published in 2013, by the University of Pennsylvania Press. The work examines biographies and autobiographies of African-descended individuals f ...
''
* Malaria in the Caribbean
Malaria has had a significant impact on the history of the Caribbean, due to its effects on the colonization of the islands and the corresponding impact on society and economy.
Malaria was not found in the Americas prior to the discovery of the ...
* Black ladino
* Middle Passage
The Middle Passage was the stage of the Atlantic slave trade in which millions of Africans sold for enslavement were forcibly transported to the Americas as part of the triangular slave trade. Ships departed Europe for African markets with manu ...
* Slavery in the British and French Caribbean
Slavery in the British and French Caribbean refers to slavery in the parts of the Caribbean dominated by the French colonial empires, French Empire or the British Empire.
History
In the History of the Caribbean, Caribbean, Kingdom of Engla ...
* Slave health on plantations in the United States
The health of slaves on American plantations was a matter of concern to both slaves and their owners. Slavery had associated with it the health problems commonly associated with poverty. It was to the economic advantage of owners to keep their wo ...
* Slavery hypertension hypothesis
The slavery hypertension hypothesis proposes that disproportionately high rates of hypertension among black people in the New World are due to selective pressure preferring individuals who retain more sodium among black slaves during the Middle Pa ...
* Weathering hypothesis
Arline Geronimus wrote about the weathering hypothesis the early 1990s to account for health disparities of newborn babies and birth mothers due to decades and generations of racism and social, economic, and political oppression. It is well docum ...
References
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European colonization of the Americas
Slavery in the Caribbean
Early modern society
Physiology
Tropical diseases
Mind control
Slavery in North America
Slavery in South America