Talk:Middle Passage

message: Is the source for 10 Million survivors and 3 Million dead cited? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.81.96.78 (talk) 23:11, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Basil Davidson, in his highly-acclaimed 1961 book "Black Mother" quoted what he thought were estimations by Kuczynski. Kuczynski, in the 1930s, quoted W.E.B. DuBois. DuBois, while generally being accepted as "an eminent authority" on the Atlantic slave trade (to quote Curtin), indeed popularized the much-cited "minimum" 15 million (that came to the New World) calculation in a 1911(!) semi-scholary speech, but he too only cited it (and never claimed anything else). The origin of these numbers is in fact a 1860(!) political paper (!) by one Edward E. Dunbar - who was a publicist, not an historian. And he didn't "calculate" it either, he himself says that he only "guessed" these numbers. This is actually one of the best examples of a "tower of evidence" (meaning a shaky quote that gets repeated so often that its origin is lost in the process and it eventually becomes an undisputed fact). The first historian to actually see through the tower was Philip D. Curtin in his 1969 book "The Atlantic Slave Trade. A Census." . Since then, a huge number of studies has found the number of slaves who arrived in the New World to be between 9.2 and about 12 million, but the "Minimum 15" is still alive and running wild in non-scientific realms. You can find an in-detail study of the origins of this guess in Northrup's "The Atlantic Slave Trade" (latest edition from 2002). Malc82 18:08, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  10 Million, 3 Million? 

message: The article refers to the spread of diseases on slave ships, and lists syphilis and malaria as diseases that "spread rapidly in the close-quarter compartments". As syphilis is primarily a sexually transmitted disease and malaria is spread by vectors that would be rare at sea, a citation for the spread of these diseases would be welcome.
Halfsnail 08:50, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disease spread on slave ships 

message: The article says:
:The Europeans themselves often kidnapped African people. In addition, African kings, warlords and private kidnappers were coerced into selling their captives to Europeans who held several coastal forts.
Is there any evidence for the assertion that "kings, warlords, and private kidnappers were coerced into selling their captives"?  This would seem to absolve the native African slave traders of any responsibility.  This seems to be something of a rewriting of history to portray a certain point of 
view - namely, that slavery and the slave trade was virtually non-existent in Africa until the arrival of Europeans and to the extent that natives participated in it it was only under duress of coercion. -- Planders 21:46, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Slavers were coerced? 

message: I will edit the Intro section to this article in a few minutes because it contained various failures. Before reverting, please read this rationale and offer your criticisms/problems here.
The middle Passage was a portion of the Atlantic slave trade route - it was the only portion of the Atlantic slave trade route. 
The slave trade involved Peruvian and Mexican mines, Brazilian coffee plantations, South Carolinian fields, and Caribbean sugar, coffee, and cotton plantations - the list is not complete. It is also pretty misleading because Peruvian and Mexican mines were never a large scale destination, they were mainly "supplied" by the Encomienda and later Repartimiento systems, which had nothing to do with the Middle passage.
The European powers, including Spain, Portugal, France, England, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Brandenburg, as well as Canada, all played a role - Neither Norway nor Canada existed as independent states at the time, both weren't prominently involved as regions. On the other hand New England traders were quite prominent.
The Germans were also involved by supplying slave voyages with financial aid - Germany as a state also didn't exist back then. Even if I wouldn't be German myself, this sentence isn't acceptable without any reference. I have never heard that German financial aid (apart from Brandenburg-Prussia's colonial aspirations) was a major factor behind any part of the triangle trade.
Asian textiles were used as trading goods in Africa - that's not wrong (history is complex), but  wasn't a major factor. 
Malc82 13:18, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Intro

message: I have added "reference needed tags to the "Journey" and "Abolition" sections. Reasons for this are:
* Obviously, both sections don't give any references
* That African kings were only coerced into taking part is contrary to scientific consensus.
* Both sections are written with obvious POV. Moral outrage, even if justified, is not a good basis to write an encyclopedia article.
:I have removed the POV tag---I detected no moralist tone in the tagged section. Kemet 02:26, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The removal of the POV tag has been reverted consistent with Wikipedia policies and guidelines: The concerns of the originating editor have not been answered and the issue at hand has not been resolved. Noula69 10:31, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The originating author cited moral outrage as his/her concern.  A reading of the article will reveal no such tone---so the concern is essentially resolved.  The description of afflictions of slaves during the Middle Passage is factual information, so the POV tag is unwarranted.  The article DOES need proper citation though.  Kemet 16:53, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There is no indication that the issue was solved to the originating author's satisfication which is the prerequisite to removing the POV tag. You cannot infer consent based on your own opinion that the POP tag is unwarranted. Originating author's tag restrored. Noula69 20:33, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

text: Sorry, I completely missed the above discussion, but want to answer here (btw: please leave further comments on the bottom of or in a new section to allow other editors to understand and join in, thanks). I think the reasons why I tagged the section still largely apply. By Wikipedia's guidelines, all unreferenced content can (and in fact should) be removed. After months, this section is still almost entirely unreferenced. The only reason I preferred tagging instead of removing back then was to avoid an edit war and a lenghty, pointless discussion about sinister motivations for the removal. I'd still prefer referencing over removal right now. As to the POV-tag, the current version of the section (which is much improved from when I first discovered it) doesn't strike me as particularly POV, but I would oppose removing the tag for procedural reasons. Either you enforce WP-rules in full and largely remove the section, or you back it up with WP:RS, which is the only way to show this can be considered a NPOV (I know that some people wouldn't consider it as such right now), something that I largely agree with, but other people don't. Basically, it's impossible to really comment upon the validity of some points unless we know what sources they were based upon. Malc82 04:04, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

text: Answered this question above . Please sign your edits on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~). There is no "agenda" here, calling these accomplished contemporary historians a worse source than DuBois, who worked about a century ago, indicates that you may not have enough expertise on this topic to accuse them (and implicitly me) of having an "agenda". Thanks. Malc82 18:16, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reasons for "Reference needed" and "Neutrality tags 

message: First of all, I don't see why a section about abolition is needed at all in this article. Also the concentration of Abolition in the US isn't justified.
Besides that, the section shows the same POV-slant that has already been discussed and tagged at the Atlantic slave trade article. See Talk:Atlantic_slave_trade#End_of_the_slave_trade for details.
I will delete this section in a week or so if nobody disagrees.
Malc82 13:57, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Answered this question above . Please sign your edits on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~). There is no "agenda" here, calling these accomplished contemporary historians a worse source than DuBois, who worked about a century ago, indicates that you may not have enough expertise on this topic to accuse them (and implicitly me) of having an "agenda". Thanks. Malc82 18:16, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Abolition section

message: The article details the European countries involved, but doesn't mention which African ethnic groups were most affected by the slave trade to the Americas. It might also be useful to list out which African areas were most involved--I know we can't use countries, but perhaps we could describe them according to their modern locations, e.g. "present-day Nigeria" etc.? (See for instance Atlantic slave trade#Slave Market Regions and Participation.) I feel as though the lack of specifics regarding the Africans' origins only reinforces the idea that the slaves aren't important enough to talk about. Could I simply import the list from the Slave Trade article? Aristophanes68 (talk) 01:55, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, go ahead and be bold. Graham87 11:40, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  More info on which African peoples were affected. 

message: rofl it'll probably be fixed by the time anyone sees this.69.76.7.248 (talk) 17:49, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: All fixed. Graham87 03:36, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:   vandal  

message: With many good scholarly works on the slave trade why is one of the only two references listed a textbook?  A textbook should never be a source for an article.
71.252.207.32 (talk) 12:52, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Because school children study the slave trade and want to improve the article. Rich Farmbrough, 18:26, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh the sources are currently listed under "notes"... Rich Farmbrough, 12:44, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  References 

message: "At sea, the sharks that followed the ships were used, if only passively, to discourage sailors from abandoning the ship."
This seems a rather romantic notion that sailors would try to swim for it, rather than be involved in slaving, given that most sailors were probably unable to swim, and that even for a strong swimmer more than a dozen or so miles at sea is extreme going. Rich Farmbrough, 18:26, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Removed

message: ... "by jumping overboard was such a problem that captains had to address it directly in many cases. They used the sharks that followed the ships as a terror weapon. One captain, who had a rash of suicides on his ship, took a woman and lowered her into the water on a rope, and pulled her out as fast as possible. When she came in view, the sharks had already killed her—and bitten off the lower half of her body"
Not sure quite how this would "address" suicide - death by shark or death by drowning? Rich Farmbrough, 20:22, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Suicide

message: "The two most common types of resistance were refusal to eat and suicide. Suicide was a frequent occurrence, often by refusal of food or medicine or..." somehow the repetition should be removed. But is not clear (and uncited) if refusal to eat was a resistance tactic that wasn't suicidal. Seems sloppy. Rich Farmbrough, 12:43, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Collapse

message: This statement in the intro is confusing or in need of clarification: "For two hundred years, 1440–1640, Portugese slavers had a near monopoly on the export of slaves from Africa." 
1: There was no Portuguese presence in the new world until 1504. So, how could there have been a 'middle passage' for slaves from Africa to the Americas in the 64 years from 1440 to 1504? (Or is the editor trying to claim that the Portuguese were transporting slaves from Africa back home to Portugal?)
2: From 1580 to 1640 Portugal did not exist as it was in union with Spain.
This article is poor enough already. It doesn't need extra help from patently incorrect dates.;) 1812ahill (talk) 00:16, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusing statement regarding Portugal. 

message: As is mentioned in above in comments this article is a disgrace. It's bloody offensive. Little vignettes about sharks, and weaseling words like they "even" had port holes on some ships. I don't think I have ever see a worse article on Wikipedia.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.194.63.244 (talk) 10:21, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Poor quality 

message: I have personally looked at the lists of slaves. WE HAVE THE LISTS. WITH THEIR NAMES ON IT.  The total number of slaves brought to Americas was 381,000. 199.116.241.58 (talk) 05:20, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  I'm sorry, this is the most ridiculous article on Wikipedia