In considering new questions, Mustakeem moves away from the traditional quantitative approach, as well as the conventional focus on the masculine experience of the transatlantic slave trade. Curtin’s The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (1969), Slavery at Sea is a ground-breaking contribution to the growing scholarship of what Mustakeem terms ‘Middle Passage studies’, situating her work alongside scholars including Marcus Rediker, Emma Christopher, Stephanie Smallwood, and Eric Taylor (3-4). Further adding to the originality of Slavery at Sea is the soundtrack which accompanies the text, ‘a first of a kind scholarly musical project’ which facilitates an even deeper emotional connection to the terror of the Middle Passage.Įxpertly diverging from previous slave trade studies which have favoured a ‘number-centred methodology’, such as Philip D. This ambitious study brings together a wide array of archival sources – including diaries, medical logs, ship logs, account sales, and newspapers – to consider ‘this horrific period in time’ which ‘continues unchallenged’ and so remains ‘a bloodied yet sanitized chapter in global history’ (6). Mustakeem’s Slavery At Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage redefines the existing narrative of the transatlantic slave trade by offering vastly new perspectives to the literature. Slavery At Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage. (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2016).
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