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Jumping Overboard: Examining Suicide, Resistance, and West African Cosmologies During the Middle Passage

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Jumping Overboard: Examining Suicide, Resistance, and West African Cosmologies During the Middle Passage JUMPING OVERBOARD: EXAMINING SUICIDE, RESISTANCE, AND WEST AFRICAN COSMOLOGIES DURING THE MIDDLE PASSAGE By Robert L. Stevenson, Jr. A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of African American and African Studies – Doctor of Philosophy 2018 ABSTRACT JUMPING OVERBOARD: EXAMINING SUICIDE, RESISTANCE, AND WEST AFRICAN COSMOLOGIES DURING THE MIDDLE PASSAGE By Robert L. Stevenson, Jr. This dissertation examines slave ship mortality, slave ship suicides, and resistance through the lens of traditional West and West Central African cosmologies. The results offer an alternative analysis of suicide by drowning as a form of resistance during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The cases examined in this study recount the testimonies of slave ship captains, surgeons, crewmembers, and linguists who travelled onboard slave ships in the Middle Passage and subsequently documented their experiences. This study proposes that the slave ship engendered a new spatial phenomenon for many enslaved West and West Central African people. Interpreted through this lens, these sources offer evidence that the cosmologies of these enslaved people, in the context of the torturous experiences on slaving vessels, encouraged self-destruction as one of many forms of resistance and one that offered the prospect of a spiritual return back to Africa. The evidence from the cases reveal at least three overlapping practical concepts that informed captives’ decisions to leap overboard: agency, martyrdom, and transmigration. I analyze these cases through the lens of traditional West and Central West African cosmologies, utilizing Africana Critical Theory and slave suicide ecology to develop a critical frame for understanding what motivated suicides by drowning. In doing so, I arrive at an alternative interpretation of these events that resists the implicitly White Supremacist framing found in many earlier historical accounts. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Writing a dissertation can be a lonely and solitary task. It is a road that, for the most part, one travels alone. However, as on any road, one finds people, obstacles, and encouraging words along the way. I am honored to have had the consultation of my committee members, faculty, and colleagues. Each of you, in one way or another, has shown me through your suggestions, challenges, and insights what true scholarship looks like and what it means to be committed and dedicated to something larger than you are. I could not have been blessed with a more inspiring and committed advisor than Dr. Lee June. I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. June in another academic setting, and I was enamored by his intriguing questions and comments. When I felt as though I could not go any further, he listened, critiqued, and offered advice that literally changed my life. I will forever be grateful for your friendship, care, and counsel. One of the first professors I had at MSU was Dr. Pero G. Dagbovie. Dr. Dagbovie, you made scholarship, as a profession and a discipline, come alive. Your seminars were engaging and filled with the “what ifs” of intellectual exchange. Dr. Rita Kiki Edozie, you took a chance on me and opened the doors of admission to the African American and African Studies Program at Michigan State. Dr. Edozie, you are a model of scholastic rigor and intellectual honesty. Thank you. Though I have not taken any classes with Dr. Walter Hawthorne, your scholarship, research, and consultations were foundational to my investigative development, and so I say thank you. Dr. Glenn Chambers, what can I say? I enjoyed your seminars immensely. You were willing to work with me in my directed studies, helping me stay on track for graduation while I pastored a church and worked at another institution. Your assistance in gaining a graduate assistantship and your leadership will never be forgotten. Marilyn Duke, you have been my lighthouse in the sea of Michigan State University. iii Any time I felt I was about to lose my way, you were there to guide me to the right path, always available and willing to assist. Thank you. I also want to thank my colleagues, Mrs. Shirley June for your careful editing of the last few versions of my dissertation, and the faculty in the African and African American Studies Program at Grand Valley State University. In particular, I thank Dr. Steeve Buckridge for demonstrating such generosity and support throughout your tenure as director of the area now called Global Studies. Additionally, I thank Dr. Jack Mangala, who hired me to teach my first class at Grand Valley. The writing, structure, and ProQuest format design I attribute to Mrs. Jen Cathey. Jen, words could never express how much I appreciate your tireless editing and formatting of my dissertation. Your keen computer skills and your eye for technical optics were a gift. This dissertation would not have been possible without your expertise. Thanks to Ms. Leslye Allen for keeping all of us in AAA up to date and on task. Your friendship and kind words were always on time. I would also like to thank my best friend on the planet, Victoria Stevenson. Victoria, you were the first person to congratulate me five years ago after having been accepted into the doctoral program. You stood by me during the long nights of reading and preparing for class and the many days I had to drive to to both Grand Valley and Michigan State. You are truly a gift from God. Thank you. iv PREFACE Over a period of 400 years, millions of African women, men, and children were stolen from their homes for the express purpose of creating wealth for their captors. More than 35,000 voyages, from which approximately 5,000 ships still lay at the bottom of the ocean, transported these captives, many of them to their deaths. Their names were not recorded, their histories forgotten. In the minds of their captors, slave ship captains, and their crews, these people were simply commodities, less than human. As of this writing, in the year 2018, the African continent still suffers from critical economic, political, and societal conditions that are the living legacy of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The President of the United States, Donald Trump, recently referred to Haiti and African nations as “shithole countries.”1 This comment, which seeks to stabilize these countries as ahistorically undesirable places, obfuscated the history of imperial and colonial relations when, in fact, Trump’s wealth, and the wealth of millions like him, is the result of a long exploitation of the African continent by European, stealing both her natural resources and her human and intellectual capital. This dissertation is dedicated to those whom we have forgotten, to those brave and courageous persons who leaped from ships into the sea, seeking a return home, to Mother Africa, and to their ancestors. May they rest in peace, and may these words bear witness to their bravery and tenacity. 1 President Donald Trump speaking during a news conference with Norwegian Prime Minster Erna Solberg in the East Room of the White House on Jan. 10, 2018, in Washington. v TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................................................... viii LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................................... ix INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY ............................................................................................. 10 Research Design................................................................................................................ 12 Suicide and Africana Critical Theory ............................................................................... 13 RESEARCH QUESTION ............................................................................................................. 20 CHAPTER 1 ................................................................................................................................. 22 SITUATING THE STUDY (PRECURSORS TO THE TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE) 22 Northern Africa and Portugal............................................................................................ 25 Mortality Studies and West and West Central African Belief Systems............................ 27 Insurrection and Resistance Studies .................................................................................. 34 The Economy that Fueled the Transatlantic Slave Trade ................................................. 35 CHAPTER 2 ................................................................................................................................. 41 HISTORIOGRAPHY OF MARITIME LITERATURE .............................................................. 41 Literature on Sea Vessels and Their Tragedies ................................................................. 41 Resistance Literature of Seaborne Insurrections, Suicide, and Cosmology ..................... 43 Igbo Religious Views, Cosmologies and Their Relationship to Suicide and Resistance . 49 CHAPTER 3 ................................................................................................................................. 63 SUICIDE BY DROWNING: REVIEW AND INTERROGATION OF COSMOLOGY AND MORTALITY LITERATURE ....................................................................................................
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