Oroonoko Post #1: Atlantic Slave Trade

Oroonoko Post #1-Atlantic Slave Trade

On page twelve of Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, Behn describes the time period’s act of slave trading and describes those involved including the slaves themselves and their masters. Behn expands on how the owners find it “necessary to caress them as friends, and not to treat them as slaves; nor do we dare do other, their numbers so surpassing ours” (Behn 12). J.D. Fage’s article, “African Societies and the Atlantic Slave Trade” explains the Atlantic Slave Trade and how Europeans wanted to continue in order to earn more profits after ships left West Africa. Fage raises questions on how the African societies were affected and claims how if the Africans did not value the goods from the Europeans more than the slaves they sold to buy them, they would not have engaged in this trade. Additionally in the novel, Oroonoko is sold to Trefry and renamed “Ceaser” through trade on a slave ship and the context of this article helps better understand the process behind the slave trading and the geographical location of Behn’s descriptions at the beginning of the novel. Fage explains the increase of institutions of slavery in West Africa and the “enlargement West African populations of unfree men and women” (Fage 109) had at the time. He expands on how the masters of this population used slavery as a means to “enhance the status, power and wealth of those who owned and exploited them”(Fage, 109). Within Oroonoko, his owner Trefry still treats him as his property despite his kinder ways, and this source highlights the context of slave trading relating to the process of how Orookoko and Imoinada were sold.

Link to Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/650862