Black and British: A Forgotten History, from the acclaimed historian and star of 'Celebrity Traitors'

by David Olusoga

the ‘seasoning’, a brutal period of punishments, beatings, cultural deracination and instruction designed to break the spirit. The ‘production line’ at Bunce Island moved from east to west. African captives arrived on a beach on the eastern side of the island. They were landed there by inland slave-traders who had brought them on river canoes. Some of these traders were Africans, others were from mixed-race Afro-Portuguese or Afro-English peoples, powerful coastal communities that were the offspring of European slave-traders and local women. By the time the captives arrived on the ‘slave beach’ they were already profoundly traumatized. Most had been seized in slave raids against their home villages. These typically took place in the early hours of the morning in order to capture people at their most disorientated. The old and very young, whose economic value was negligible and who might slow down the caravan, were murdered in front of their relatives. These killings were intended to shock those taken captive into meek submission. So effective was this tactic that European slave-traders on Bunce Island and elsewhere complained that the captives arrived in a stupor, a condition that was called ‘the lethargy’, but which modern psychologists would recognize as PTSD – post-traumatic stress disorder. From the slave beach the silent, sullen captives were marched up a short pathway to the Sorting Yard, an open area located directly in front of the main defensive walls of the fortr...