The Atlantic World Slave System

–In his 1920 essay The Souls of White Folk, the scholar W.E.B. Du Bois described slavery as a
hybrid of capitalism and racism: The using of men for the benefit of masters is no new invention
of modern Europe. It is quite as old as the world. But Europe proposed to apply it on a scale and
with an elaborateness of detail of which no former world ever dreamed. The imperial width of the
thing,its heaven–defying audacitymakes its modern new–ness.
Stephanie Smallwoods Saltwater Slavery likewise highlights the joint processes of capitalism
and racism that transformed human beings into the commodities of the Atlantic slave trade.
How did these processes of commodification work, both practically and ideologically? Focus
your answer on either the African coast, or the slave ship, or North Americas slave markets.