These continued conflicts provided captives who were sold to European slave traders, which funded further wars and captures.
The commodification became complete when slaves were subjected to deprivations that tested the limits of human endurance—all in the name of maximizing profit for the RAC.
These accounting instruments, packaged as they are in the form to be transmitted to headquarters in London, both conceal and reveal the underlying stories.
"People, tobacco, gold, and gunpowder, all mutually exchangeable against one another, were able to pass smoothly across transactional lines that separated one account from another" (84).
In the process of being removed to the Americas, slaves were deprived of the kin relations through which many African societies established the identities of their component members.
Deprived of the ability to put down roots in the New World, these slaves were doubly robbed of identity: that of the one they left behind and that of the one they could not create in the Americas.