Overview
*One last time...please (please?!?) don't use AI for this. You can do this!!! I have faith in you!!***
Assignment—Transatlantic Crossings
One of the big reasons for Europe’s “reawakening” was the fact that Europeans were sailing all over the place, “discovering” parts of the world for the first time and often growing very wealthy in the process. The discovery of the New World and subsequent migration to and extraction from the Americas completely changed European society and culture, and led them into the greatest era of economic growth the world had ever seen (often on the backs, literally, of people forced into this migration via slavery).
Obviously, that’s too big a topic for a single assignment. But we can start to think about the ramifications of this event in a bit of detail by thinking about a couple of sources.
Go to the following link:
http://www.americanyawp.com/reader/british-north-america/
There, you’ll find a collection of documents. NOTE: you only need two of the documents for this assignment…please read the account by Olaudah Equiano and the account by Francis Daniel Pastorius. You will use these two documents to complete the assignment.
Both of these documents describe the same general event—the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by the author. These two men were among the millions and millions of people who crossed the Atlantic after 1500, and their narratives reflect some of the hardships voyagers would have faced. It’s hard for us to wrap our heads around a three-month voyage, on a relatively small wooden ship, across a dangerous ocean, to a land that must have seemed as mysterious as the moon to us. And consider this—although sailors could use the sun to determine how far north or south they were, there was no way to tell how far east or west a ship had traveled…after you lost sight of Portugal, it was anyone’s guess how far you had actually traveled! So these accounts do a good job relating some of the basic issues travelers faced on a transatlantic voyage.
However, there are significant differences between the two narratives. Most obvious is the fact that one of these authors was enslaved at the time of the crossing while the other was not—for one of these men, the voyage was a choice, but not for the other. Obviously, this leads to different facts in the narrative—you probably don’t need a history professor to tell you that it was less comfortable to cross the Atlantic as a slave than as a free person…you had better food, better sleeping arrangements, and could expect better treatment from the crew. These facts are all great…they help historians understand the realities facing people in different situations as they made these journeys.
Honestly, I don’t care what you do with these sources, as long as you compare and contrast the experiences and attitudes of the two men who left them for us to read. Find some interesting things to think about and point to…as long as you are thinking deeply about these documents, you’ll be fine! Even just asking "does this person sound like he's enslaved" or "does this person sound like he's free" is a good starting point!
As always, you should support your argument with some evidence, so you should be able to prove your single idea with quotes from the two documents. Remember that these assignments are designed so that you don’t have to read the textbook or access other information to complete them…it really is only about the evidence in front of you! Bring in two quotes from each document to support your argument, whatever it is….a total of four quotes. Give us the quote, explain how it supports your ideas and any other insights you might have noticed, and make sure it's YOU talking.
That last point is important. I do NOT want to read a bunch of AI submissions for this assignment. Tell me what YOU think, WHATEVER that is.
Compare and contrast the two documents. Four quotes—two from each. Lots of analysis.