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Difficulty: MediumShipboard Rebellions and Middle Passage Resistance

Read the following excerpt from a report by Captain John Ashley of the English slave ship *Adventure* (1767) to the ship's owners:

"On the tenth day of our voyage, a sudden insurrection was raised by the men in the hold, who had by some means procured a cold chisel and hammer. We later discovered that several of the women captives, who were permitted to walk on the deck without irons, had gathered these instruments from the carpenter's chest and passed them through the gratings to the men below. Their conspiracy was carried out with such silence that we had no suspicion until the hatches were forced."

Which of the following conclusions about resistance during the Middle Passage is best supported by Captain Ashley's account?

  1. A
    Shipboard insurrections were typically spontaneous acts that lacked strategic coordination among different groups of captives.
  2. B
    Enslaved captives focused primarily on covert, everyday resistance rather than direct, physical confrontations.
  3. Enslaved women leveraged their relative mobility on deck to play a critical role in planning and facilitating shipboard revolts.Answer
  4. D
    Rebellions were generally unsuccessful because captives were unable to overcome the physical barriers separating the deck from the hold.

Answer

Enslaved women leveraged their relative mobility on deck to play a critical role in planning and facilitating shipboard revolts.
The correct option is supported by the text, which shows that women captives on the deck used their relative freedom of movement to procure tools and pass them to chained male captives, demonstrating how gendered spaces on slave ships were utilized to organize resistance.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the source text for evidence of captive agency and cooperation.
The text describes women captives on the deck obtaining tools and passing them to the men in the hold.
This establishes that the revolt was organized and involved coordination across different physical and social spaces on the ship.
2
Evaluate the role of gendered spaces and captivity conditions.
Enslaved women, who were left unchained, had access to tools and areas of the ship that chained men did not.
This shows how captives exploited the specific conditions of their confinement to execute resistance strategies.
3
Match the findings with the provided options to identify the correct conclusion.
The option highlighting the role of enslaved women leveraging their mobility to facilitate the revolt aligns with the text.
This option directly translates the details of the primary source into a broader historical conclusion about Middle Passage resistance.

Key Concept

Shipboard Rebellions and Middle Passage Resistance
Estimated Time:1m 15s
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Shipboard Rebellions and Middle Passage Resistance

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