The Europeans did use manipulation to take advantage of the situation. For example, shells were the African currency. Slaves would sell for 20,000 shells a piece. Since shells aren't worth anything to the Europeans they just simply had to collect them up and trade them for the slaves. This became a very profitable exchange if you do the math. So royalty usually sold prisoners of war, slaves, and criminals to the Europeans in exchange for shells, guns, etc. But, there were also kings who refused to allow Europeans to enslave their people and the only methods of getting them would be threw force. Never less, European fed the fire to these evil practices. They prospered the greatest off the backs of 9,645,000 Africans. Using this slave labor for growing sugar, tobacco, and indigo making the American colonies and the West Indies highly rich areas. .
In "Slave Ship" the sailors are portrayed as bad men who have their ways with the African woman. As middlemen they took advantage of their situation and used it to rape and abuse the Africans. For exercise they would make them dance atop the boat and if any refused to dance or dance "hard enough" they would be flogged. But, the worst comes from the way in which they stored the slaves. The sailors would chain and force hundreds of slaves to stack on top of each other. They would give them three to four buckets to use for toilets without any regard to their comfort. In result of the harsh treatment many slaves aboard the ships died. One would think that this would be costly to the ones involved in the slave trade. But, since slaves were then worth more then gold, it was a better business strategy to stack as many slaves possible to increase the number who make it to the market place. Littlefield seems to agree that this is true since he mentions in the beginning of chapter four in Rice and Slaves that when ships began to leave the African coast, slaves were more likely to revolt.
