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Introduction
…the whole history of the United States comes walking over the hill
behind a line of people in chains. Changes that reshaped the entire world
began on the auction block where enslaved migrants stood or in the
frontier cotton fields where they toiled…enslaved African Americans built
the modern United States, and indeed the entire modern world, in ways
both obvious and hidden.
– Edward E. Baptist, Historian
Cornell University
Based on Lawrence Hill’s novel of the same
name, the CBC series The Book of Negroes
is an exploration of slavery in North
America through the eyes and experiences
of Aminata Diallo.
Aminata is the much-loved daughter of a
midwife mother, with whom she “catches”
babies, and an artisan father, who has taught
her to read the Koran and write Arabic.
Kidnapped by enslavers as a young girl, she
endures: a forced march in shackles to the
coast, branding with a hot iron, a whipping
so severe it opens her back, the middle
passage across the Atlantic, and her sale as
chattel to an indigo plantation owner. These
trials mark the beginning of her story and
harden her determination to find her way
home.
Historical Context
When Christopher Columbus returned to
Europe from his 1492 voyage across the
Atlantic, word of lands previously unknown
spread rapidly. So began what has been
named in generations of history books the
“Age of Discovery.” For those outside of
Europe, in the America’s, Africa and India,
this age might more aptly have been named
an “Age of Destruction.”
What Europe’s sea-faring powers
“discovered” were human, mineral and
agricultural riches that would fill the coffers
of monarchies and build empires.
Labour intensive plantation systems were
established along the Eastern Seaboard of
what would become the United States.
These plantations would fuel the Industrial
Revolution with the raw materials required
to make rum, cloth, tobacco and other mass
produced goods. The forced labour of
enslaved Africans made possible America’s
rise as an economic super-power.
Unlike other slaving systems that have
existed for thousands of years in human
history, the chattel system gave its victims
no more rights than a chair or pair of shoes
or any other form of simple property.
Enslavers were permitted to do whatever
they wished with their human “property” —
up to and including taking their lives.
Enslaved men, women and children had no
domain over their own bodies. Parents had
no claim to their own children.
This is the world in which Aminata’s story
unfolds. The viewer is invited to cultivate
and explore a deeper understanding of the
complexities, brutality and lasting effects of
slavery.
This history continues to resonate in our
current social and economic structures, and
forms of racialized oppression persist in
both Canada and the United States. The
Book of Negroes series along with this
teacher resource guide can be used to
engage with and interrupt this thread of
history.
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