“The loss of stories sharpens the hunger for them. So it is tempting to fill in the gaps and to provide closure where there is none. To create a space for mourning where it is prohibited. To fabricate a witness to a death not much noticed. […] Initially I thought I wanted to represent the affiliations severed and remade in the hollow of the slave ship by imagining the two girls as friends, by giving them one another. But in the end I was forced to admit that I wanted to console myself and to escape the slave hold with a vision of something other than the bodies of two girls settling on the floor of the Atlantic.”

Saidiya Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts” (2008)

The first time I read these words of Saidiya Hartman, something twisted inside me. It was week three of my Laidlaw Research project and sat in the library, at the end of a long day, I was stand stilled by this claim—“I wanted to console myself.”  

My project, titled “The Children of Enslavement: historical legacy and lived experiences of children in trans-Atlantic slavery” had set out to “excavate” the little-known experiences of children in the Middle Passage, that journey of violence and horror which fueled the economic and oppressive might of colonial powers such as Great Britain. I aimed to examine what little historical analysis did exist regarding children, what proportion of the trade included children, and to scour slave narratives in order to pull out any experience that could inform us. Despite all my attempts at conscientious pursual of this goal, I had been sweeping over the fact that I had been consoling myself. Me, a white person from the United States, studying in Scotland, United Kingdom, comfortably and safely in the confines of a university library with no more than books and descriptions to “haunt me.”

To be clear, by consoling myself, I mean to say that I had been wrestling with the (archival) silence that persists for histories of enslavement that prioritize the experience of the enslaved; an issue evermore exasperated when attempting to find records of children beyond a listing in a ship manifest. (By 'archival' silence I mean the lack of materials retained in historical archives and knowledge more broadly that reflects upon the topics I am exploring). This wrestling, rather frustration, had to be met in my mind with historical imagination, such as that used by Tiya Miles in her book All that She Carried: The History of a Black Family Keepsake, who re-patched the narrative of a matrilineal line of enslaved women and their ancestors, often utilizing others’ stories to piece together what they may have felt or what they may have thought.* And here is where the consoling came in; what stories could I imagine? What histories would I attempt to shed light on? Fill out? Lend credence to?

In the negative space of that which simply does not exist, such as any surviving narrative of the Middle Passage written by a child (and less than a handful by/of women), and the overwhelming horror of atrocities that were recorded, I felt that if I did not “find” the enslaved child’s voice I would be failing their memory, or perhaps I would be failing my own. In the same vein as Hartman’s sentiment, to read all day about brutality enacted against girls, boys, and infants, without any record of their care towards one another or witness any moments of hope, was a difficult reality. As much as I wanted to read or imagine that two children, ripped from their families and placed among those who did not speak their language in a violent environment, found small ways to communicate and hold each other, and find strength within each other for even a moment, I came to realize that where this did not exist, I could not fabricate.

I found it just as important to ask myself, why did I, as a scholar, want so desperately to do so? The pain of what was recorded and silence were forefront, but I consistently have to remind myself of my own privilege and place. My scholarship does not ameliorate the past. And clearly it should never function to coddle myself from the reality that was and is, to assure myself of some comfort when the furthest discomfort I must experience was to read it.

So, what could I do? How could I construct a positive argument about children’s place in trans-Atlantic enslavement with all the gaps, silences, and unknowns? How could I remain focused on my own place as a scholar?

If it is not clear by now, I have found myself asking more questions that answering them. It is now week five, and while I do have an argument, I am constantly negotiating silence.

As I begun to examine slave narratives and various documents regarding the slave trade last week, I endeavored not to comfort myself when confronted by the realities and histories in front of me with “filling in the gaps,” but to rather try and extricate the processes that underpinned the debit/credit logs of slave ships and the language used by formerly enslaved people. And to recognize what the gaps themselves tell us.

Both Hartman and Stephanie Smallwood, another scholar of enslavement, have called for writing counter-histories and critical examinations of the archive. From their inspiration, it became increasingly clear that if children were systematically excluded the archive, that could serve to reveal much. 

This undercurrent of my work is in no way complete, and certainly will not be as my research period officially ends next week. As I begin to grasp the angles of my argument I hope to present, largely undiscussed here, I must make the struggle of the archive present in my writing and conversations with others. As a historian, I implore other scholars of the humanities—particularly those with disparate source materials—to consider those silences, but also to consider one’s own reactions to those silences. Yet this is a lesson for all, regardless of discipline, as silence is not a thing of the past. The British slave trade was officially abolished 216 years ago. American Antebellum slavery ended formally only 158 years ago. The silences that were forcibly created not that long ago loom heavy over us. The dictating power over whose story is worthy of voice is ever-present in our societies still. To write, to speak, to narrate, is to have power. So, whether it be in scholarship or your day-to-day, ask yourself; what power are you enacting? What narrative are you producing? What reality are you consoling?

I would like to thank my advisor Dr Andrew Edwards, my Laidlaw cohort, and Lord Laidlaw and the Foundation for the support and opportunity to pursue this work.

Find Saidiya Hartman’s “Venus in Two Acts” here: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/241115.

 *I cannot more highly recommend Miles’s book; while dealing in historical imagination, Miles maintains historical integrity masterfully and serves as a broader examination of American slavery and its legacy. It is written as a public history and would engage non-historians as equally as historians.

If you are interested in any further readings on Atlantic enslavement, archival silence, or just would like to have a conversation feel free to reach out to me over the Laidlaw network.