The Slave Trade's Diet: What Enslaved Africans Ate on the Middle Passage

What did enslaved Africans actually eat during the Middle Passage? This episode of The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering dives into the logistics of provisioning slave ships—from the vast quantities of horse beans and yams to the dried fish, palm oil, and rice that sustained captives across the Atlantic. Lucas and Luna examine ship manifests, the notorious 'squatting' position for feeding, and how malnutrition and disease were baked into the system. They also explore the contrast with the diet of enslaved people on plantations, the role of African provisions like millet and plantains, and the grim irony that many ships carried more food for the crew than for the people in the hold. Drawing on records from the Royal African Company, the 1788 Dolben Act, and accounts by Olaudah Equiano, this episode uncovers a little-examined but telling dimension of the slave trade: the daily caloric calculus of human cargo. #MiddlePassage #SlaveTrade #AtlanticSlaveTrade #HorseBeans #OlaudahEquiano #DolbenAct #RoyalAfricanCompany #Provisions #Yams #PalmOil #Malnutrition #HistoryOfFood #Slavery #18thCentury #Equiano #Calico #FexingoHistory #History Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo