ABSTRACT
To formulate some understanding of the significance of the actuality and memory of the slave ship in the context of the birth of modernity, this chapter examines four main areas. First, it introduces the notion of the revolutionary and 'Black Atlantic' and to think about the multiple ways one can think of the ships of the middle passage. Secondly, it looks at the central question of how one addresses the historicity of the slave ship when there is no such thing as a 'living memory'. Thirdly, one looks at three initial attempts to do just that kind of ethnography on the slave ships looking in some depth at the work of Marcus Rediker but also at the recent work by Emma Christopher and Stephanie Smallwood. Fourthly, it briefly looks at the ships as material assemblages returning to this in a later chapter where we examine the relationship between materiality and memory.
