Branding Slaves

Description

This print shows an enslaved woman being branded by a white man, while other African women were presumably waiting to be branded at an unknown location, likely in Africa. Blake used this illustration to depict the lengths to which slave traders would go in order to keep track of their merchandise. The same image is also found in later editions of Blake. In any case, this image is apparently not based on an eye-witness, but was fabricated by the artist. The illustration appears to be an embellishment of an earlier one in another source (see image H006 on this website; also, for details on branding).

Source

William O. Blake, The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade (Columbus, Ohio, 1857), p. 97.

Language

English

Rights

Image is in the public domain. Metadata is available under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International.

Identifier

Blake1

Spatial Coverage

Africa

Item sets

Slave Sales & Auctions: African Coast & the Americas

Citation

"Branding Slaves", Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, accessed September 30, 2023, http://www.slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/2438
This print shows an enslaved woman being branded by a white man, while other African women were presumably waiting to be branded at an unknown location, likely in Africa. Blake used this illustration to depict the lengths to which slave traders would go in order to keep track of their merchandise. The same image is also found in later editions of Blake. In any case, this image is apparently not based on an eye-witness, but was fabricated by the artist. The illustration appears to be an embellishment of an earlier one in another source (see image H006 on this website; also, for details on branding).
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