Also known as: Commodification, human commodification, commodification of persons
Last updated: April 23, 2026
Commodification of persons in the Atlantic slave trade was not a single moment but a process that began before embarkation — at the littoral, the coastal fort, and the market — where independent people were converted into human commodities whose value resided in their exchangeability. Violence, hunger, surveillance, and calibrated suffering were part of this conversion. The process continued on the ship, where bodies were catalogued by age, sex, and apparent health, and extended into the plantation, where labor-power was extracted as ongoing value.
Atlantic Slave Trade
Middle Passage
Slave Ship
Social Death
The Conceptual Tools Of The Plantation
If you use rasin.ai data or findings in your research, please cite us:
Chicago
"Commodification." Rasin.ai, 2026. https://rasin.ai/connections/concepts/commodification. Accessed 2026-05-05.