 Primary source documents in my mind are the building blocks of history. Primary source documents are the raw materials that historians use to interpret the past. So they are original sources from the time period created during a time period under study. So it could be a newspaper from the 1600s, a newspaper from the 1980s. An audio clip, a video clip. This video here will be a primary source document for those studying video conferencing in 2013. There are many, many, many types of primary source documents. But the key is that they allow us, they allow historians to build interpretations because they are examples of what people did at the time, what they said at the time, their biases, their perspectives, and their lived experiences through written documents, through video documents, through audio documents. So primary sources are going to be very important to our class, African-American studies. Especially when we consider that African-American culture and African-American history for a long time was an oral-based culture, was a culture where the history was not written down, but was spoken and passed on via the spoken word. So when we talk about analyzing primary source documents, we will at times in this class analyze things that are spoken, and what do they tell us about a historical time period. We have the benefit of a lot of written print documents now, and so we will spend some time developing the tools and the skills to analyze or to determine what these documents tell us about a historical time period. So soaps, what is soaps? So S is for speaker, and I'm going to go through these quickly here and then talk about them in more detail in a moment. S is for speaker, O is for the occasion, A is for the audience, P is for the purpose, S is the subject of the primary source document, and the last S is so what? Why do we need to be concerned about this in the first place? Okay? Now, how do we use soaps to analyze primary documents? One, the speaker, the first S. Who's the author? Who's the speaker? What is their nationality or ethnicity or other affiliation? Their gender, their age or social class, political affiliation. Are they credible? That's a very important question. Are they credible? Can they be trusted? Why or why not? Now, with a primary source document, we may not always know all of the answers to all of these questions, but it will be important for us to try and find these answers, because without knowing who said it, it would be hard for us to interpret what the document says. Alright? So, oh, it's occasion. Why? Under what circumstances? Was this speech given or this document written? A, who's the audience? Who's reading or listening to this? So things aren't written or spoken or sang or painted in a vacuum. Generally, it's always for an audience. So, from looking at the document, do we get a sense of who this audience is? What is their POV? POV is point of view. What is the point of view of not just the author, but also the audience? And how would they perceive the speaker or audience's argument? Okay? Purpose. What's the author's central claim? What's their argument? What do they hope to accomplish in all of this? What is the purpose? Why was the document written? The next S, subject. What is the document all about? Okay? And it's here, this S, the subject part, and we will spend a little bit of time translating a document, understanding a document. This is where we read it more carefully and closely to understand what the document's saying. So what topic is covered? And then the last S, which is very important for the historian. Alright? So what? Why does this even matter? Where does this document fit in our larger arguments about the historical narrative of American history, of African American history, whatever history it is that we're studying? How does this fit? How does this contribute to what we know about the narrative that exists? Alright? So, let's now look at a document. The title of the document is a new and accurate description of the coast of Guinea, divided into the gold, the slave, and the ivory coast by Willem Bozeman. Alright. So the first S is speaker. So just from what we've talked about before, we do know now who the speaker is. Willem Bozeman. Now who is he? Now this requires a little bit more investigative work. A historian is an investigator doing some investigating, figuring out who's saying what and what the ultimate purpose is and what message is being conveyed. So who is Willem Bozeman? So he is a Dutch sea captain. He is a sea captain. So he owns a ship. He is a sea captain. That's his area of business. He has 14 years of experience sailing along the coast of western Africa. So, since he's talking about Guinea and the coast of western Africa, 14 years of experience as a historian, we might think, huh, that makes him pretty credible. He's a credible source here. And one of the things that we need to know as he is the speaker, we also know that he's writing this in 1705. So he's writing this in 1705. So he's a sea captain, 14 years of experience, writing this in 1705. So we gathered that information just from the title. All right? Now, let's look back at the first paragraph of the document. So the first paragraph says, the first business of one of our factors, when he comes to Vida, again, if you see something in brackets here, that's generally how it is pronounced, right? So Vida is to satisfy the customs of the king and the great men which amount to about a hundred pounds in Guinea value as the goods must yield there, after which we have free license to trade, which is published throughout the whole land by the crier. Now, I admit the first time I read this, I didn't know what was going on. All right? And know that this guy is a sea captain. I know he has 14 years of experience. I know he's writing this in 1705. But other than that, I don't know what's going on. So what do I do as a historian if I don't know some of these words I don't even know? Well, guess what? You look them up, right? So we start to look up these words to figure out what's being said. So I've heard of factor before. What is a factor? So we got to look that up. And these are some of the things that you will be doing. So a factor is a person who acts who transacts business for another. So it looked like an agent. So going back to that first paragraph, the first business of one of our business agents. So again, he's a sea captain. He's doing some business here. When he comes to Wida, what is Wida? So Wida today called Wida. This was kingdom. A kingdom in West Africa. And it was absorbed into, and I'm going to get out of your way so you can see this, into the Homi Kingdom in 1727. And it's today part of the nation of Benin. So Wida is a place. It is a place in Western Africa. So if we go back to the paragraph again, what do we see here? We see that the first business of one of our agents, when he comes to this place in Western Africa, Wida, is to satisfy the customs of the king. Customs generally are taxes, right? They pay taxes to the king. And remember that Bosman is Dutch. So the Dutch king here, and the great men. Which amount to about, with great men, we can talk about people who are in the upper class. People who are in the ruling authorities of the Dutch kingdom. Which amount to about 100 pounds in Guinea value. So Guinea. Guinea is the currency. The currency of Wida. So the first business of one of our agents, when he comes to Wida, is to satisfy the customs of the king and the great men. So now I've made a mistake. I've been talking about the king, the Dutch king and the great men. When in fact, if you look back, that's why it's important to carefully read these primary social documents. The king here is actually referring to the king of Wida. That king and the great men in that kingdom. So we're paying them in their currency as the goods must yield there. After which we have free license. Once we do that, once we pay tribute. So we're paying taxes to the king. And that king then allows us to now have further transactions. Because what we see here is after which we have free license to trade. So we have a freedom to trade now. Which is published throughout the whole land by the crier. Now I had trouble figuring out, what is crier? So I looked that up. And going back to the... I mean, I found a couple of things here. I looked it up and the low and behold crier is a female hawk. So I can't. That doesn't quite fit. Doesn't quite fit in the context of this document that we're talking about. Well, I've also heard of a town crier. Someone who speaks out, publishes news. And we know that from this document, this free license to trade is published throughout the whole land by the crier. So perhaps the crier is the person who gets news out. Who spreads news out. Alright, we will call that today maybe a newspaper or internet or something like that. But this is a person whose job is to communicate news. Okay. So that's the first paragraph. Alright. So now we got a sense. We got this Dutch trader. The Dutch are coming. They're trading with this this new... this town called Wida. And they are now have... they have to pay a tribute to be able to have a free license to trade. And this is what they've done in the first paragraph. Okay. So why don't you take a few minutes and press pause in the video now. And now look at the other... the rest of the document. Okay. And I will highlight in a few minutes some of the key pieces of the rest of the document that you need to keep in mind. As well as Ben is talking about the soaps process of analyzing primary source documents. So, we have the first S with your speaker. Now let's talk about the occasion. The first paragraph. And by this time, you've read the rest of the document. So, the occasion is a description of the slave trade around 1700. So, Bosman is writing about the slave trade around 1700. And who's reading this? And we get to the audience in a moment, but this is for... written for potential new customers. So he's not just... not just writing to describe himself, but you could say that he's writing to let people know that this is the way that the Dutch do business in Africa with the slave trade. He may be writing to let future sea captains who participate in the slave trade for the Netherlands or the Dutch know how to do things. Okay. So the occasion there can be lots of occasions for this document. There are other things that we can extrapolate from what we see there in the primary social document. Audience. So, like we mentioned in the occasion, the audience could be potential new customers. New customers of Bosman, as he's a sea captain. One of his interests would be I have these enslaved people on board. I need to sell them when I get to listen to us, listen to how well we treat these enslaved people. Maybe you want to buy from us. So people may become very interested in the products of Bosman's business through his writing. So there's a lot of self-interest there. Now, one of the things to keep in mind is the context. Again, this is not one of the letters, but here we're talking about Guinea. So we're talking about this area here on the western coast of Africa. The western coast of Africa. So that's important to keep in mind. And now, what I'd like to do is look at one more paragraph in the document and then I'll close with the remaining part of the soaps process for looking at primary ocean documents. So, let's look at this paragraph. Alright? And I'll read that as you read along with me. You would really wonder to see how these slaves live on board for through their number sometimes for though I'm sorry their number sometimes amounts to six or seven hundred yet by the careful management of our masters of ships they are so regulated that it seems incredible. And in this particular and in this particular our nation exceeds all other Europeans for as the French, Portuguese and English slave ships are always foul and stinking on the contrary hours are for the most part clean and neat. And I think here you can see very clearly the purpose of this document why Bosman is writing this the audience that he wants to attract again he's saying hey look we're all in the slave trading business together we do things much better than the English and the Spanish. Yes, things are bad but we at least have clean ships they're neat if you read the rest of the document even talks about treating them treating the enslaved people fairly humanely as we see here the slaves are fed three times a day much better than they eat in their own country alright so he's being persuasive here trying to describe why the Dutch why if you're interested in slave labor you should always think of the Dutch first not the English, not the Portuguese not the Spanish, not the French but the Dutch this is a businessman trying to sell his sea captain business of slave trading okay other contextual things this is an image and if reading the document the enslaved people being packed in very tightly being naked as they're packed in in very inhumane conditions and even the statement that said they're fed three times a day better than they eat in their own country again that's a statement assuming that the Africans were backwards that they did not eat well that they did not have good things when they were in Africa not enslaved again so keeping in mind the undercurrent of the time right but also the undercurrent of racial thoughts of superiority of the Europeans, of this Dutchman and the thoughts of inferiority of the Africans okay so they're tightly packed in and this document written by Boseman kind of describes that the tight packing aboard these slave ships just like the one that Boseman is the captain of taking enslaved people from Africa to the new world alright so as we close we're going to talk about the last two essays so subject the topic covered here after reading this entire document is clearly the slave trade okay clearly the slave trade and if you have not read the entire document I'd like for you to press pause now and take a few minutes to read it in its entirety so the last s so what what is the significance why is this document even important and here it's your turn I'd like for you to think about this look at the document again closely think about what this document says to us about this time period think about what it says to us about racial ideas racial ideology what does it say about thoughts of racial superiority or racial inferiority what does this document say about the conditions of the enslaved people during the slave trade what does it say about thoughts of humanity or inhumanity when we're thinking about the slave trade the people the slave traders alright was profit their main motive or were they thinking about the humanity of the enslaved people so as you finish looking at the document I'd like for you to write an answer to this question it's a very general question broad question but so what so what after you spend maybe about 10-15 minutes writing that answer I'd like for you to give it to your facilitator thank you and see you next time