Colonialism

Colonialism Steven Spielberg's "Amistad" is centered on the legal status of Africans caught and brought to America on a Spanish slave ship. The Africans rise up and begin a mutiny against their captors on the high seas and are brought to trial in a New England court. The court must decide if the Africans are actually born as slaves or if they were illegally brought from Africa. If the Africans were born as slaves then they would be guilty of murder, but if their being brought here from Africa is illegal, they had the right to defend themselves. This was not such a simple issue since the slave trade had been banned by treaties at the time of the Amistad incident in 1839. The movie starts on board the Amistad. On the ship the leader of the Africans, Cinque, frees himself from his chains and frees the rest of his tribe. They slaves are being taken from a Havana slave market to another destination in Cuba. The two men who bought them are spared, and promise to take the slaves back to Africa. Instead, the Amistad is guided into US waters, and the Africans end up being tried in a New England court. Luckily, it is a Northern court. If the slaves had ended up in the South court, slaves, free, amistad, slave, men, brought, africans, supreme, movie, cinque, being, africa, wife, village, two, tried, slaves, south, ship, rest, real, off, new, legal, freed, former, england, born, been, back, america, against, work, while, were illegally, well-off, waters, was, once, van, understand, under, try, tribe, trial, translator, trade, together, time, this, was, they