barracoon

{{other}}{{Short description|Historic barracks used for enslaved or criminals}}

File:Slave baracoon, Sierra Leone, 1849.jpg

A barracoon (an adaptation of Portuguese barracão, an augmentative form of the Catalan loanword barraca ('hut') through Spanish barracónCollins English Dictionary. HarperCollins Publishers. 1991. {{ISBN|0-00-433286-5}} ) is a type of barracks used historically for the internment of enslaved or criminal human beings.

In the Atlantic slave trade, captured individuals were temporarily transported to and imprisoned at barracoons along the coast of West Africa, where they awaited forced transportation across the Atlantic Ocean. A barracoon simplified the slave trader's job of keeping the people destined for slavery alive and in captivity, with the barracks being closely guarded and the captives being fed and allowed exercise.{{cite book|last=Rodriguez|first=Junius P.|title=The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery, Volume 1|year=1997|publisher=ABC-CLIO|pages=73}}{{cite book|last=Lloyd|first=Christopher|title=The Navy and the Slave Trade: The Suppression of the African Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century|year=1968|publisher=Routledge|pages=29–30}}

The barracoons varied in size and design, from small enclosures adjacent to the businesses of European traders to larger protected buildings.{{cite book|last=Gomez|first=Michael Angelo|title=Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South|year=1998|publisher=UNC Press|pages=155–156}} The amount of time enslaved persons spent inside a barracoon depended on their health as well as with the availability of slave ships. Many captive enslaved individuals died in barracoons, some as a consequence of the hardships they experienced on their journeys and some as a result of their exposure to lethal European diseases.{{cite book|last1=White|first1=Deborah|title=Freedom On My Mind|date=2013|publisher=Bedford/St.Martens|location=New York|page=23|edition=1}}