Seasoning was a process conducted during the Atlantic slave trade

Atlantic slave trade

The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...

 for the purpose of "breaking" slaves.

History

The practice conditioned the African captives for their new lot in life; newly arrived African captives would have to be trained into the daily rigors that await them in the Americas. This training was carried out on Plantations in the Caribbean such as Jamaica.

Estimated mortality rates for this process vary from 7% to 50% with duration between one and four years.

Most slaves destined for island or South American plantations were likely to be put through this ordeal, though slaves shipped directly to North America bypassed this process. Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

held one of the most notorious of these camps.

The process of seasoning had a strong profit motive for example, as economists state the average price of adult male slaves in Jamaica in the 1770s was 52% higher than "New Negroes" (Africans who came to a New World).