The Slave Trade

by Hugh Thomas

  Other works of value for the Portuguese empire and slavery are by C. L. R. Boxer, Portugal Race Relations in the Portuguese Colonial Empire (Oxford, 1963), and Portuguese Society in the Tropics (Madison, 1965). For Portuguese trade in the seventeenth century, there is Frédéric Mauro, Le Portugal et l’Atlantique au xviième siècle, 1570-1670 (Paris, 1960), and two other works by the same author: “L’Atlantique Portugais et les esclaves, 1570-1670,” in Revista da Faculdade de Letras xxii (Lisbon, 1956), and Le Brésil du XVème siècle à la fin du xviiième siècle (Paris, 1977).

  Gilberto Freyre’s The Mansions and the Slaves, tr. Harriet de Onis (New York, 1970), remains an immensely rewarding work. See too two important books of C. L. R. Boxer, The Golden Age of Brazil (Berkeley, 1962), and The Dutch in Brazil (Oxford, 1957). For the Cacheu company there is Cândido da Silva Texeira, “Companhia de Cacheu,” Boletim do Archivo Historico Colonial (Lisbon, 1950). There is a fine study of Pombal’s new monopoly companies of Brazil by Carreira, As companhias pombalinas de navegaçao . . . (Bissau, 1969). Joseph Miller, Way of Death (Madison, 1988), is a pathbreaking work of distinction about the trade in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Angola. José Honorio Rodrigues, Brazil and Africa, Eng. tr. (Berkeley, 1964), is one of the best works on the whole subject of the trade to Brazil.

  The early Spanish slave trade can be followed in Vicenta Cortés Alonso, La Esclavitud de Valencia durante el reino de los reyes católicos (Valencia, 1964), and in Antonio Rumeu de Armas, España en la Africa Atlántica, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1956). For the astonishing trade in Caribbean Indians, see Carlos Deive, La Española y la esclavitud de los Indios (Santo Domingo, 1995). Georges Scelle’s La traite negrière aux Indes de Castille, 2 vols. (Paris, 1906), is still essential and even José Antonio Saco’s Historia de la Esclavitud, 5 vols. (Paris, 1875-1893), is still useful too. Vol. 2 and Vol. 3 refer to African slavery and were separately republished in 1938 in Havana with an introduction by Fernando Ortiz. There is much useful information in Consuelo Varela, Colón y los florentinos (Madrid, 1988). For Seville in the sixteenth century, see Enriqueta Vila Vilar, Los Corzos and los Mañara (Seville, 1991); and Ruth Pike’s two admirable volumes, Enterprise and Adventure (Ithaca, 1966), and Aristocrats and Traders (Ithaca, 1972). For Spain’s intellectual life, see Bernice Hamilton, Political Thought in Sixteenth Century Spain (Oxford, 1963); and for the mercantile life generally, Eufemio Lorenzo Sanz, Comercio en España con América, en la época de Felipe II, 2 vols. (Valladolid, 1979).

  The early days of the Caribbean can be examined in Carl Sauer’s pessimistic study, The Early Spanish Main (Berkeley, 1966), and several works of Luis Arranz (El Repartimiento de Albuquerque en 1512 [Santo Domingo, 1992], and Diego Colón I [Santo Domingo, 1993]). The Spanish relations with the Indians is followed in Lewis Hanke’s The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the New World (Philadelphia, 1949). Frederic Bowser’s The African Slave in Colonial Peru (Stanford, 1972), is far the best introduction to that theme. The best study of Las Casas is the remarkable work of Manuel Giménez Fernández, Bartolomé de las Casas, 2 vols. (Seville, 1953-1960), but see also Benjamin Keen and Juan Friede, eds., Bartolomé de Las Casas in History (De Kalb, 1971). There is as yet no good life of Bishop Fonseca. For pre-Conquest slavery, there is Carlos Bosch García, La esclavitud prehispánica entre los Aztecas (Mexico, 1944).

  For the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, see Pierre and Huguette Chaunu, Séville et l’Atlantique, 12 vols. (Paris, 1957), of which vol. 3, pp. 35-163, lists ships approved for slave voyages; Eufemio Lorenzo Sanz, Comercio en España con América, en la época de Felipe II, 2 vols. (Valladolid, 1979); Ruis Rivera et al., Los Cargardores de Indias (Madrid, 1992); Jonathan Israel’s Empires and Entrepôts (London, 1990). The asientos of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries are magisterially analysed by Enriqueta Vila Vilar, Hispanoamérica y el comercio de esclavos (Seville, 1977). For the diplomacy, see Jonathan Israel, Empires and Entrepôts (London, 1990).

  For the Spanish empire generally, see Leslie B. Rout, The African Experience in Spanish America (Cambridge, 1976). For Mexico, there is Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán, La población negra de México (Mexico, 1972), and Jonathan Israel’s Race, Class and Politics in Colonial Mexico (London, 1975). See also Eleanor Melville, A Plague of Sheep (Cambridge, 1994), and D. M. Davidson, “Negro Slave Control in Colonial Mexico,” HAHR xlvi, 1966. For Chile, see Rolando Mellafe, La introducción de la esclavitud negra en Chile (Santiago, 1959). For New Granada, see Nicolás del Castillo Mathieu, Esclavos Negros en Cartagena (Bogotá, 1982). See too two works of Jorge Palacios Preciados, La Trata de Negros por Cartagena (Tunja, 1973) and Cartagena de Indias, gran factoria de obra esclava (Tunja, 1975). For the trade to Buenos Aires there is Elena Scheuss de Studer, La Trata de Negros en el Rio de la Plata (Buenos Aires, 1958).

  For the Spanish trade in the late seventeenth century, see Marisa Vega Blanco, El Tráfico de Esclavos (Seville, 1984), and Irene Wright, “The Coymans asiento,” in Bijdragen voor Vaderlandische Geschiedenis en Oudeheidkunde, reeks vi, deel I, afleverung 1-2 (Arnhem, 1924). For Spain in the eighteenth century, there is Bibiano Torres Ramirez on the Cádiz company, La Compañía Gaditana de Negros (Seville, 1973).

  The opening up of Africa can be studied in Philip Curtin, Economic Change in Precolonial Africa: Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison, 1975); and Walter Rodney, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast (Oxford, 1970), though the latter underestimates the number of slaves in Africa. Benin can be studied in A. J. C. Ryder, Benin and the Europeans (London, 1969), and Dahomey in I. A. Akinjogbin’s Dahomey and Its Neighbours (Cambridge, 1966). See also Robin Law’s excellent books, The Oyo Empire (Oxford, 1977), The Slave Coast of West Africa (Oxford, 1991), and his extraordinary The Horse in African History (Oxford, 1980). For the region of the delta of the Niger, see Kenneth Onwuka Dike, Trade and Politics in the Niger Valley (Oxford, 1956), which illuminates the whole period (even if it concentrates on the nineteenth century); and David Northrup’s Trade without Rulers (Oxford, 1978). The best work on the Congo seems to me to be Anne Hilton, The Kingdom of Congo (Oxford, 1985). Trade with Central Africa can be studied in David Birmingham, Trade and Conflict in Angola (Oxford, 1966); and J. Vansina, Kingdoms of the Savanna (Madison, 1966). See too Phyllis Martin’s excellent The External Trade of the Loango Coast (Oxford, 1972). There is also John Thornton’s very interesting Africa and the Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World (New York, 1992), which illuminates the whole region. Evelyn Martin, The British West Africa Settlements (New York, 1970), has much to commend it. For a general introduction, see The Cambridge History of Africa, vol. 3, ed. Roland Oliver (Cambridge, 1977), and vol. 4, ed. Richard Gray (Cambridge, 1973). See too J. D. Fage, A History of West Africa (Cambridge, 1969); and A. G. Hoskins, An Economic History of West Africa (London, 1973).

  For the beginnings of the French slave trade, there is J.-M. Deveau’s France au temps des Négriers (Paris, 1994) and the same author’s La Traite Rochelaise (Paris, 1990). Robert Louis Stein, The French Slave Trade (Madison, 1979), is still useful. See also Gaston Martin’s pioneering Nantes au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1931), and his L’Histoire de l’Esclavage dans les colonies françaises (Paris, 1948). For the late seventeenth century, see E. F. Berlioux’s André Brüe (Paris, 1874), Jean-Baptiste Ducasse, Rélation du voyage du Guinée, ed. P. Roussier (Paris, 1935), and Marcel Trudel, L’esclavage au Canada français (Quebec, 1960). See too Abdoulaye Ly’s La Compagnie du Sénégal (Paris, 1958).

  For the eighteenth century, there is also Éric Saugera, Bordeaux Port Négrier (Paris, 1995). For the French trade generally there is also Jean Mettas’s remarkable Répertoire des expéditions françaises au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1978-1984). The study is completed by Serge Daget’s no less remarkable similar work on the nineteenth century, Répertoire des expéditions négriers françaises à la traite illégale (Nantes, 1988). See also Jean Meyer, L’armement nantais (Paris, 1967) and Pierre Dardel, Navires et marchandises dans les ports
de Rouen et du Havre au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1963), Maurice Bégouen-Demaux, Une famille de marchands de la Havre, 2 vols., 1948-51; for Honfleur, there is J. C. Benard, “L’armament honfleurais et le commerce des esclaves à la fin du XVIIIe siècle,” Annales de Normandie 10, 1960, 249-64; and Jean Mettas, “Honfleur et la traite des noirs au XVIIIe siècle,” RFHO lx, 1973.

  For the Dutch trade there is the formidable book of Johannes Postma, The Dutch in the Atlantic Slave Trade (Cambridge, 1990). See also Cornelius Ch. Goslinga, The Dutch in the Caribbean (Assen, 1971), J. F. Jameson, Willem Usselincx, Papers of the American Historical Association, 1887, and Jonathan Israel’s fine general work The Dutch Republic (Oxford, 1995). For the Dutch in Brazil there is C. L. R. Boxer’s work of that title mentioned above, and H. Wätjen, Das Hollandische Kolonial Reich in Brasilien (Berlin, 1921), of which there is a Portuguese translation. For the Dutch in New York, there is Oliver Rink, Holland on the Hudson (New York, 1986). For sugar see Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power (New York, 1985).

  For the English trade, there is G. F. Zook, The Company of Royal Adventurers (Lancaster, Penn., 1919), and K. G. Davies, The Royal Africa Company (New York, 1970). For Hawkins’s voyage, apart from the account in the Hakluyt volume, there is Antonio Rumeu de Armas’ accomplished Viajes de Hawkins a América (Seville, 1946), and J. A. Williamson, Sir John Hawkins (Oxford, 1927). Nigel Tattersfield, The Forgotten Trade (London, 1991), is an outstanding work on the slave trade from smaller English ports. For the slave trade aspect of the South Sea Company there is Colin Palmer’s excellent Human Cargoes (Urbana, 1981). For Liverpool, there are many works, such as C. N. Parkinson’s The Rise of the Port of Liverpool (Liverpool, 1952), and, still interesting, Agnes Mackenzie-Grieve’s The Last Years of the Liverpool Slave Trade (London, 1941). For Bristol, there is the great work of David Richardson, Bristol, Africa and the Eighteenth Century Slave Trade, 3 vols. (Bristol, 1986-1990). There is nothing satisfactory on London, though much can be found in David Hancock’s splendid Citizens of the World (New York, 1996), a study of Richard Oswald and his partners. Roger Anstey’s The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition (London, 1975), covers a lot of ground. For the eighteenth-century Caribbean, Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (London, 1964), is still good to read, but his economics about the decline of Jamaica are corrected by, for example, B. W. Higman, Jamaica Surveyed (Kingston, 1988).

  The best work on the slave trade to North America is Jay Coughtry’s The Notorious Triangle (Philadelphia, 1981), but he concentrates on Rhode Island, and J. A. Rawley’s The Transatlantic Slave Trade (New York, 1981), corrects this emphasis, especially chapters 10 to 25. See also Roger Anstey, “The North American Slave Trade 1761-1810,” RFHO LXII, 1975, 226-27. For the slave trading of individual territories in the United States, there is James G. Lydon on New York (“New York and the Slave Trade,” in WMQ 35, 1978), Darold Wax on Pennsylvania (“Quaker Merchants and the Slave Trade in Colonial Pennsylvania,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, LXXXVII, 1962) and Maryland (“Black Immigrants,” Maryland Historical Magazine 73, no. 1, March 1978). For Maryland see, too, the letters of Mary and Henry Tilghman in Maryland Historical Magazine, xxi, 20-39, 123-149, and 219-240, and Elizabeth Donnan on New England (“The New England Slave Trade,” New England Quarterly III, 1930). Philip Hamer’s wonderful collection of Henry Laurens’s papers (Columbia, S.C., 1968 onwards), are a constant pleasure and source of information for South Carolina. For Aaron Lopez, there is a poor biography by Stanley Chyet, Lopez of Newport (Detroit, 1970), and B. M. Bigelow, “Aaron Lopes, Merchant of Newport,” in New England Quarterly IV, 757, as well as Virginia Platt, “And Don’t Forget the Guinea Voyage,” WMQ, 3d series, XXXII (1975). The de Wolfs are considered rather lightly in George Howe’s Mount Hope (New York, 1959).

  The history of the British Caribbean is rich, and many excellent works have been written about it, though the treatment of the slave trade is less complete, and the introductions to Donnan’s splendid volumes of documents are probably the most instructive, especially Volume II.

  For the Danish entry into the trade, see Georg Norregåard, Danish Settlements in West Africa (Boston, 1966). For the Brandenburgers, see Adam Jones, Brandenburg-Prussia and the Slave Trade in Daget’s Colloque, cited below. For the Swedes, see Ernst Ekman, “Sweden, the Slave Trade and Slavery,” in RFHO LXII, 1975, 13.

  BOOK V: ABOLITION

  Thomas Clarkson’s history of abolition (The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Africa Trade, 2 vols. [London, 1888]) repays reading even now. John Francis Maxwell’s Slavery and the Catholic Church (London, 1975) reminds us of innumerable statements which the churchmen made against slavery. The works of Benezet, Granville Sharp, Jonathan Woolman, and all the Scottish philosophers, Hutcheson, Ferguson, Smith, and Wallace are all still very interesting. The great writer on the subject of slavery seems to me to be Montesquieu, though Diderot, Voltaire, and Rousseau of course repay examination. Raynal is still remarkable. See also David Davies’s Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca, 1966).

  For England there is Roger Anstey’s book cited above, and Seymour Drescher’s excellent Econocide: British Slavery in the Age of Abolition (New York, 1977) and Capitalism and Antislavery (London, 1986). The study of Wilberforce, Clarkson, and Pitt is best approached by means of biographies (R. I. and S. Wilberforce, but also Robin Furneaux for the first, and now John Ehrman for the last), though Clarkson’s life by Earle Leslie Griggs (Thomas Clarkson, The Friend of Slaves [London, 1936]) now seems old fashioned. The various reports for the Privy Council (1789), for the House of Commons (1790) are invaluable, as are the debates in the Houses of Commons and Lords, 1788-1807.

  The best book on United States abolition remains, astonishingly, W. E. B. Dubois’s The Suppression of the Atlantic Slave Trade to the United States (New York, 1896). The debates on the Constitution in 1787 have now been conveniently published in the Library of America, 1993. The subject of the French revolution and abolition has to be approached by a host of specialist monographs about the main characters, though the beginning of Serge Daget’s thesis on abolition in France is penetrating.

  BOOK VI: THE ILLEGAL ERA

  The most important general secondary work is David Eltis’s excellent Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New York, 1987). He knows that mine of information, FO 84 in the Public Record Office better than anyone. For Spain (and Cuba) there is David Murray’s masterly Odious Commerce (Cambridge, 1983), which led me to several interesting discoveries in the Spanish archives. The financial side of Spanish slaving is well considered in Angel Bahamonde and José Cayuela’s Hacer las Americas (Madrid, 1992), and a Cuban angle is to be seen in José Luciano Franco’s Comercio clandestino de esclavos (Havana, 1980): the author has used several interesting Havana archives, such as the papers of Joaquín Gómez. Rolando Ely’s Cuando reinaba el rey de azúcar (Buenos Aires, 1963), is a good study of social life in nineteenth-century Cuba. Pío Baroja’s novel Los Pilotos de Altura, new ed. (Madrid, 1995), gives a vivid impression of the reality of sailing on slave ships from Cuba. Arthur Corwin’s Spain and the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba (Austin, 1967), is still much the best picture of the complicated Spanish political impact of abolition, but H. S. Aimes’s A History of Slavery in Cuba (New York, 1907), cannot be overlooked. Rebecca Scott’s Slave Emancipation in Cuba (Princeton, 1985), argues interestingly how slavery and modern technology can be compatible.

  The end of the Brazilian slave trade is admirably treated in Leslie Bethell’s The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade (Cambridge, 1970), which directed me to many interesting sources. It may be supplemented by Joseph Miller’s Way of Death mentioned above, Mary Karasch’s Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro (Princeton, 1987) and Peter Conrad’s World of Sorrow (Baton Rouge, 1986); Conrad’s The Destruction of Brazilian Slavery (Berkeley, 1972), is also excellent. José Honorio Rodrigues’s Brazil and Africa, Eng. tr. (Berkeley, 1965), is the best study by a Brazilian, its chapter 6 being
a good study of abolition from a Brazilian angle.

  The French slave trade in the nineteenth century is now possible to study thanks to the homeric work of Serge Daget, both his admirable Répertoire of ships, cited above, and his unpublished thesis, La France et L’abolition de la traite des noirs (Paris, 1969).

  The British naval patrol is still best considered in Christopher Lloyd’s The Navy and the Slave Trade (London, 1949), but there is also W. E. F. Ward’s The Royal Navy and the Slavers (London, 1969), not to speak of E. Philip Leveen, British Slave Trade Suppression Policies (New York, 1977), and Raymond Howell’s The Royal Navy and the Slave Trade (London, 1987). A United States study on the same theme is Warren Howard’s. Many naval officers (Andrew H. Foote, Africa and the American Flag [New York, 1862]) also wrote memoirs.

  For Africa in the nineteenth century, there is Suzanne Miers’s Britain and the Ending of the Slave Trade (London, 1975), and there are also innumerable travelers (James Tuckey, Narrative of an Expedition to Explore the River Zaire [London, 1818]; John Adams, Sketches Taken During the Ten Years’ Voyage to Africa Between the Years 1786-1800 [London, 1827]; Pierre du Chaillu, Voyage en Afrique Équatoriale [Paris, 1863]). The evidence to Hutt’s committee of the House of Commons (London, 1849-1850), is the best of many British enquiries, for which there remains no equivalent in any other country. There is no adequate study of the United States illegal slave trade after 1808.

  General works on the slave trade are headed by Philip Curtin’s The Atlantic Slave Trade, A Census (Madison, 1969). There is also James Rawley, The Transatlantic Slave Trade, cited above, which has many virtues, but it concentrates on the North American trade and omits the post–1807 era. Herbert Klein’s The Middle Passage (Princeton, 1978), illuminates the whole field. Robin Blackburn’s volumes on slavery unfortunately appeared too late for me to take them into account.