The Atlantic Slave Trade
“No African Trade, no Negroes, no Negroes, no sugar; no Sugar, no Islands, no Islands, no Continent,
no Continent, no Trade; that is to say farewell to your American Trade, your West Indian Trade.”
–Daniel Defoe, 1713
August 8, 1444
I. African and European origins
pre-modern slavery
slavery in Africa
factories and fortsElmina (est. 1482)
II. why Africans?
labor needs [Walvin, "Tastes of Empire"]
attitudes
maritime knowledge
III. overview
1440-1867 12,000,000 slaves shipped to Atlantic ports
mortality rate: 10-20%
Migration to British America
Britons Africans 1600-1800 1,042,100 2,333,150
IV. phases
A. origins
Sao Tome [map] > Spanish Caribbean (1526)
Brazil (1560)
New World plantation complex [image]
John Hawkins (1562) [Nat'l Archives exhibit]
B. the British and the sugar revolution
Barbados
Company of Royal Adventurers into Africa (1663)
Royal African Company (1672-1698)
1670s
British slave trade: 1660s-1807
regional sources of slaves [note especially the Bight of Biafra]
[source: Oxford History of the British Empire]
C. eighteenth-century height
1700-1800: +7,000,000 slaves embarked
1690s: 30,000/year 1790s: 85,000/year
six imperial systems: English, Portuguese, French, Spanish, Dutch, Danish
D. slave trading in the era of abolition
British abolition (slave trade - 1807; slavery -1833)
shift to free trade
1830-1850 1.3 million slaves shipped
Brazil and Cuba
V. captivity and the middle passage
Alexander Falconbridge's Account (1788)
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
V. Conclusion
"Britain Confronts Legacy of the Slave Trade" NYT (March 2007)
International Slavery Museum, Liverpool
