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Opening the Slave Trade

Lacy K. Ford, Jr.

in Deliver Us from Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South

This chapter details how the first short-staple cotton boom linked cotton profits, slavery, and territorial expansion in momentous ways. It examines South Carolina's contested decision to reopen the ... More

This chapter details how the first short-staple cotton boom linked cotton profits, slavery, and territorial expansion in momentous ways. It examines South Carolina's contested decision to reopen the African slave trade to meet the labor demands of the cotton boom and supply slaves to the nation's new purchase, Louisiana.Less

Through a Looking Glass: Olaudah Equiano and African Experiences of the British Atlantic Slave Trade

David Richardson

in Black Experience and the Empire

This chapter focuses on the movement of Africans to America on British slave ships. The exact number of British ships that participated in the slave trade will probably never be known, but in the 245 ... More

This chapter focuses on the movement of Africans to America on British slave ships. The exact number of British ships that participated in the slave trade will probably never be known, but in the 245 years separating the first known English slaving voyage to Africa in 1562 and the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807, merchants in Britain despatched about 10,000 voyages to Africa for slaves, with merchants in other parts of the British empire perhaps fitting out a further 1,150 voyages. Altogether, the ships involved in these British and British empire voyages were responsible for carrying possibly 3.4 million or more enslaved Africans to the Americas, or one in three or four of all enslaved Africans entering the Atlantic slave trade during its history.Less

The Atlantic Slave Trade to 1650

Herbert Klein

in Tropical Babylons: Sugar and the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450-1680

By examining the Atlantic slave trade in the period prior to 1650, this chapter argues that despite its synchrony with the rise of sugar production, the slave trade evolved independently of the ... More

By examining the Atlantic slave trade in the period prior to 1650, this chapter argues that despite its synchrony with the rise of sugar production, the slave trade evolved independently of the expansion of the sugar economy. It describes the purchase of African slaves from European ships, including the high mortality of slaves in Atlantic slave trade voyages. Since data from this early period is admittedly difficult to obtain, the relative significance of the slave trade to the early sugar industry is considerably more problematic than has been previously thought.Less

“My Ninth Master was a European”: Enslaved Blacks in European Households in Egypt, 1798–1848

Terence Walz and Kenneth M. Cuno

in Race and Slavery in the Middle East: Histories of Trans-Saharan Africans in 19th-Century Egypt, Sudan, and the Ottoman Mediterranean

Many enslaved Africans lived in households headed by Europeans in Cairo and Alexandria during the nineteenth century. African slaves who were owned by the Europeans were generally Christians by ... More

Many enslaved Africans lived in households headed by Europeans in Cairo and Alexandria during the nineteenth century. African slaves who were owned by the Europeans were generally Christians by culture, if not always by frequent church attendance. They were often diplomats, doctors, merchants, military officers, or employees of the Egyptian government. As migrants to Egypt, European masters and African slaves alike acculturated to local views and practices. The practice of taking a slave wife has counterparts in other cross-cultural and colonial situations, and similar domestic arrangements were made by Egyptian men with African slave women. The working-class Saint-Simonian Voilquin and the high-society Saint Elme each elicited interesting, detailed, and intimate information from their male and female sources about the lives of African slaves in European households.Less

The Land of the Dead: The Imperial Capital, 1822–1871

Jeffrey D. Needell

in The Sacred Cause: The Abolitionist Movement, Afro-Brazilian Mobilization, and Imperial Politics in Rio de Janeiro

This chapter provides the urban context and describes the socioeconomic and political milieu of the movement. Its major points include the prospects for Afro-Brazilian political mobilization, ... More

This chapter provides the urban context and describes the socioeconomic and political milieu of the movement. Its major points include the prospects for Afro-Brazilian political mobilization, reviewing the latter up through 1871 and taking into account religious brotherhoods, urban festivals and culture, and mutual aid and labor organizations. It also reviews Afro-Brazilian divisions and creolization, with the end of the African trade, the ebb of African ethnicities, and the potential of religious synthesis. It concludes with an overview of the imperial political structure, highlighting the emperor’s increasing impact on cabinets and policy, and particularly the divisive Conservative passage of the gradualist abolitionist law of 1871 and the debate’s significance in terms of state-elite relations and slavery’s prospects.Less

Jews and New Christians in the Atlantic Slave Trade

Seymour Drescher

in Jews and the Civil War: A Reader

This chapter examines the role of Jews and New Christians in the Atlantic slave trade. It discusses the three phases of the African slave trade, each succeeding phase numerically larger than its ... More

This chapter examines the role of Jews and New Christians in the Atlantic slave trade. It discusses the three phases of the African slave trade, each succeeding phase numerically larger than its predecessor. In the century and a half of the first phase (1500–1640), nearly 800,000 Africans embarked on the “Middle Passage.” During the course of the second phase (1640–1700), 817,000 left Africa. In the final phase, between 1700 and British abolition in 1807, 6,686,000 were exported. This means that four out of every five Africans transported to the New World between 1500 and 1807 were boarded in the final phase. This chapter also considers how the slave trade opened up transoceanic niches of entrée and refuge that gave New Christians an initial advantage in human capital over other merchants. It also suggests that Jewish merchants were marginal collective actors in most places and during most periods of the Atlantic system: its political and legal foundations; its capital formation; its maritime organization; and its distribution of coerced migrants from Europe and Africa.Less

“Our Religion and Superstition Was All Mixed Up”: Conjure, Christianity, and African American Supernatural Traditions

Yvonne P. Chireau

in Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition

This chapter considers the centrality of supernatural traditions of Conjure in the African American spirituality, presenting examples from various historical contexts. Conjure is a magical tradition ... More

This chapter considers the centrality of supernatural traditions of Conjure in the African American spirituality, presenting examples from various historical contexts. Conjure is a magical tradition in which spiritual power is invoked for various purposes, such as healing, protection, and self-defense. From slavery days to the present, many African Americans have readily moved between Christianity, Conjure, and other forms of supernaturalism with little concern for their purported incompatibility. During the slavery period, persons believed to possess special powers were present in black populations throughout the United States, and African American practitioners of Christianity often mingled unusual practices with their traditions. African American testimonials describe how some slaves believed that the power of charms and amulets provided them with protection from abuse and racial subjugation by white slaveholders and affliction such as sickness and destitution. Supernatural practitioners often adopted symbols from Christian traditions for use in their own practices and rituals, such as protective charms and Christian accoutrements.Less

The Brazilian Internal Slave Trade, 1850–1888: Regional Economies, Slave Experience, and the Politics of a Peculiar Market

Robert W. Slenes

in The Chattel Principle: Internal Slave Trades in the Americas

This chapter defines “internal slave trade” as the practice of selling people within the society where they reside. For analytical purposes, however, the term is more usefully reserved for a system ... More

This chapter defines “internal slave trade” as the practice of selling people within the society where they reside. For analytical purposes, however, the term is more usefully reserved for a system of commerce in human beings that is relatively autonomous—with primarily endogenous determinants of prices and other characteristics—and that integrates local buyers and sellers within a region, colony, or nation, or even within an area that overlaps political boundaries, into a common market. The paradigm, of course, is the commerce in bondspeople in the American South after the abolition of the African slave trade to the United States in 1807. In Brazil, a similar mercantile system dealing in forced labor fully emerged only with the end of the African traffic to that country in 1850.Less

Irving's Voyages in the Transatlantic Slave Trade

in Slave Captain: The Career of James Irving in the Liverpool Slave Trade

This chapter discusses the complexities of the slave trade gleaned from Irving's letters. The African destinations mentioned in Irving's letters included some of the most important trading locations ... More

This chapter discusses the complexities of the slave trade gleaned from Irving's letters. The African destinations mentioned in Irving's letters included some of the most important trading locations for British ships in the late eighteenth century. All of the voyages in which he participated between 1783 and 1788 obtained slaves in the Bight of Biafra. In letters written on board the Jane, Princess Royal and Ellen, Irving also repeatedly commented on his own health and that of the officers, suggesting that the threat of illness was pervasive.Less

“Most Favourite Cargoes”: African Child Enslavement in the Nineteenth Century

Benjamin N. Lawrance

in Amistad's Orphans: An Atlantic Story of Children, Slavery, and Smuggling

Nineteenth-century slave traders recognized children as effective tools with which to avoid new slave trading restrictions and prohibitions. This chapter explores the contextual perimeters of ... More

Nineteenth-century slave traders recognized children as effective tools with which to avoid new slave trading restrictions and prohibitions. This chapter explores the contextual perimeters of children and child slaves in the nineteenth century against broader scholarly debates about childhood. Reuniting the orphans of La Amistad as an imagined slave ship family somehow provides a pattern for understanding the outline of the nineteenth-century African child slave experience. From the enslavement in their original villages, journey to the coastal prisons or barracoons, to the deep and dark activities of a slave ship, the chapter examines the different aspects of child enslavement within the context of the 1830s–40s illegal slave trade, along with the relationship between child enslavement and the expansion of prohibitions on slave trading.Less

Pan-Africanism in Olaudah Equiano’s: Interesting Narrative

Babacar M’Baye

in The Trickster Comes West: Pan-African Influence in Early Black Diasporan Narratives

This chapter discusses the most celebrated autobiography of a black writer from the West—The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Written by Himself. Vincent Carretta depicts the ... More

This chapter discusses the most celebrated autobiography of a black writer from the West—The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Written by Himself. Vincent Carretta depicts the book as being “motivated by a combination of factors,” including “a desire to recount his spiritual autobiography and an interest in outlawing the African slave trade.” Carretta, however, maintains that Equiano “may have invented rather than reclaimed an African identity” and that he may have also “invented his African childhood and his much-quoted account of the Middle Passage on a slave ship.” This thesis was challenged by G. Ugo Nwokeji’s revelation that “Equiano’s baptism in January 1759, arranged by his owner and his relatives, happened more than three years after his slave name and purported Carolina birthplace had appeared on record for the first time through the handiwork of his naval officer master, Michael Henry Paschal.”Less

Restitution Claims for Wrongful Enslavement and the Doctrine of the Master’s Good Faith

Robert Westley

in The Construction of Whiteness: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of Race Formation and the Meaning of a White Identity

This chapter begins with the suggestion made by Judge Posner in his opinion for the majority in the case of In re African-American Slave Descendants Litigation to the effect that the injuries exacted ... More

This chapter begins with the suggestion made by Judge Posner in his opinion for the majority in the case of In re African-American Slave Descendants Litigation to the effect that the injuries exacted by slavery were imposed on the slaves alone, and thus provide no standing to their descendants to sue for restitution of their ancestors’ injuries. Legal procedural doctrines such as standing or time limits or sovereign immunity have successfully blocked consideration by courts of contemporary claims for slavery reparations. In light of conflicting views about the significance of temporality, it has become clear that part of the challenge of understanding contemporary whiteness practices was to make a constructive return to their foundational moments during slavery, to determine what discourses governed the allocation of restitution in both law and equity when enslavement was acknowledged in some cases to have been wrongful, and no procedural doctrines blocked consideration of restitution on the merits.Less

The Nineteenth Century and After

BERNARD LEWIS

in Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry

The chapter discusses slaves during the nineteenth century. From the late eighteenth century onwards, there are numerous accounts by contemporary observers of the processes by which African slaves ... More

The chapter discusses slaves during the nineteenth century. From the late eighteenth century onwards, there are numerous accounts by contemporary observers of the processes by which African slaves were caught, transported, and sold in the markets of the Middle East and North America. The main purpose for which blacks were imported was domestic service. A certain number of free blacks also found employment. In Egypt their role was usually humble. Eunuchs were in considerable numbers for households from the palace downward. They were also employed in the service of mosques and made custodians of the tomb, which gave them an almost priestly status. By the nineteenth century, they were recruited overwhelmingly from Africa. In the course of the nineteenth century, black slaves or black freedmen were found to be occupying important positions and often exercised great power. This occurred frequently in Arabia.Less

Introduction: The Orphans of La Amistad

Benjamin N. Lawrance

in Amistad's Orphans: An Atlantic Story of Children, Slavery, and Smuggling

This book traces the lives of six African children in an attempt to demonstrate that the lived experiences of slave children are indeed recoverable, arguing that the role of African child slaves in ... More

This book traces the lives of six African children in an attempt to demonstrate that the lived experiences of slave children are indeed recoverable, arguing that the role of African child slaves in the illegal slave trade has been underestimated and their experiences misunderstood. A reassessment of the children's participation in the nineteenth-century Atlantic slave-trading networks reveals that the establishment of abolitionism marked the beginning of the child enslavement era. These six lives illustrate the broader experience of African child enslavement and mobility during the early to mid-nineteenth century, as well as the centrality of child mobility to the huge illegal trafficking enterprise supporting the nineteenth-century trans-Atlantic trade. The book shows how these six lives constitute an imagined Atlantic “slave ship family” born of fictional bond, molded by shared traumas, and united by a common goal of survival.Less

“That They Cease to Be Truly Slaves”: African Emancipation and the Collapse of Slavery

in Labor and Love in Guatemala: The Eve of Independence

This chapter examines the slave trade in Guatemala. It argues that Afro-Guatemalan slavery was dismantled gradually by the responses of slaves and slaveholders to the particular structures of slavery ... More

This chapter examines the slave trade in Guatemala. It argues that Afro-Guatemalan slavery was dismantled gradually by the responses of slaves and slaveholders to the particular structures of slavery as it existed locally. These structures were products of centuries-old Iberian understandings of slavery, and products of long-term social transformations—racial and cultural mestizaje in particular—in the colonial American context. Such transformations were beyond the control of legislation. Slavery itself was crumbling in Guatemala well before the new independent government issued the general emancipation. Across the generations preceding independence, African slaves had come to be integrated into the colony's Hispanic culture, society, and economy.Less

Restoration Legacies: Tragic Monarchs, Exotic and Enslaved

Laura J. Rosenthal

in Ways of the World: Theater and Cosmopolitanism in the Restoration and Beyond

This chapter looks at William Congreve's enormously popular but now unfamiliar play The Mourning Bride (1697) alongside Aphra Behn's play about an Indian queen, The Widow Ranter, and her heroic ... More

This chapter looks at William Congreve's enormously popular but now unfamiliar play The Mourning Bride (1697) alongside Aphra Behn's play about an Indian queen, The Widow Ranter, and her heroic novella about an enslaved African prince, Oroonoko. The Mourning Bride has become almost invisible in scholarship, but it remained one of the most frequently performed tragedies throughout the eighteenth century and consolidated Congreve's reputation as a serious artist. This tragedy persists mostly through the misquotation “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”. The discussion focuses on Zara, a powerful African queen reduced to captivity and humiliated by her European lover for whom she betrays her nation. Zara echoes the powerful Indian queens created by John Dryden. Dryden's Mesoamerican plays first appeared at the beginning of England's entry into the African slave trade in the form of a royal monopoly; The Mourning Bride appeared in the midst of a pamphlet war over the fate of the Royal African Company generated by the threat to its monopoly when its governor, James II, fled the country. While The Mourning Bride does not depict plantation slavery or the slave trade itself, it nevertheless registers the impact of trafficking in African bodies. Congreve's Zara evokes the exotic queens of the Restoration, but is a more complicated figure who demands respect for her dignity and empathy over her abuse. As the chapter suggests, Zara moved audiences not just as a “woman scorned,” but as an African who has been deracinated and enslaved.Less

Provincial Politics, Foreign Affairs, and Patronage: 1848–1853

in The Party of Order: The Conservatives, the State, and Slavery in the Brazilian Monarchy, 1831–1871

This chapter examines the issues of political patronage, provincial politics, and foreign affairs in Brazil during the period from 1848 to 1853. It describes the provincial political milieu of the ... More

This chapter examines the issues of political patronage, provincial politics, and foreign affairs in Brazil during the period from 1848 to 1853. It describes the provincial political milieu of the mid-century, discusses the costs and contradictions of political consolidation, and evaluates the local impact of the looming foreign-policy crises, particularly the African slave trade. This chapter also considers the failure of the saquaremas to resolve the conflicts between the orderly and ordering state they envisioned, the intervention of the emperor and the state's abuse in the hands of violent and competitive provincial oligarchies and the associated system of patronage and spoils.Less