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This introductory chapter by Robert Burroughs outlines the dimensions of the nineteenth-century transatlantic slave trade, and of British naval efforts against it. It then briefly reviews previous book-length studies of the naval suppression campaign, while explaining the present volume’s main aims: to come to a more nuanced understanding of the motivations behind Britain’s anti-slave-trade policies and actions; to highlight the impact of anti-slave-trade measures upon enslaved and formerly enslaved Africans, and the lack of attention to African perspectives in earlier writings about the subject; and to identify how understandings of the work of the anti-slave-trade squadron were developed through complex dialogues between and among its metropolitan architects and critics, and those who experienced it at the coal-face, as the idea of anti-slavery floated between ship and shore.

Richard Huzzey analyses Britons’ political commitment to slave-trade suppression, including the origins and evolution of policy in the context of domestic, international, and imperial politics. The suppression campaign was born of the unique conjuncture of British popular pressure and the conflict with Napoleonic France. The naval squadron became part of an 'anti-slavery state' in Victorian Britain, with both parties’ leaders posturing to show their commitment. After considering why a cross-party anti-coercionist movement failed to end the nation’s costly commitment to suppression in 1848-50, the chapter assesses the ways in which naval force advanced British interests as an aggressive imperial power and a supposed world hegemon. The suppression campaign rested on cultural and political, not directly economic, constructions of Britain’s national interest.

At the conclusion of the volume, Richard Huzzey and John McAleer assess the ways that British suppression of the Atlantic slave trade has been represented in history, memory, and commemoration, including the 2007 bicentenary of British abolition. Analysis of political rhetoric invoking the legacy of suppression suggests that suppression is still often represented as naval heritage or even a precedent for breaking international law. Evaluating museums and memorials to sailors, the chapter suggests that suppression has moved from patriotic comfort to discomforting anomaly in histories of Atlantic slavery, leading to the subject’s problematic placement at the margins of public history.

Mary Wills assesses officers’ experiences of naval suppression, with particular attention to their emotional commitment to the cause. Examination of their personal testimonies of daily life on the West African Squadron illuminates the conditions of service and officers’ understanding of their role on the West African coast. Typical responses include boredom, frustration and despondency, but also determination and dedication to duty. The chapter explores the motivations for service, including the financial gain offered by prize monies, and belief (or not) in the virtues of the antislavery cause. It also looks at the often fraught relations on board captured prize vessels en route to Admiralty courts, and officers’ attitudes toward and treatment of enslaved Africans in their care.

This chapter explains the understanding of the African end of the slave trade through an analysis of the Registers of Liberated Africans in conjunction with the revised edition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database (TSTD₂). The slave trade from Sierra Leone never came close to matching the export figures of the more active slaving centers south of the equator. By providing a linguistic identification of recaptive names from the Havana Registers and pinpointing the geographic regions in which they are currently used, an estimation of the point of enslavement for these recaptives is possible. Comparing the Rio Pongo results with the distances traveled by slaves from southern Sierra Leone ports leads to some noteworthy contrasts between the north and south. Thus, the potential that culturally significant evidence such as African names can have for shedding further light on the African end of the slave trade is demonstrated.

The chapter explores the creation of a U.S. branch of the transatlantic slave trade in the aftermath of U.S. independence. It looks at the central role played by Rhode Island merchants in this traffic, the tensions generated by the expansion of abolitionism in the region, and the broader political debates on the national level.

Chapter 3 discusses the impact of the slave trade act of 1807 and the multiple forms of U.S. participation in the slave trade during the 1810s. It shows how some forms became predominant over that period while others nearly disappeared. It also explores some of the broader political implications of the persistence of the slave trade after 1808 and the Missouri Crisis.

This chapter focuses on the practice of the slave trade to Bahia and Cuba in the first half of the nineteenth century, and offers a reassessment of the impact that processes and forms of enslavement and the transportation to the coast, and across the Atlantic, had on the shaping of plantation societies on the other side of the ocean. It also re-examines the figures of this trade with the purpose of making sense of the numbers of the trade to Bahia and Cuba through statistic and demographic methods. The ultimate goal is to engage with ongoing scholarly discussions around the origins of the enslaved men, women, and children who were sent to Bahia and Cuba from the ports of the Slave Coast.

This chapter attempts to make Africans, who played a crucial role in the formation of new cultures throughout the Americas, more visible. It discusses several studies of African diaspora in the Americas. Such studies can provide a better understanding of when particular African ethnicities started to become victims of the Atlantic slave trade, and of their final destinations in the Americas. The chapter also highlights the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, the best recent synthesis of the work of the quantification school of Atlantic slave trade studies.

This chapter by Robert Burroughs evaluates British depictions of encounters between naval crews, slaves and/or liberated Africans, and slave traders. Examining both fictional and non-fictional prose, it discusses: images of Africans, before and after contact with slave traders and naval officers; portrayals of European and American slave traders as ‘enemies of humanity’, or as romantic outcasts of the Atlantic world; constructions of Jack Tar as both opponent of the slave trade, and slave-like victim of officers’ tyranny; sailors’ indifference to the suffering of others, and crewmates, as a result of exposure to the slave trade; and the rise of the officer-hero.

Chapter 7 analyzes Afro-Caribbeans as participants in illicit commerce, but it also discusses smuggling’s impact on slavery in the coastal circum-Caribbean. People of color were involved in smuggling not only as contraband cargo to Venezuela but also often as active workers in the illegal marketplace. This chapter asks how smugglers amalgamated the slavery apparatus of Venezuela and its surrounding foreign colonies into the black market. Furthermore, how did Africans being trafficked illegally and smuggling conducted by the enslaved alter notions of property, criminality, and subjecthood? Venezuelan planters frequently sent their slaves to trade with unlicensed foreign merchants. These traders, in turn, sometimes employed enslaved people as sailors or porters on smuggling ventures. For enslaved and free people of color alike, contraband trade carried the prospects of wage earning and greater autonomy in labor, but also the risks of captivity and enslavement in Spanish dominions. The embargo of foreign contraband vessels produced thorny questions regarding the freedom or bondage of the slaves aboard. Competing legal jurisdictions, temporary manumissions, and opportunities for marronage only compounded these uncertainties.

The earliest Atlantic slave trade began in the Greater Senegambia. This region was an important source of African slaves, who were shipped to the Americas for the rest of the eighteenth century. This chapter argues that people from the Greater Senegambia have made rich demographic and cultural contributions to many regions in the Americas, especially in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. It also discusses the slave trade voyages recorded between Greater Senegambia and the Americas in The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. Records show that the United States was the most important place where Senegambians clustered after Europe legally entered the Atlantic slave trade.

Almost every major figure in the Scottish Enlightenment condemned slavery on moral, philosophical and economic grounds. Yet Scotland's involvement in the slave trade and plantation slavery was far more considerable than historians until very recently have recognised. Edward Long, the Jamaican planter, politician, and historian wrote in 1776 that one third of the (white) population of Jamaica, the largest slave island in the Caribbean, were from ‘Northern Britain.’ Robert Burns, author of ‘The Slave's Lament’ was within an ace of joining other young Scots who fled poverty or their past and became slave drivers on a plantation. Others profitably pursued medical, legal or commercial careers on the slave islands and many owners of sugar estates returned home to Scotland and built a significant houses or endowed schools. Slave ships left Scottish ports and many Scots crewed the much more numerous ones from Liverpool and Bristol. Richard Oswald, son of a Caithness manse, formed a consortium to buy a slave station on the Sierra Leone river and made £500,000 in exporting slaves to the Carolinas and the West Indies.

The monumental Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade database has its limitations. It tells us, however, that of the 12 million (or more) slaves embarked from Africa for America, around 2 million (or more) came from the Slave Coast. Between 1696 and 1730 – that is, before the rise of Dahomey – one-third of all slaves came from the Slave Coast, which was then the leading African supplier. But under Dahomey, and much to the dismay of the new rulers, that coast lost its predominant position. A relative decline set in, as the heavy-handed methods of the new masters of the coast turned out to be counterproductive.

This chapter analyses slave professions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the Indian Ocean. It explores the activities of the English East India Company in the Indian Ocean and the utilisation of slave labour within the company itself. It tackles the use of slaves in maritime industry; the obfuscation of slavery with titles that resembled employment; the movement and forced migration of slaves; the routes into slavery; methods of slave-stealing; and the slave professions - sailors, soldiers, interpreters, doctors, builders, gardeners, domestic slaves, and concubines. It concludes that slaves were a source of revenue for the company, and were forcibly relocated both to quell resistance and to further distribute and exploit their skillsets.

This chapter explores Anglo-American policy-making between 1891 and 1834, with a particular focus on policies concerning piracy, privateering, and slavery. It examines British policy concerning the Gulf of Mexico and territories under Spanish control; American policy regarding piracy and privateering; the effect of the Monroe Doctrine on international relations - as it declared the Americas as part of the US economic and strategic sphere, and warned European colonisers from interfering with South America; Monroe’s eventual compromise; slave trade policies; and the 1819 Anti-Slave Trade Act. American and British policy-making differed in many of these regards, particularly concerning slavery, but it concludes that they continued to maintain a co-operative relationship as it furthered their own economic interests to do so.

This chapter provides a further analysis of naval relations, piracy restrictions and the suppression of slavery between 1820 and 1830. It continues to document the anti-piracy stance of the US Navy during the increase and decline of piracy in the early 1820s. It also documents the British anti-piracy efforts, and discusses their perceived lacklustre effort as reported by US media outlets. It examines colonisation in detail, including the actions of the American Colonization Society on the West African coast, and the presence of the Royal Navy in West Africa. It concludes by stating that the Anglo-American relationship was heavily strained in this period due to conflicting attitudes toward slavery, yet despite tensions, they remained co-operative while combatting piracy.

This chapter analyses the repurposing of the Liverpool slave fleet after the British abolition of slavery in 1807. Williams’ asserts that the period following abolition was one of economic instability, despite the later success of the port with other forms of trade. His essay attempts to determine what became of each ship in the fleet, which trades their vessels were best suited to. Mitchell examines data from shipping registers to determine that the fleet was quickly repurposed, and made frequent voyages to Africa, the West Indies, and South America for different trade pursuit. The conclusion points to both the specialised features of slaving vessels - such as copper sheathing to protect the hull during tropical passage - and the steady growth of new trade opportunities both contributed enormously to the speedy re-deployment of the slaving fleet, despite social anxiety about the port’s future after abolition.