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Abstract
This essay investigates the factors that were involved in the development of an
intra-regional trade in enslaved Africans throughout the Americas. It traces the
beginnings of this intra-regional trade from the establishment of the Spanish
New World empire and its expansion, consequent the emergence of the plan
tation system in the British West Indies. It notes that even after the abolition
of the British slave trade in 1807, several thousands of enslaved persons were
traded between the various anglophone Caribbean territories. The trade created
multiple middle-passage' experiences for many of the enslaved and consider
ably increased the trauma of enslavement. The essay also notes the involvement
of Danish, Dutch and Swedish traders in the trade.
Introduction
The commemoration of the two-hundredth centennial of the abolition
of the British slave trade in 2007 has provided an opportunity for histo
rians to revisit the nature and scope of the African holocaust. For many,
the fact that for over three hundred years there were in excess of 25,000
voyages, disembarking more than eleven million persons (some esti
mates go as high as twenty million or more) in the New World, illus
trates the large-scale, involuntary migration of Africans.1 The numbers,
however, do little to illustrate the horror and sheer brutality of the trade,
except when juxtaposed with statistics on mortality and eyewitness
descriptions of the treatment of the enslaved.
The Journal of Caribbean History 42, 1 (2008): 46-66
46
48 Pedro L. V. Welch
Puerto Rico experienced their own sugar revolutions". With that came
a major surge in the importation of enslaved labourers.
For Spanish America, it appears that the major transit points, in order
of importance, were Cartagena in Colombia, Vera Cruz in Mexico,
Caracas in Venezuela, Porto Bello in the Isthmus and Callao in Peru.
Once trade with the Dutch expanded after 1640, Curaao became an
important transit point which fed into the trade of these Spanish ports.
Thus, we are informed that Slaves by the thousands over the centuries
entered the New World at Cartagena, sometimes having been
'refreshed' in the Caribbean.. .. Cartagena became the principal entre
pt of Spanish America. Crossroads of empire, it held the famous
Cartagena fair which drew buyers in great numbers from the
provinces.8 Yet, we must also note that some of the enslaved shipped
through Cartagena to other Spanish centres might have begun their mis
erable New World existence in other locations such as Curaao and, as
we shall discover when we look later at Spanish-English collaboration
in the intra-regional slave trade, from English ports such as Kingston in
Jamaica and Bridgetown in Barbados.
Notwithstanding the importance of the Spanish trade in enslaved
Africans during the formative years of European conquest and settle
ment, the major expansion of the slave trade is associated primarily
with the British colonies in the New World. After all, Barbados was the
first territory to experience the 'sugar revolution', and by the 1660s it
became the premier centre for a re-export trade in enslaved Africans.
Our attention, therefore, turns to the experience of the English-speak
ing New World.
The early years of the transatlantic slave trade in the English-speak
ing New World are associated with a struggle between the Royal African
Company (RAC) and those who clearly recognized the considerable prof
its that might accrue from involvement in the trade. The RAC began its
life in 1660 as the Company of Royal Adventurers TVading to Africa.
This earlier, joint-stock company received a charter to trade in Africa in
that year and a revised charter in 1663. Its early capitalization was
assured by investment from persons drawn from the upper echelons of
English society and even from the king himself.
In the first period of its existence, the company began to farm out
some of its trade by licensing so-called private or separate traders. Thus,
by the time that its name changed to the RAC, it had a long practice of
farming out some of its trade to others. Quite apart from its licensing of
private traders, the RAC was faced with tremendous competition from
50 * Pedro L. V. Welch
52 Pedro L. V. Welch
from the island's position as a major hub for market intelligence and
from its geographical position as the easternmost island in the
Caribbean chain. Shipping data for 1680-1738 records an average of
forty-one vessels per year docking at the various ports (Bridgetown,
Holetown, Oistins and Speightstown) and an outward-bound traffic
averaging eighty-one vessels per year to the other islands (roughly
twenty-five per cent of the total outward-bound shipping). George
Pinckard, a doctor attached to the British Caribbean fleet in the 1790s,
noted that another aspect of Bridgetown's growth as a port lay in the
excellent victualling services it offered. He observed that "most of the
West India trading ships recruit(ed) their stock at Barbados". Bridgetown
was both the "busy Thames" and the "London" of the West Indies.13
The British Naval Office shipping lists show that, of ninety-seven
vessels arriving at Barbados between 27 April and 3 July 1733, at least
seventy-five of them traded between that island and other Caribbean
and North American ports. Fifteen of these vessels were registered in
Barbados and thirty-eight in North America. Twenty-six of some ninetyone outward-bound vessels in this same period headed for Caribbean
and North American destinations.14 When one realizes that a consider
able smuggling trade existed between Barbados and these islands, as
well as with the French and Spanish Caribbean, it becomes possible
that these official statistics may well represent only a small proportion
of the real volume of trade between Barbados and the rest of the
region.
It seems that much of the trade was carried on in small vessels
owned by local merchants and mariners. For example, in a petition of
30 October 1772, Bridgetown merchants complained that the imposition
of a duty, 2s 6d per ton on all vessels entering the port, was inimical to
their interests. They referred to an act of 30 May of that same year, enti
tled "An Act to Encourage the Inhabitants of this Island to Become the
Owners of Small Vessels", and observed that there was a considerable
number of small vessels (schooners) "commonly commanded by the
good Inhabitants and Natives of this island and employed in trading
with the neighbouring colonies. . . . [T]he said vessels generally make
from twelve to fifteen voyages within a month.'15
Our review of the shipping returns for the eighteenth century does
not indicate an inter-colonial shipping trade of the frequency reported
here by the Bridgetown merchants. It is quite probable that the petition
ers were revealing a lot more of their activities than they had intended.
The small vessels used in the local trade were also involved in a clan-
destine contraband trade. This trade made use of a class of vessel which
could slip far inland along the rivers and creeks under the cover of dark
ness to offload and load their illegal ware. Their owners could not be
expected always to comply with naval and shipping regulations, and, as
a result, these vessels did not often show up in the official returns.
Perhaps this was the experience that Olaudah Equiano, an enslaved
African, reported as he traversed the Caribbean waters in a sloop which
discharged its cargo several times up rivers and creeks. Notwithstanding
the evidence of illegal trade, the petitioners' complaint also indicates a
vigorous official trade.
The intra-regional trade played a major role in the expansion of the
Bridgetown port. Moreover, the position of the island, at the hub of a
regional trading system, is an underlying factor in the self-consciousness
of an indigenous mercantile class. In 1807, the merchants petitioned
the Colonial Office in London for the extension of free-port status to
Bridgetown. It was not the first time that this had been suggested, but
the impetus at that time appears to have been the granting of free-port
status to Dominica, Jamaica and Grenada. This threatened to draw away
considerable trade from Barbados, and the merchants felt constrained
to remind His Majesty's Board of TYade" that Bridgetown was hitherto
the Chief Mart of TYade". Moreover, they argued that Barbados, 'being
placed to the Windward of all the other Islands under your Majesty's
Dominion in the West Indies affords it an opportunity of drawing to
itself full benefits of such a Free Port".16 It might well have been the
possibility of making substantial profits from the slave trade that
prompted these responses. Barbadian investors might also have noted
that a considerable trade in enslaved Africans took place between
Dominica and the nearby French islands, particularly at a time when the
British had occupied these territories.
Ian Steele's path-breaking study of communications in the Atlantic
World has identified other advantages that facilitated Bridgetown's dom
inance in the inter-colonial and metropolitan-colonial trade. Steele notes
that, in the late seventeenth century, Bridgetown and Boston were "usu
ally first to be favoured with news from Stuart England, and the volume
and seasons of their shipping connections with each other further
enhanced their advantage as sources of news". He states further that
"Whether it was news concerning market prices of sugar, merchant or
naval shipping that had entered the Caribbean . . . Barbadians were
well placed to be among the first to know the westbound news. . . .
English colonial shipmasters, anxious to maximize the safety and yield
54 Pedro L. V. Welch
Table 1: TYade in Enslaved Africans to Southern US States by Selected Caribbean Countries for Selected Years, 1710-1787
Caribbean Countries
Years Antigua
Virgina
1710-1718
1727-1769
Total
South Carolina
1752-1754
1755
1757
1759
1763
1764
1765
1769
1771
1772
1783
1784
1785
1787
Total
110
409
519
Montserrat
Anguilla
Barbados
Bermuda
Jamaica
1,877
3,152
5,029
4
4
103
417
520
78
8
8
35
35
Nevis
St Kitts
13
13
2
1,068
1,070
534
100
200
200
50
170
160
40
39
30
90
"
20
150
50
262
271
120
25
20
30
12
140
"
150
1,787
729
65
8
-
"
218
Source: Adapted from Elizabeth Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America (New York: Octagon Books, 1969),
4:175-234, 301-14, 375-413, 428-90.
57
Table 2:
Years
Barbados
Bermuda
Curaao
Jamaica
1715
1716
3
7
29
52
-
146
12
6
-
3
4
9
81
4
-
18
2
-
9
-
1717
1718
1719
1720
1721
51
9
32
30
4
37
5
4
12
12
6
-
70
32
1725
25
35
1726
1727
10
112
6
4
145
5
93
50
16
12
1728
1729
1730
40
22
8
5
1
7
11
1731
48
44
76
21
42
47
1732
13
24
75
1733
1734
16
2
131
21
1736
12
115
1738
4
24
3
9
16
-
30
88
4
2
-
21
37
1722
1723
1724
1739
1740
1741
1743
1750
12
7
4
4
3
2
-
1
1
-
1763
5
9
-
1765
30
Total
403
511
82
109
1,315
1754
58 Pedro L. V. Welch
^1
was
often
Olaudah Equiano
/http://hum.lss.wisc.edu/bplummer/hist330/olaudah.jpgl
a
witness
to
cruelties
of
every
kind, which were exercised on my unhappy
fellow slaves. I used frequently to have differ
ent cargoes of new Negroes in my care for
sale; and it was almost a constant practice
with our clerks, and other whites, to commit
violent depredations on the chastity of the
female slaves. . . . When we have had some of
these slaves on board my master's vessels to
carry them off tQ other islands or to Africa,
bility. Later, after his recovery, Brace was handed over to his purchaser and
served with him on his ship, until he was sold later to another purchaser in
Boston. After several changes in ownership, he became the property of a family
called Stiles and, eventually, because of his action in the American Revolution,
he received his freedom. His narrative, dictated to a white American, Benjamin
Prentiss, reveals a story of violence and paints a vivid picture of the plight which
awaited the African enslaved person in the New World. The Middle Passage
experience was repeated several times in his life as he was traded from enslaver
to enslaver.24
60 Pedro L. V. Welch
62 Pedro L. V. Welch
In the case of the Danes, Sven Green-Pedersen has estimated that about
43,000 enslaved persons were re-exported from St Croix and St Thomas
over the period 1733 to 1802. Moreover, with the granting of free-port
status to St Thomas, a not-inconsequential transit trade developed. His
estimate, that over 26,000 enslaved persons were traded from St Thomas
over the period 1785 to 1807, reveals something of the scale of the trans
portation of enslaved persons.38
Neville Hall's research on the slave society of the Danish West Indies
also indicates that the free-port status of St Thomas stimulated a tran
sit trade in enslaved persons. It also indicates that other free ports at
Kingston, St Georges, Grenada, Bridgetown and Nassau participated in
such a trade.39 However, as we have pointed out earlier, the existence of
a vigorous contraband trade suggests that the scale of human suffering
far surpassed anything that the raw statistics might indicate. In addition
to these observations on the transit trade in the Danish West Indies, we
might note that some North American ports functioned as transit points
in an intra state trade. As a result of a growing market for enslaved
persons in North America after the 1740s, New Jersey became an impor
tant transit centre for other states. As the governor of New Jersey
wrote in 1762, large numbers of enslaved persons were landed in New
Jersey, 'to be run into New York and Pennsylvania".40 Indeed, a New
Jersey-West Indies nexus may also be identified, in which traders in
the anglophone Caribbean were advised to use New Jersey as a trading
centre to avoid the duties paid on enslaved persons elsewhere in the
North American market.41
Our survey, therefore, has identified some of the major transit points
and routes along which enslaved persons were transported over the
period between the first entry of Europeans and the early nineteenth
century. We will end our discussion by returning to the question of the
intra-regional trade in the British Caribbean territories after 1807, par
ticularly since our discussion is set in the context of a commemoration
of the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807.
64 Pedro L. V. Welch
their own trade in enslaved Africans. The Americans also passed legis
lation to abolish the trade. For our purposes, however, the task is to
assess the course of the intra-colonial trade in this period of abolition
ism. In each case, the passage of legislation was one thing; the issue of
policing the system was another. In the case of the Danes, Hugh Thomas
informs us that, even after 1808, ships continued to conduct the slave
trade under Danish flags, and, in the case of the Americans, no special
machinery was set up to enforce the abolition of the trade.42 In short, for
all the legislative statements of the various authorities, the misery of
the intra-colonial trade continued for some time.
British abolition, likewise, did not mean an immediate end to the
sufferings, under the British hand, of newly enslaved Africans. In this
context, we might note Professor Hilary Beckles's discussion on the
post-1807, intra-Caribbean slave trade. In his examination of the contri
butions that Williams and Eltis made to this area of historical enquiry,
he observes that neither of them included in their calculations the thou
sands of 'liberated Africans', persons captured on the seas from illegal
slavers by the British Navy and employed as apprentices in labor-starved
colonies".43 Beckles's observations remind us that, the statistical argu
ment apart, what was represented in the trade was continued despair
for countless thousands of persons who had been separated from loved
ones either from their place of origin in Africa or, in the case of enslaved
Creoles, from their colonial residences.
Barry Higman has also paid some attention to the post-1807, intraCaribbean slave trade, noting that Eltis's statistics do not cover the
period after 1830, and that some transit points were not included in the
latter's examination of the trade. Thus, he identifies the Virgin Islands,
Montserrat, Nevis and Anguilla as missing from Eltis's statistical survey,
with the Virgin Islands emerging as significant suppliers" to TVinidad.44
Higman's estimate of 13,500 enslaved Africans being shipped to
Trinidad and Demerara-Essequibo from other Caribbean transit points,
in the period between 1808 and 1825, provides some additional basis for
considering the cost in human suffering. When we take the various esti
mates that first Williams, and later Eltis and Higman, provided, and
link them with the "thousands of liberated Africans" that Beckles iden
tified as requiring inclusion in such estimates, it is clear that the post
abolition situation for the intra-Caribbean slave trade requires closer
examination of what exactly was achieved by abolition in 1807.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
See David Eltis et al., The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 5-6. They refer to higher
estimates of about fifteen million, although they suggest that the data tend
towards downward revision. However, whether the lower or higher esti
mates are used, the acknowledgement of fairly large mortalities in Africa,
on the march towards the coast and on the Middle Passage, as well as the
fact that much of the trade was simply not reported, might support consid
erable upward revision.
Elizabeth Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the Slave Trade, 3 vols. (New
York: Octagon Books, 1969).
Philip Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (London: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1969), 57.
See Eric Williams, The British West Indian Slave Trade after its Abolition
in 1807', Journal of Negro History 27, no. 2. (1942): 175-91; David Eltis,
"The TVaffic in Slaves between the British West Indian Colonies,
1807-1833', Economic History Review 25, no. 1 (1972): 55-64.
Wiliams, 'British West Indian Slave Trade", 178.
Ibid., 191.
Eltis, "lYaffic in Slaves', 56.
James A. Rawley, The Transatlantic Slave Trade (New York: Norton, 1981),
52-53.
K.G. Davies, The Royal African Company (London: Longmans, 1960), 144.
Donnan, Documents, 2:241.1 have modernized the spellings in the passage
in the interest of consistency.
Ibid.
Ibid., 241.
George Pinckard, Notes on the West Indies (London: Longmans, 1806), 1:443.
Barbados National Archives: Data extracted from the Naval Office Shipping
Lists for 1733.
Barbados National Archives: Petition of Bridgetown merchants to the
Barbados Council, Minutes of the Council, 20 October 1772.
British National Archives: Colonial Office (CO) 28/61/120, Bridgetown
Merchants' Petition to the Board of TVade, 18 December 1787.
Ian K. Steele, The English Atlantic 1655-1806 (London: Oxford University
Press, 1986), 27-28.
David Galenson, Traders, Merchants, and Slaves: Market Behaviour in Early
English America (London: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 36.
See Jeunes B. Hedges, The Browns of Providence Plantations (Providence:
Brown University Press, 1968), 74-80.
See Virginia B. Platt, 'And Don't Forget the Guinea Voyage: The Slave TVade
of Aaron Lopez of Newport*, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 2, no. 4
(1975): 601-18.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
Notes on Contributors
Heather Cateau is Lecturer in History at the University of the West
Indies, St Augustine Campus, lYinidad and Tobago.
Alan Cobley is Professor of History at the University of the West
Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados.
Claudius Fergus is Lecturer in History at the University of the West
Indies, St Augustine Campus, Trinidad and Tobago.
Richard Goodridge is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of
the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados.
Verene A. Shepherd is Professor of History at the University of the
West Indies, Mona Campus, Jamaica.
Alvin O. Thompson is Emeritus Professor of History at the
University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados.
Pedro Welch is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of the
West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados.