West Africa and the transatlantic slave trade: New evidence of long‐run trends

1997 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Eltis ◽  
David Richardson
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Long Run ◽  
New Evidence

British Legal Strategies and the Abolition of the Slave Trade

2020 ◽  
pp. 73-111
Author(s):  
Inge Van Hulle
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
British Government ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Foreign Office ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Legal Strategies ◽  
Model Agreement

Chapter 2 connects abolitionist efforts to induce the British government to reinvigorate its efforts to suppress the transatlantic slave trade from the 1840s onwards as the catalyst for the creation of new legal tactics. First, within the confines of the Foreign Office, a model standard agreement was devised that was to be concluded with African rulers, which furthered an agenda based on the idea of replacing the slave trade with ‘legitimate commerce’. The model agreement built on an existing tradition of including abolition clauses in treaties since the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. Second, the implementation of the model agreement ran parallel to the increase in commercial power and the use of force to suppress the slave trade through the use of naval blockades and the bombardment of the coastline of West Africa.

“Legitimate commerce” in the Eighteenth Century: The Royal African Company of England Under the Duke of Chandos, 1720–1726

2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 544-578 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew David Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Lower Cost ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Mineral Resources ◽  
Strategic Decision ◽  
Commodity Trade ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
British Trade ◽  
Slave Traders

Following the loss in 1712 of its previous monopoly over British trade with West Africa, the Royal African Company found itself unable to compete with smaller, lower-cost British slave traders and nearly collapsed entirely. Salvation seemed to arrive in 1720 in the person of James Brydges, the Duke of Chandos, who led a massive re-capitalization of the company and made the strategic decision to move its focus to the commodity trade between Europe and Africa and on the search for new botanical and mineral resources in Africa itself. While Chandos directed the RAC’s employees in implementing this radical new scheme, he kept it secret from his fellow shareholders, leading them to believe that his plans were aimed at revitalizing the company’s mature but declining line of business in the transatlantic slave trade. The Duke’s strategy, however, proved overly ambitious and failed to reverse the company’s decline.

Ahmed Bâba at-Timbuktî

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hamadou Adama
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Administrative Positions ◽  
Public Office ◽  
Islamic World ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Religious Identification ◽  
Legal Opinions ◽  
The City

Ahmed Bâba (1556–1627) was among the most prolific and the most celebrated of Timbuktu scholars of the 16th and 17th centuries. During his childhood he was educated and trained in Arabic law and Islamic sciences by his father, Ahmad, and other relatives. His principal teacher, the man he named the regenerator (al-mujaddid), was the Juula scholar Mohammed Baghayogho al-Wangarî, whose teaching he followed for more than ten years. Following the Moroccan occupation of Timbuktu in 1591, he was exiled to Marrakesh in 1594 and jailed for two years before he was released but obliged to remain in the city for many years. He was widely known both for his teaching and for the fatwas (legal opinions) he issued. He was offered administrative positions but declined them all in favor of teaching. In 1608, he was permitted to return to his hometown, Timbuktu, where he continued to write and teach until his death in 1627, but he held no public office there. His special field of competence was jurisprudence. He was also recognized for his abilities in hadith and wrote several works on Arabic grammar. He is probably best known for his biographical compendium of Mâlikî (founded by Malik ibn Anas died A.D. 795 is orthodox school of Muslim jurisprudence predominating in Sudanic Africa and the Maghreb) scholars, Nayl al-Ibtihâj bi tadrîs ad-dibâdj, a valuable supplement for the Western Islamic world to Ibn Farhûn’s ad-Dibâj al-Mudhahhab. His work specifically addresses issues relating to the significance of racial and ethnic categories as factors in the justification of enslavement. In the Bilâd as-Sûdân, Ahmed Bâba influenced the debate over slavery by relying on interpretations of Islamic precedent, which was invoked to protect freeborn individuals from enslavement. By extension, he impacted the transatlantic slave trade on the basis of religious identification with Islam and the desire to avoid the sale of slaves to non-Muslims, especially Christian Europeans on the coast of West Africa.

scholarly journals Windows of global exchange: Dutch ports and the slave trade, 1600–1800

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 422-441
Author(s):  
Cátia Antunes ◽  
Filipa Ribeiro da Silva
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Commercial Company ◽  
West Africans ◽  
West India Company ◽  
Economic Developments ◽  
Global Exchange ◽  
Port Structures ◽  
Dutch Experience

In 2008, Pierre Gervais contended that social and economic developments in the Atlantic were to be ascribed to an overwhelming European intervention in West Africa and the Americas. This article questions Gervais’s assumption by stressing how Europeans, West Africans and Americans – individuals and states – mutually influenced urban hierarchies and distributive hubs across three different continents, while arguing that these interactions and interconnections should be seen within a context of entangled histories. This contribution re-examines the Dutch experience of slave trade and shipping to assess the extent to which slave trading and shipping activities influenced port hierarchies in Europe, determined the organization of port hubs in West Africa and helped develop port structures in the Americas. This assessment is anchored in the data provided by the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, the collections of the Dutch West India Company and the Middleburg Commercial Company, and the notarial archives of Amsterdam and Rotterdam.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Mary Wills
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
National Character ◽  
Napoleonic Wars ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
The West ◽  
British Identity ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
The Impact

This chapter situates the activities of the West Africa squadron within several interconnected themes and contexts relating to the impact of the Britain’s Abolition Act of 1807. Britain’s abolitionist cause was regarded as an indicator of the national character, dedicated to morality, humanitarianism and freedom, and naval suppression fitted neatly into this narrative. The role of the Royal Navy in enforcing the 1807 Act transformed notions of British identity and evolving ideas of imperialism on the international stage. This chapter positions the book within the existing literature on the nineteenth-century campaign against the transatlantic slave trade, the role of the Royal Navy in the post-Napoleonic Wars period, and the British role in Africa more widely.

Slave Traders by Invitation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Finn Fuglestad
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Human Settlement ◽  
Local Setting ◽  
Slave Traders ◽  
Atlantic Slave Trade

The small Slave Coast between the river Volta and Lagos, and especially its central part around Ouidah, was the epicentre of the slave trade in West Africa. But it was also an inhospitable, surf-ridden coastline, subject to crashing breakers and devoid of permanent human settlement. Nor was it easily accessible from the interior due to a lagoon which ran parallel to the coast. The local inhabitants were not only sheltered against incursions from the sea, but were also locked off from it. Yet, paradoxically, this small coastline witnessed a thriving long-term commercial relationship between Europeans and Africans, based on the trans-Atlantic slave trade. How did it come about? How was it all organized? Dahomey is usually cited as the Slave Coast's archetypical slave raiding and slave trading polity. An originally inland realm, it was a latecomer to the slave trade, and simply incorporated a pre-existing system by dint of military prowess, which ultimately was to prove radically counterproductive. Dahomey, which never controlled more than half of the region we call the Slave Coast, represented an anomaly in the local setting, an anomaly the author seeks to define and to explain.

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