scholarly journals Tricks of the Slave Trade

2017 ◽  
Vol 91 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Edgardo Pérez Morales
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Slave Traders ◽  
Cuban Sugar ◽  
Trading Activities

Around 1808, Spaniards’ ability to outfit and successfully complete slaving expeditions to Africa paled in comparison to the skill of French and British slavers. In the wake of British Abolitionism and the Cuban sugar revolution, however, some Spaniards learned the tricks of the slave trade and by 1835 had brought over 300,000 captives to Cuba and Puerto Rico (most went to Cuba). This article presents evidence on the process through which some Spaniards successfully became slave traders, highlighting the transition from early trial ventures around 1809–15 to the mastering of the trade by 1830. It pays particular attention to the operations and perspectives of the Havana-based firm Cuesta Manzanal & Hermano and to the slave trading activities on the Pongo River by the crewmen of the Spanish ship La Gaceta. Although scholars have an increasingly solid perception of the magnitude and consequences of the Cuba-based trade in human beings in the nineteenth century, the small-scale dynamics of this process, ultimately inseparable from long-term developments, remain elusive. This article adds further nuance to our knowledge of the post-1808 surge in the Spanish transatlantic slave trade.

scholarly journals Fifty Shades of Trade

2019 ◽  
Vol 93 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 41-68
Author(s):  
Ryan Espersen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Political Environment ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Illicit Trade ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Slave Traders

Abstract From 1816 to the 1830s, the islands of St. Eustatius, Saba, St. Thomas, St. Maarten, and St. Barts were actively engaged with illicit trade in ships, prize goods, and the transatlantic slave trade. Ships’ crews, governors, and merchants took advantage of the islands’ physical, political, and legal environments to effectively launder goods, ships, and people that were actively involved in these activities. St. Thomas stands out due to the longevity of its status as a regional and international hub for illicit trade at the end of Atlantic and Caribbean privateering and piracy. Within this social and political environment, this paper will unveil the tensions between international, regional, and local interests that drove merchants and colonial officials on St. Thomas to engage with illegal transatlantic slave traders, privateers, and pirates, during the early nineteenth century. Secondly, this paper will reveal the processes through which these relations occurred.

Circuits of wealth, circuits of sorrow: financing the illegal transatlantic slave trade in the age of suppression, 1850–66

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 409-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. E. Harris
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Capital Flows ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
The United States ◽  
Final Phase ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Global Commerce ◽  
Slave Traders ◽  
Slave Ships ◽  
Financial Arrangements

AbstractSlave traders forced more than 1.65 million captive Africans aboard illegal transatlantic slave ships during the nineteenth century. This article focuses on the final phase of this brutal traffic, between 1850 and 1866. It argues that slave traders sustained their illicit industry, in large part, by strategically coordinating their financial arrangements against a rising tide of international suppression. One key tactic was for slave trade investors in the United States, Cuba, Africa, and Iberia to lower the risks of interdiction by joining forces and co-financing voyages. Another was to combine with an international cast of merchants and bankers, who helped them launder slave trade capital and transmit it to their distant allies. This capital was concealed within broader currents of global commerce, which was, in turn, spurred by the growth of free trade in the nineteenth century. These myriad alliances and capital flows undergirded the trade until its final extinction in the 1860s.

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.

The United States and the Contraband Slave Trade to Brazil, 1831–1856

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonardo Marques
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Multiple Forms ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Slave Traders

Chapter 5 discusses the forms of U.S. participation in the transatlantic slave trade to Brazil during the illegal era. It shows how Portuguese and Brazilian slave traders employed multiple U.S. resources in the traffic and the political tensions generated by the multiple forms of U.S. participation in the slave trade.

scholarly journals O Atlântico enfermo e os agentes da saúde no período do tráfico ilegal

Afro-Ásia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaori Kodama
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Yale University ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade

<p>Resenha de:<br />BARCIA, Manuel. <em>The Yellow Demon of Fever: Fighting Disease in the Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Slave Trade</em>. New Heaven: Yale University Press, 2020. 269p.</p>

Introduction

Slave No More ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Aline Helg
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Multidimensional Approach ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Slave Resistance ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
Personal Property

This introductory section presents the historiography of the slave trade and the humanity of the slaves involved. How did slaves express themselves as human beings and social actors in their own right, when the laws of the time primarily considered them to be personal property? Spanning the early sixteenth century to 1838 and considering the entirety of the continental and Caribbean Americas, the author utilizes a multidimensional approach to conduct a long-term comparative study of the Americas, revealing the breadth and success of actions taken by slaves to liberate themselves long before abolitionism. This section also examines the particular circumstances of slaves and the actions of slaves who were able to obtain their own freedom, which reveals how slaves ultimately sped up the abolition of slavery. Looking at various forms of slave resistance also demonstrates the affirmation of slaves' intrinsic humanity. Finally, the introduction provides a review of secondary literature that serves as the foundation of Helg's book.

Revolution

Atlantic Wars ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 252-273
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Plank
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
The United States ◽  
Revolutionary Era ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
The Common ◽  
Moral Superiority

Chapter 11 traces the common origins and consequences of revolutions in various regions of the Atlantic world. In Europe and much of the Americas, a new military ethic developed, promoting patriotic and loyal service and condemning mercenaries and foreign interventionists. Campaigners against the transatlantic slave trade sought to dissociate Europeans and Americans from African violence. In the Americas, revolutionary conflict fuelled racial and communal animosity. Revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries sensed their own moral superiority and showed contempt for their opponents. Anger, fear, and the desire for vengeance fed on each other, in some places leading to genocidal violence. In the early nineteenth century the United States condemned British aid to indigenous American warriors and expressed general opposition to European military intervention in the newly independent American republics. National and imperial policies adopted in the revolutionary era broke the early modern pattern of transatlantic war.

scholarly journals Slaves and Slave Trade in the Timor Area: Between Indigenous Structures and External Impact

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-33
Author(s):  
Hans Hägerdal
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Local Systems ◽  
Indonesian Archipelago ◽  
External Impact

Abstract This study rethinks the patterns of slave-holding and slave trade that can be discerned in small-scale societies in the Timor region of the Indonesian archipelago, especially Timor, the Solor and Alor Islands, Rote, and Savu. It studies how European powers—the Dutch and the Portuguese—influenced the trade in enslaved human beings and how this was balanced by slaving conducted by Asian forces. The study is based in large part on archival sources from the VOC period, together with published Portuguese sources. Data on these issues provides some basis for comparisons with other, better documented cases of slavery and slaving in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. This contributes to an understanding of how local systems of slavery interacted with the transregional systems represented by external groups.

“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.

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