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.

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.

Freedman in Rio de Janeiro

2019 ◽  
pp. 40-50
Author(s):  
João José Reis ◽  
Flávio dos Santos Gomes ◽  
Marcus J. M. de Carvalho ◽  
H. Sabrina Gledhill
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Rio De Janeiro ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Tower Of Babel ◽  
West Africans ◽  
The City

When Rufino arrives, Rio de Janeiro is an African Tower of Babel. More than 600,000 Africans landed there between 1801 and 1830, many of whom stayed in the city. Less than 6 percent had come from West Africa, like Rufino. Central Africans comprised more than 80 percent and Mozambicans, 15 percent. Although they were a minority, West Africans controlled a large portion of the street labor market. Most worked as porters and vendors, the majority of the latter being women. In Rio de Janeiro, Rufino gets acquainted with the slave trade and may have realized that he could find protection and earn a living by working in that business.

The Dutch Slave Trade in the Atlantic, 1600–1800

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pieter Emmer ◽  
Henk den Heijer
Keyword(s):  
Slave Trade ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
French Caribbean ◽  
Dutch Government ◽  
Slave Ship ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
West India Company ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Dutch Brazil

The Dutch share in the Atlantic slave trade averaged about 5 to 6 percent of the total, but the volume differed sharply over time. The beginning of the Dutch transatlantic slave trade can be dated to 1636, after the Dutch West India Company (WIC) had acquired its own plantation colony around Recife in Brazil. In order to set up a regular trade in slaves, the WIC also took Elmina on the Gold Coast and Luanda in Angola from the Portuguese. The slave trade to Dutch Brazil was short-lived, and after the loss of Dutch Brazil and Luanda, the WIC as well as private merchants from Amsterdam started to sell slaves to colonists in the Spanish, English, and French Caribbean via Curaçao, the WIC trade hub in the region. In 1667, in addition to the small colonies of Berbice and Essequibo, the Dutch conquered Suriname and during the 18th century established Demerara. The Dutch slave trade became more and more focused on these plantation colonies. Between 1700 and 1725, after the Dutch had been banned from selling slaves in foreign colonies, the Dutch slave trade declined, but the volume increased again after 1730 when the WIC lost its monopoly and private shipping companies were allowed to enter the trade. In addition, Amsterdam-based investors poured money into the Dutch plantation colonies expecting windfall profits from a new cash crop: coffee. These profits did not materialize, and the majority of the planters in the Dutch plantation colonies went bankrupt. These bankruptcies, another war with Britain, and the French occupation caused the Dutch slave trade to decline sharply. The last Dutch slave ship sailed to Suriname in 1802. In 1814, the Dutch government yielded to British abolitionist pressure and abolished the slave trade in the hope of regaining its colonial possessions occupied by Britain.

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