Stanley B. Alpern. Abson & Company: Slave Traders in Eighteenth-Century West Africa. London: Hurst, 2018. Pp. 224. $65.00 (cloth).

2021 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-174
Author(s):  
Cristina Malcolmson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Slave Traders

“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.

Mapping Senegambia: Legacies of Ambition and the Failure of an Early Colonial Venture

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-231
Author(s):  
Sven Outram-Leman
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Senegal River ◽  
Colonial Expansion ◽  
Secure Access ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
River Niger

Britain's short-lived Province of Senegambia (1765–1783) was part of an expansion effort in the region driven by a desire to secure access to the gum trade of the Senegal river. Drawing on Britain's knowledge of France's dealings with the Upper-Senegal region it was complemented by the adoption of French cartography, edited to illustrate a new colonial identity. It is argued here that there was an additional motive of developing closer contact with the African interior. This pre-dates the establishment of the African Association in 1788 and its subsequent and better-known expeditions to the River Niger. In contrast to the French, however, the British struggled to engage with the region. This paper approaches the topic from a perspective of cartographic history. It highlights Thomas Jeffery's map of ‘Senegambia Proper’ (1768), copied from Jean Baptiste Bourguingnon d'Anville's ’Carte Particuliére de la Côte Occidentale de l'Afrique' (1751) and illustrative of several obstacles facing both British map-making and colonial expansion in mid-eighteenth century Africa. It is argued that the later enquiries and map-making activities of the African Association, which were hoped to lead to the colonisation of West Africa, built upon these experiences of failure in Senegambia.

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.

An 1804 Slaving Contract Signed in Arabic Script From the Upper Guinea Coast

1987 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 341-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
George E. Brooks ◽  
Bruce L. Mouser
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Rhode Island ◽  
Guinea Coast ◽  
Merchant Ship ◽  
Arabic Script ◽  
Slave Traders ◽  
Image Position

Few slaving agreements contracted between African sellers and American purchasers appear to have survived. They were rarely committed to paper, were destroyed after commitments were fulfilled, or were removed from business records kept by slave traders. The contract discussed here is of considerable interest as a document which, although brief, records important information and offers intriguing insights concerning African-European and African-African relationships in Guinea-Conakry at the turn of the nineteenth century.The slaving contract is dated 15 November 1804, and apparently was negotiated aboard the merchant ship Charlotte of Bristol, Rhode Island, Jonathan Sabens, master, anchored at the Iles de Los archipelago.Nov. th[ursday] 15-1804Shipe Charlottefortay days after date I Promas to pay Jno. Sabens or orde[r] nin[e] hundard and ni[ne]ty five Bars to be Pade in Rice and Slave Say fore tun of Rice at nity Bars par tun the Remandr in Slaves at one hundard and Twenty Bars par Slave.[signed in Arabic] Fadmod [Fendan Modu Dumbuya][signed in Arabic] Muhammad Sa'ab shokr Mohammed Sakib Fana/Ta/ Mohammed Shabaan(the month before Ramadan)Respecting the American traders involved, the Charlotte was jointly owned by George D'Wolf and Jonathan Sabens of Bristol, Rhode Island. Captain Jonathan Sabens was an experienced mariner, involved in at least three previous slaving voyages, including one as master of the Charlotte. Members of the D'Wolf family were associated with numerous slaving voyages to west Africa and continued to invest in slaving ventures long after Rhode Island made the trade illegal in 1787.

Prospects

2018 ◽  
pp. 58-83
Author(s):  
Deirdre Coleman
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Tropical Waters ◽  
Close Observation ◽  
Slave Traders

Chapter 2 begins with the intellectual stimulus of Smeathman’s voyage through tropical waters to West Africa. His powers of close observation are exercised on creatures such as the polyp, an exemplary case of the plant-animal continuum which was so perplexing to naturalists. Upon arriving at the Isles de Los, Smeathman is affronted by the sights and sounds of slavery. Pity for the enslaved, especially the women nursing babies, is accompanied by admiration of the scale and efficiency of the slave trade’s organization. In comparison his fieldwork equipment looks puny to the slave traders who consider their ‘collections’ to be far more significant, and certainly more profitable.

France and the Slave Trade

2020 ◽  
pp. 60-78
Author(s):  
Alan Forrest
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Middle Passage ◽  
Short Overview ◽  
Slave Ships ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Atlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Triangular Trade

The chapter begins with a short overview of France’s involvement in the Atlantic slave trade and shows how, by the second half of the eighteenth century, more and more merchants and investors became dazzled by the profits offered by a successful slave voyage. All the Atlantic ports engaged in the slave trade, though Nantes had the highest level of slaving and the greatest dependence on the triangular trade with west Africa and the Caribbean. The economics of a slave voyage are analysed, as well as the cargoes purchased for trading in Africa; the captains’ involvement in slave markets in both West Africa and the Caribbean; the risks run by the slave ships and their crews during the voyage; and the conditions that were endured below deck during the Middle Passage.

A Dialogue with King Agaja: William Snelgrave’s 1727 Ardra Diary and the Contours of Dahomian-European Commercial Exchange

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 29-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neal D. Polhemus
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Political History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Commercial Exchange ◽  
History Of

Abstract:The rise of the Kingdom of Dahomey in the first quarter of the eighteenth century was a watershed event in the political history of precolonial West Africa. This article draws on a newly rediscovered copy of William Snelgrave’s diary who visited King Agaja of Dahomey in April 1727. The diary provides the fullest account to date of Agaja’s motives for invading Whydah in March 1727. In addition, the Diary provides the earliest evidence confirming the bona fides of Bulfinch Lambe’s 1731 mission to England to establish commercial relations with King George II.

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