The Slave Trade

by Hugh Thomas

  This measure had several consequences. First, it favored Portuguese merchants who had re-established themselves in Rio de Janeiro, sometimes with British financial backing and occasionally with equipment bought from Liverpool slave traders. At the same time, brandings with hot irons, which had been used in Africa to identify slaves since the fifteenth century, gave way for a time to marking with a metal bracelet or a collar, though in 1818 the old system was restored, using a silver implement, on the ground that captains cheated the customs by substituting healthy slaves whom they shipped on behalf of others for captives of their own who died.

  The new rule also gave the British navy a pretext to inspect Portuguese ships. So, by 1814, Captain Irby and his West Africa Squadron thought that they would shortly be able to bring to an end the slave trade by threat and by bullying in support of the new Portuguese law.

  The impression was confirmed by the Treaty of Ghent of December 1814, which ended the War of 1812 between Britain and the United States. By that document’s article 10, Britain and the United States agreed “to use their best endeavours” to end the slave trade. But the United States still had no intention of permitting the British navy to inspect American ships. No one in the new country could forget that the issue of search-and-seize had indeed helped to cause the War of 1812. After that war, the United States attached a meaning to the phrase “freedom of the seas” with which Britain never agreed. In 1817, John Quincy Adams, then secretary of state, would tell the United States minister in London that the “admission of a right in the officers of foreign ships of war to enter and search the vessels of the United States in time of peace under any circumstances whatever would meet with universal repugnance in the public opinion of this country.”34 The British minister in Washington, a few years later, asked Adams, after he had become the sixth president of the United States, whether he could think of an evil greater than the slave trade. The president replied that he could: to grant the right of search, and “so to make slaves of ourselves.”35 Yet, at that very time, some of those fast Baltimore clippers which, 300 tons burthen, and 100 feet long, had been built as privateers during the late war with Britain, were being adapted as slave traders, often being sold to traders in Havana, carrying a crew of forty.

  Meantime, the worthy English abolitionists were beginning to irritate the statesmen whose imaginations they had almost captured. On July 29, 1814, the duke of Wellington complained to his brother Henry Wellesley, in Spain, that the pressure by Wilberforce and his friends to secure the end of the trade was so strong that they seemed to want Britain “to go to war to put an end to that abominable traffic; and many wish that we should take the field in this new crusade. . . . I was not aware till I had been here [in London] some time of the degree of frenzy existing . . . about the slave trade.”36 Lord Castlereagh was just as annoyed: he knew that “morals were never well taught by the sword.” All the same, he, too, wrote to Wellesley in Madrid: “I believe there is hardly a village [in England] which has not met and pronounced upon it”; and his correspondent, passing on his government’s desire to bring the trade to an end, told the Spanish foreign minister, the duke of San Carlos, that the pope, Pius VII, following his re-establishment in the Vatican after his Avignon-like exile, was going to try and persuade all the Catholic nations to abolish the trade. The duke of San Carlos was incensed: it was “inconsistent with his duty as head of the Catholic Church, by which he was bound to use his best endeavours to make converts to the Catholic faith; and that every Negro became a Catholic from the moment he set his foot in any of the Spanish possessions.”37

  Still, at the Congress of Vienna, Wellington and Castlereagh sought, on Britain’s behalf, to secure a joint declaration from all the nations present that they wished to abolish the slave trade, though the delegations of both Spain and Portugal opposed the plan. Castlereagh proposed an international police force to suppress the slave trade: a notion very far ahead of the times. The Spanish plenipotentiary, Pedro Gómez Havelo, marquis of Labrador, for his part, repeated Francisco de Arango’s argument, that the British colonies had had twenty years to consider abolishing the trade, and so it was not unreasonable that Spain should wish to allow their colonists to stock up, even doubling the number of their slaves. Spain’s participation in the war, the marquis insisted, had prevented their sending slave ships to Africa for some time (a scarcity not noticeable in Havana). Anyway he thought it too soon to abolish the trade.

  The problem of the French slave trade now also became a preoccupation. The overthrow of Napoleon in 1814 had brought the Bourbons back to Paris and, of course, an end to the war. Neither the restored Louis XVIII nor his foreign minister, the astute Talleyrand, was an enthusiast for the abolition of slavery or of the slave trade—though the latter did secure an agreement from his monarch that he would be willing to “discourage the efforts of a few of his subjects to renew the commerce in slaves.” That was not what England had expected. Nothing less than full condemnation was now adequate. But the government of the Restoration was the heir of Louis XV, not of Montesquieu. France thought that any agreement to allow the British to inspect and, if necessary, seize ships suspected of slaving would give Britain command of the seas; and the suggestion, at the Congress of Vienna, that the return of the French West Indian colonies of Guadeloupe and Martinique (occupied by Britain during the war) might depend on their abolishing their own trade understandably infuriated the government.

  The British government perhaps thought that France would show herself so grateful to the British for defeating Napoleon that she would accept British policy towards the slave trade, and bring it immediately to an end. The French government, facing a hundred pressing problems, hesitated. This vacillation infuriated the determined British abolitionists. So, in 1814, the British antislavery movement excelled itself in relation to France. No fewer than 800 petitions were sent to the British government urging them to persuade the restored French monarchy to end the slave trade. Three-quarters of a million people signed. Similar appeals for support were sent to the tsar of Russia, a form of communication with which that autocrat was unfamiliar. There were public meetings on an unprecedented scale. Samuel Whitbread, the brewer and a philanthropic, though distrusted, member of Parliament, thought that “the country never has, and I fear never will, express a feeling so general as they have done about the slave trade.”38 Yet, while these firm views were being presented to the governments of both Britain and France, the latter administration was beginning to receive other petitions, from their maritime citizens: the merchants of Nantes, for example, were restoring their relations with Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Cayenne, while the Chamber of Commerce of that first city of négriers were explicitly demanding the re-establishment of the slave trade in order to revive the sugar industry in the islands. All Frenchmen remembered how, a short time ago, the trade had not only been honored, but even subsidized, by the State.

  Still, at the First Treaty of Paris, signed on May 30, 1814, the restored government of France agreed to join Britain in doing everything possible to secure the suppression of the traffic in slaves. Abolitionists in Britain were distressed, not only that the collaboration was unspecified, and that the treaty restored to France her colonies (though not Tobago, St. Lucia, and Mauritius), but also that Talleyrand had secured that King Louis XVIII would agree only to abolish the slave trade within five years. With respect to the latter qualification, in the House of Commons on June 6, Wil-berforce, still most active in the abolitionist movement, declared, grandiosely, that Lord Castlereagh had brought back the angel of death under the wings of victory. What ruin, he declared, could not be accomplished in five years! If France were to set about reconquering Saint-Domingue (for which adventure many in Paris were still hankering), there would be still more demand for slaves. Lord Holland thought that 20,000 slaves would be exported a year from Sénégal alone if France were permitted her five years. Madagascar, he knew, was full of slaves ready for export.IX Lord Grey, Fox’s old lieutenant, meantime
told a meeting in June 1814 that some English slave merchants were hoping for a return to the slave trade with the same provisions as in France.

  All the same, and though the French government were already doing what they could (by tax concessions) to encourage French slave merchants to make the best of those five years, King Louis had made a crucial admission. How crucial, it is easy to see from the outrage of French maritime interests. The harbormaster of Bordeaux in these years, Auguste de Bergevin, had been thinking not of abolition, but of persuading the government to revive the old bounty on delivery of slaves; and sixty shipbuilders of Le Havre protested their “douleur” at government policy, while Nantes talked of British hypocrisies.

  In October 1814, Wilberforce wrote to Talleyrand asking for his support in general terms over the slave trade, but especially over the French commerce. He dispatched similar letters from Clarkson to both Tsar Alexander I and the duke of Wellington. That to the tsar ran in part: “It is to be presumed you are totally ignorant of what takes place on the continent of Africa. [But] not to put an end to crime when you have the power makes you accomplice to it. . . . Divine providence has restored you to your former comforts and to your hereditary dominions. . . . Let the era of your own deliverance be known in the history of the world as that of the deliverance of others also. . . .”39 Talleyrand replied that Wilberforce’s argument had convinced him, yet he had still to convince France. The ex-bishop of Autun was perhaps more influenced by a pamphlet of the historian Sismondi, De l’intérêt de la France à l’égard de la traite des nègres,X which argued that the economic interests of the country would be served better by an end to the slave trade. Even more important, Sismondi suggested that France could (and should) never hope to recover Saint-Domingue.

  Finally, in February 1815, the governments of Britain, France, Spain, Sweden, Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Portugal were prevailed upon, by Castlereagh, to sign a general declaration that, since “the commerce known by the name of the African slave trade is repugnant to the principles of humanity and universal morality,” those powers possessing colonies accepted that it was their “duty and necessity” to abolish it as soon as possible. The timing, however, like the detail, was a matter for negotiation. Indeed, it was conceded that no nation could be made to abolish the trade “without due regard to the interests, the habits, and even the prejudices” of its subjects.40

  Despite that extraordinary qualification, this statement seemed a triumph for Castlereagh, for humanity, and for Britain. These negotiations were accompanied, too, by what seemed further positive achievements with respect to both Portugal and Spain. Thus Britain and Portugal concluded a treaty in January 1815; the former agreed to pay the latter £300,000 to compensate for the thirty or so ships illegally seized (as the Portuguese thought of it) since 1810; Britain also gave up hope of recovering a previous loan of £600,000; in return, Portugal agreed to abandon their slave trade everywhere north of the equator—a measure by which the ancient traffic from Whydah or Benin to Bahia would in theory be ended. She also agreed to draft a treaty at some time in the future to set a date for the complete abolition of the Portuguese slave trade. Suspected slave ships north of the equator would be taken before either a mixed commission in Sierra Leone, or another in Rio de Janeiro (there would be a judge and commissioner from each nation in each place, the secretary appointed jointly). Ships of each power could be inspected by those of the other, though it was at that time inconceivable that a Portuguese naval vessel would take any action against a slaver.

  The shortcomings of the arrangement became evident. For example, the new courts took a long time to be established. The Portuguese government explained that it was hard to secure good men willing to undertake such unprofitable tasks in a bad climate. Nor did the treaty state anything about the trade from East Africa, and it was that which a new generation of Brazilian slave merchants—such as José Nunes da Silveira, with his brig Delfim, capable of carrying nearly four hundred slaves—was now exploiting.

  Wilberforce thought this new treaty “full of hypocrisy, wickedness and cruelty” and told Castlereagh as much. All the same, the British navy were given their instructions to seize Portuguese slavers anywhere north of the equator.

  Those captains were also ordered to seize ships of Spain if there was any indication that the slave ship concerned had any contact with a British insurer, investor, or even port. Often, though, the seizures of Spanish ships which were made had not even that modest justification. Still, in July 1815 Spain—in a Treaty of Madrid with Britain, distinct from the Congress of Vienna’s final document—express, as the reformer Argüelles would no doubt have liked, conformity with the British over the iniquity of the slave trade, promising also to prohibit Spaniards from supplying foreign countries with slaves. They agreed to limit slaving, even for the benefit of their own empire, to the seas south of the line drawn ten degrees north of the equator; and Spain added that they would abolish the trade completely in eight years. It is true that, for the time being, the Spanish commitment went no further than this statement of intent, and they made no immediate move to carry this first agreement into their domestic law. The Spanish government continued to complain about British high-handedness. Another Spanish ambassador to London, the count of Fernán Núñez, declared that two ships belonging to a merchant of Barcelona had been seized by the English frigate Camus in the Old Calabar River. The captains concerned were conducting themselves entirely legally, however: the trade did not end for several years more, and there was no British “equipment” or stores on board.

  The abolitionists remained dissatisfied, but even they could not fail to be impressed by what seemed yet more good news from France. There had still been no sailings by slave ships since the peace, and the return of Napoleon to France in March 1815, had a most positive effect. In the course of “The Hundred Days,” on March 29, the emperor, who, in 1802, had shocked so many of his foreign admirers by permitting the revival of slavery with no qualifications, now, equally with no qualifications, abolished the French slave trade, having been influenced, on the one hand, by his enlightened minister, Benjamin Constant, and, on the other, by his hope that he would thereby win over British opinion. Further, the consequence was that, on July 30, Louis XVIII, after Wellington and Blucher had destroyed “l’Usurpateur” at Waterloo, felt obliged to confirm the policy of his enemy and, contrary to what he had agreed in 1814, with no delay; so, in November 1815, in the Second Treaty of Paris, Britain, France, Austria, Russia, and Prussia engaged themselves to concert their efforts for the “entire and definite” abolition of a trade “so odious and so strongly condemned by laws of religion and nature.” The declaration of February was also attached to the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna. Pope Pius VII’s representative played a part in these discussions, enough to cause that pope to feel he had assisted the enlightened cause—though not enough for that intervention to be recorded by Castlereagh.

  But the battle for abolition within France was still far from won. French shipowners on the Atlantic coast, in the old slave ports, had been ready to dispatch their ships to Africa, and several had already declared their cargoes and destinations before the return of Napoleon, while they were still supposing that abolition would wait for five years. They argued that, in the national interest (the restocking of the Caribbean colonies), they should still be allowed to set off, and with the approval of the Ministry of Marine. In the summer of 1815, a few ships did indeed leave for Africa, including La Belle of Bordeaux, Captain Brian, financed by Jean-Marie Lefebvre and the Hourquebie brothers, a Calcutta-built vessel (seized from the English in 1806) which would be intercepted in September 1815 off Dessada, Guadeloupe, by the British naval vessel H.M.S. Barbadoes, with 501 blacks from Angola on board.

  The instructions to Captain Brian of La Belle show how everything had been arranged for the reception of the slaves at Guadeloupe: “You will address yourself to Mesdames Bosc and Briard, with whom you will arrange to sell your slaves at the highest
price possible.”41

  The French government was meantime divided: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs inclined towards abolition, since they wished to please the English; the Ministry of Marine, beset by shipbuilders, and by shipbuilders’ friends in the ports, such as the presidents of the chambers of commerce, wished to allow at least some ships to depart. While the government vacillated—and France was still within two months of the disaster of Waterloo—Robert Surcouf of Saint-Malo, a shipbuilder of great reputation as a “corsair” (he had captured many English ships during the war), and a man whose family had been concerned in the slave trade during the ancien régime, sent his Affriquain—212 tons, twenty-nine crew, Captain Pottier—to Angola on August 15, 1815. The government did nothing. To denounce Surcouf, who was colonel of the National Guard of his city, would have been to act against a national hero. Other slave merchants soon followed Surcouf’s example. The Ministry of Marine had no idea what to do. Their indecision suggested to the shipbuilders that, after all, the trade was open. Surcouf—“simple, brusque, generous, and brave beyond the call of duty,” as his hagiographer calls him—was, therefore, the father of this new stage of the French slave trade.42, XI

  The British navy then played into the hands of the French slave merchants. They seized three French ships: La Hermione as well as La Belle both of Le Havre; and Le Cultivateur, of Nantes. It is true that several other ships arrived at Africa and eventually their Caribbean destination; and that others soon set sail, without approval, and reached their markets. But the outrage in France caused by the seizures extended far beyond the ports. French feeling was inflamed; for in French maritime life, a ship was supposed to be something sacrosanct: “Le navire, c’est un pays.” How could the English be allowed to set foot on a French merchantman? The builders of slave-ships, with their excellent relations in the ministries and, to some extent, even among the politicians—the minister of marine after 1815, Baron Portal, was a Bordeaux man with experience of the sea—used their opportunity to advantage, gaining, if not approval for their mercantile activities, at least official neglect. In 1816, no fewer than thirty-six ships left French ports on slaving missions: a small figure in comparison with the eighteenth century, yet an important begining to the new stage of French commerce, in which the denunciations of the slave trade by Montesquieu, Voltaire, and the Abbé Raynal, and even the very existence in the past of an old Société des Amis des Noirs, were forgotten.XII Whatever their talk of serving the national interest, the French slavers from Nantes were in these voyages serving Cuba as much as, or even more than, the French Caribbean. These vessels seem to have visited and taken on slaves nearly everywhere on the West African coast from the Cape Verde Islands to Angola; and they also went to Madagascar and Zanzibar.