The Slave Trade

by Hugh Thomas

  A number of collections of essays are useful; for example, Serge Daget’s Actes du colloque internationale sur la traite des noirs, 2 vols. (Nantes, 1985); Henry Gemery and Jan Hogedorn’s The Uncommon Market (New York, 1979); Roger Anstey and P. E. H. Hair’s Liverpool, the African Trade and Abolition (Liverpool, 1976); the UNESCO publication, The African Trade from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Century (Paris, 1979); David Eltis and James Walvin, The Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade (Madison, 1981); and Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts, The End of Slavery in Africa (Madison, 1988).

  Chapter Notes

  In these notes I have tried to give the sources for all important direct quotations. I have abbreviated many names of books. Thus David Birmingham’s Trade and Conflict in Angola is so rendered without the explanatory subtitle, “The Mbundi and their neighbours under the influence of the Portuguese 1483-1790.”

  The first time that a reference is given, the full title of the source is given; the second time, the title is not given, but a reference is made to the first time it was mentioned, with chapter and footnote named. For example, Ca’da Mosto [1, 2] means that the first mention and full reference is given in chapter 1, note 2.

  ABBREVIATIONS

  AEA: Anuario de Estudios Americanos

  AEA(t): Anuario de Estudios Atlánticos

  AGI: Archivo General de Indias, Seville

  AHN: Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid

  AHR: American Historical Review

  APS: Archivo de Protocolos de Sevilla

  BFSP: British and Foreign State papers

  BHR: Business History Review

  CDI: Colección de Documentos Inéditos por la Historia de España Ultramar, 42 vols., Madrid 1864 onwards

  C: Philip Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade, A Census (Madison, 1969)

  D: Elizabeth Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the Slave Trade to America, 4 vols. (Washington, 1935)

  DNB: Dictionary of National Biography

  EHR: English Historical Review

  f: folio

  FO: Foreign Office

  FRUS: Foreign Relations of the United States

  HAHR: Hispanic American Historical Review

  Hutt committee: Four reports of the Parliamentary Select Committee on the Slave Trade, November 1847 to September 1848, chaired by Sir William Hutt M.P.

  JAH: Journal of African History

  JMH: Journal of Maritime History

  JIH: Journal of Interdisciplinary History

  JNH: Journal of Negro History

  Muñoz: the collection of papers of Muñoz in the library of the Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid

  PD: Parliamentary Debates

  PH: Parliamentary History

  Qu: Quoted in

  R de I: Revista de Indias

  R & P: reports and papers, that is, British parliamentary series

  RFHO: Revue française d’histoire d’outremer

  WMQ: William and Mary Quarterly

  INTRODUCTION

  1. Richard Jobson, The Golden Trade (London, 1623), 89.

  BOOK I: GREEN SEA OF DARKNESS

  1. WHAT HEART COULD BE SO HARD

  1. Zurara (Azurara)’s Chronicle of the Discovery of Guinea, Eng. tr. ed. C. R. Beazley and Edgar Prestage, Hakluyt Society, 1st ser., vols. 95 and 100 (London, 1896 and 1899). Zurara, vol. 95, 81-83.

  2. Alvise Ca’da Mosto (Cadamosto), ed. by G. B. Ramusio as vol. I of Naviggationni et Viaggi (Venice, 1551), Eng. tr. ed. G. R. Crone, Hakluyt Society, 2d ser., vol. 80 (London, 1937), 18.

  3. Qu. Mervyn Hisketts, The Development of Islam in Africa (London, 1984), 6-7.

  4. Zurara [1,1], 114.

  5. Zurara [1,1], 62.

  6. Egidio Colonna, Li livri du Gouvernment des rois, facs. ed., Samuel Paul Molenauer (New York, 1899); Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East (Oxford, 1990).

  2. HUMANITY IS DIVIDED INTO TWO: THE MASTERS AND THE SLAVES

  1. André Piganiol, L’empire chrétien, A.D. 325-395, in vol. iv (2), 404, of L’Histoire générale de G. Glotz, Hist. Rom. (Paris, 1947).

  2. Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. vii (New York, 1907), 244.

  3. Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 3 vols. (London, 1920), vol. 1, 220.

  4. Martial, Epigrams, 2 vols. (London, 1919), vol. 1, 103.

  5. Song of Solomon I:5-6.

  6. Herodotus, Everyman’s Library ed., 2 vols. (London, 1924), vol. 1, 220.

  7. Aristotle, Politics, ed. by Ernest Barker (Oxford, 1946), 91253 b.

  8. Plato, Republic, ed. Francis Cornford (Oxford, 1941), 168.

  9. Matthew 7:12; Acts of the Apostles 17:26.

  10. Ephesians 6:5; I Corinthians 7:20-21.

  11. All these matters are discussed at length in Charles Verlinden, L’Esclavage dans l’Europe médiaévale, I (Bruges, 1955), chapters 1 and 2.

  12. St. Augustine, The City of God, Everyman ed. (London, 1945), xix, 15.

  13. PH, vol. VII, 581, June 19, 1806.

  3. THE SLAVES WHO FIND THE GOLD ARE ALL BLACK

  1. Pierre Bonnassie, From Slavery to Feudalism in South-western Europe (Cambridge, 1991), 35.

  2. Saint Isidore, qu. Bonnassie [3, 1], 57.

  3. Austin Lane Poole, From Doomsday Book to Magna Carta (Oxford, 1935), 40.

  4. Bonnassie [3, 1], 341.

  5. PH, 28, 60-61, May 12, 1789.

  6. Qu. Richard Fletcher, Muslim Spain (London, 1996), 75.

  7. Lewis [1, 6], 65.

  8. Verlinden [2, 11], 253.

  9. Los Códigos Españoles, Los Siete Partidas, part 4, tit. 21, ley 1.

  10. Verlinden [2, 11], 1, 320, 337, 349, 352.

  11. Verlinden [2, 11], I, 358-62; see M. Gual Camarena, “Una cofradía de negros libertos en el siglo XV,” Estudios de edad media en la Corona de Aragón XV, 1952; and also for Seville, Isidoro Moreno’s La Antigua Hermandad de los Negros de Sevilla (Seville, 1997).

  12. Alfonso Zuazo, in a letter to Charles V in CDI, I, 292.

  13. Leo Africanus, Description of Africa, ed. R. Brown, Hakluyt Society, ser. I, vol. 93 (London, 1890), 309.

  14. Qu. Ralph Austen, “The Trans-Saharan Trade,” in Henry Gemery and Jan Hogendorn, The Uncommon Market (New York, 1979).

  15. Qu. Lewis [1, 6], 57.

  16. Leo Africanus [3, 13], 145.

  17. Ibn Hawkal, qu. J. W. Bovill, The Golden Trade of the Moors (London, 1958), 97

  18. Ibn Battuta, The Travels of Ibn Battuta, ed. H. A. R. Gibb, Hakluyt Society, 4 vols. (London, 1958-1994), III, 321.

  19. Valentim Fernandes, Description de la côte occidentale d’Afrique, 1506-1510, ed. Theodore Monod and Raymond Mauny (Bissau, 1951).

  20. Ca’da Mosto [1, 2], 36, 49.

  4. THE PORTUGUESE SERVED FOR DOGS TO SPRING THE GAME

  1. Bailey W. Diffie and George Winius, Foundations of the Portuguese Empire (Minneapolis, 1977), 34.

  2. Felipe Fernández-Armesto, in G. Winius, ed., Portugal the Pathfinder (Madison, 1992).

  3. Diogo Gomes, De Primea Inventione Guinée, in Raymond Mauny’s edition of his chronicle, as told to Martin Behaim (Bissau, 1959).

  4. Ca’da Mosto [1, 1], 2.

  5. Duarte Pacheco Pereira, Esmeraldo de situ orbis, ed. Raymond Mauny (Bissau, 1956), 27.

  6. Zurara [1, 1], 40.

  7. Zurara [1, 1], 85.

  8. Zurara [1, 1], 59.

  9. Ca’da Mosto [1, 2], 18.

  10. Zurara [1, 1], 121.

  11. Ca’da Mosto [1, 2], 28.

  12. Zurara [1, 1], 107 ff. The Portuguese called the place Arguim, of course.

  13. Ca’da Mosto [1, 2], 41.

  14. Es-Sadi, qu. Bovill [3, 17], 102.

  15. Al-Bekri, in Philip Curtin, Economic Change in Precolonial Africa (Madison, 1975).

  16. Willem Bosman, A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea, Eng. tr. (London, 1705), 82.

  17. Fernandes [III, 16], 41.

  18. Filippo Sassetti, Lettere edite e inedite (Florence, 1855), qu. A. C. de M. Sau
nders, A Social History of Black Slaves in Portugal (Cambridge, 1982), 168.

  19. Florencio Pérez Embid, Los descubrimientos en el Atlántico (Seville, 1948), 163.

  20. Gomes [4, 3], 52.

  5. I HERDED THEM AS IF THEY HAD BEEN CATTLE

  1. Gomes [4, 3], 22-23.

  2. Fr. Martín de Córdoba, Un jardin de las doncellas (Valladolid, 1500), qu. Peggy Liss, Isabel the Queen (Oxford, 1992), 304.

  3. Qu. A. W. Lawrence, Trade Castles and Forts of West Africa (London, 1963), 32.

  4. Gabriel Tetzel and Václáv Sasek, Travels of Leo of Rozmital, tr. by Malcolm Letts, Hakluyt Society (London, 1957).

  5. Hernando de Pulgar, Crónica de las Reyes Católicos, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1943).

  6. Antonio Rumeu de Armas, España en la Africa Atlántica, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1956), I, 103.

  7. Eustache de la Fosse, “Voyage a la cóte occidentale de’Afrique,” Revue Hispanique 3 (Paris, 1896).

  8. Bailey and Winius [4, 1], 317.

  9. Anthony Luttrell, “Slavery and slaving in the Portuguese Atlantic,” Edinburgh conference on the Transatlantic slave trade, Edinburgh, 1965, Mss.

  10. Ruy de Pina, Crónica del Rey João II (Coimbra, 1950), 74; Pacheco [3, 5], 134.

  11. Documentos sobre relaciones internacionales de los reyes católicos, ed. Antonio de la Torre (Barcelona, 1968), IV, 46-48.

  12. Thomas Münzer, Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid, 1924), 63.

  13. See too Bartolommeo Marchionni, but see Virginia Rau, “Notes sur la traite à la fin du XVe siècle et le florentin Bartolommeo di Domenico Marchionni,” Bulletin de l’Institute Historique Belge de Rome XLIV (1974), 535-543. Two letters from Marchionni in the Ricardiana Library in Florence (MS 1910) were printed in the Hakluyt ed. of Cabral’s voyage, ed. W. B. Greenlee (London, 1938), 147-50.

  6. THE BEST AND STRONGEST SLAVES AVAILABLE

  1. Alice B. Gould, Nueva Lista documentada de los tripulantes de Colón en 1492 (Madrid, 1984), 304ff.

  2. Qu. Carl Sauer, The Early Spanish Main (Berkeley, 1966), 88.

  3. Bartolomé de las Casas, Historia de las Indias (Mexico, 1966), II, 173.

  4. Vespucci to Lorenzo Pierfranceso de’ Medici, in Frederick Pohl, Amerigo Vespucci (New York, 1944), 77.

  5. CDI, XXXI, 104.

  6. Ovando’s instructions are in Juan Pérez de Tudela, Las Armadas de Indias, y los origenes de la política decolonización (Madrid, 1956).

  7. Georges Scelle, La traite negrière aux Indes de Castille, 2 vols. (Paris, 1906), I, 124. There is much useful information in Consuelo Varela, Colón y los florentinos (Madrid, 1988).

  8. Casas [6, 4], III, 273.

  9. AGI, Indif. gen. leg. 418.

  10. CDI, XXXI, 453.

  11. AGI, Indif. gen. leg. 418, 1.2., f. 98 and f. 104 v.

  12. Niccoló Macchiavelli, The Prince, ed. George Bull (London, 1961); Victor Pradera, El Estado Nuevo (Madrid, 1941), 276.

  13. Ferdinand to Lizarazo and Miguel Pasamonte, in Muñoz, 1, 1695, item 605.

  14. José Antonio Saco, Historia de la Esclavitud Africana en el Nuevo Mundo, 3 vols. (Paris, 1879), I, 67.

  15. CDI, IV, no. 3; Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex, ed. Charles Dibble and Arthur Anderson, 12 vols. (Salt Lake City, 1953 onwards), XII, 19; Fernando Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Historia de la Nación Chichimeca, ed. (Madrid, 1988), 270.

  16. Judge Zuazo to the King, in CDI, V, 292.

  17. Manuel Giménez Fernández, Bartolomé de las Casas, 2 vols. (Seville, 1953 and 1960), II, 434.

  18. Giménez Fernández [6, 17], II, 552.

  19. Casas [6, 4], III, 129.

  20. The grant in AGI, Indif. gen. 1.7, of Oct. 21, 1518, is published as an appendix to Scelle [6, 7], I, 755.

  21. Qu. Scelle [6, 7], I, 174.

  22. AGI, Justicia leg. 7, no. 3. Braudel in his La Mediterranée au temps du Philip II mistakenly gave this date as 1526. The lawsuit is no. 4 of that legajo.

  23. Frederic Bowser, The African Slave in Colonial Peru (Stanford, 1972), 4.

  24. AGI, Indif. gen. leg. 422, no. 16, f. 99 (I am grateful to Doña Enriqueta Vila Vilar for directing me to this legajo); and Ruth Pike, Enterprise and Adventure (Ithaca, 1966), 89.

  25. Manuel Fernández de Oviedo, ed. Juan Pérez de Tudela (Madrid, 1959), bk. 4, ch.8.

  26. Saco [6, 14], I, 158.

  27. In Greenlee’s Cabral [5, 13].

  28. Antonio Rumeu de Armas 9 [5, 6], I, 418.

  29. Qu. A. J. C. Ryder, Benin and the Europeans (London, 1969), 47.

  30. Ryder [6, 29], 52.

  31. Letter of July 6, 1526, in the Vizconde de Paiva Manso, Historia do Congo (Lisbon, 1877), 54.

  32. C 99-101 gives a larger figure.

  33. Diego Angulo Iñigues, Alejo Fernández (Seville, 1906), 110.

  34. Antonio Moreno Ollero, Historia de Sanlúcar de Barrameda a fines del la Edad Media (Cádiz, 1983), and Loic Mananteau et al., Los Pueblos de la Provincia de Cádiz, 32, Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz, 1991).

  35. Qu. John Hale, The Italian Renaissance (London, 1993), 359.

  36. Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, Historia de la decadencia en España (Madrid, 1910), 19.

  37. Nicolas Clenard, Correspondence, ed. A. Roersch (Brussels, 1940).

  7. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, GIVE US A PAIR OF SLAVE WOMEN

  1. These figures derive from C, 18, 101, but corrected by reference to, for example, Colin Palmer’s Slaves of the White God (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), 70, 112, and Enriqueta Vila Vilar, Hispanoamerica y el comercio de esclavos (Seville, 1977).

  2. Cortés’ will is in Antonio Muro Orejón, Hernando Cortés, Exequías, . . . (Seville, 1967); Peruvian figures derive from Bowser [6, 23].

  3. Clenard [6, 37], III, 32.

  4. Veturino in Herculano Opusculos, vi, 64, qu. Saunders [4, 55].

  5. Enriqueta Vila Vilar, Los Corzos y los Mañara (Seville, 1991).

  6. Nicolas Clenard [7, 3], III, 36.

  7. John Hemming, The Conquest of the Incas (London, 1970), 150.

  8. Alonso de Castillo Solórzano, La Niña de Embistes (Madrid, 1929), 126, cit. Pike [6, 24], 190-191.

  9. Alonso de Zorita, Brief Relation of the Lords of New Spain, Eng. tr. Benjamin Keene (London, 1965), 205.

  10. Qu. Colin Palmer [7, 1], 70.

  11. Francisco Paso y Troncoso, Epistolario de Nueva España (Mexico, 1939-42), iv, 96.

  12. Mariano Cuevas, Documentos inéditos del siglo xvi para la Historia de México (Mexico, 1914), 115.

  13. John Hemming, Red Gold (London, 1978), 37.

  14. Sir Thomas More, Utopia (New Haven, 1964), 108.

  15. Lewis Pastor, History of the Papacy, 40 vols. (London, 1891), viii, 447.

  16. Lewis Hanke, Spain’s Struggle for Justice in the New World (Philadelphia, 1949), 72-73.

  17. Moses Finlay, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (London, 1981), 23.

  18. Giles of Rome, De Regimine Principium, ed. H. Samaritani (Rome, 1607), qu. Quentin Skinner and Eckhard Kessler, Cambridge History of Philosophy (Cambridge, 1988), 407.

  19. Luther, qu. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca, 1966), 106.

  20. Domingo de Soto, Tratado de la justicia y el derecho, tr. into Spanish by Jaime Torrubiano, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1922).

  21. Silvio Zavala, La Filosofia política en la conquista de América (Mexico, 1947), 98.

  22. Scelle [6, 7], I, 205; F. Cercada in “Asiento de Esclavos para América en el año 1553,” in Misionalia Hispanalia, Madrid III, 580-97.

  23. F. de Oliveira, Arte de Guerra no mar (Coimbra, 1555).

  24. Martin de Ledesma, Commentaria in Quartum Sententiarum (Coimbra, 1560).

  8. THE WHITE MEN ARRIVED IN SHIPS WITH WINGS

  1. Letter of Father Gouveia, qu. David Birmingham, Trade and Conflict in Angola (Oxford, 1966).

  2. Letter of Father García Simães of Nov. 7, 1576, qu. Fr. Dieudonné Rinchon, La Traite et l’esclavage des congolais par les européens (Brussels, 1929), 59.

/>   3. Andrew Battell, Hakluyt Society, series II, vol. vi, ed. E. G. Ravenstein (London, 1901).

  4. Willy Bal, ed., Description du royaume de Congo et les contrées environnantes, par Filippo Pigafetta et Duarte Lopes, 1591 (Louvain, 1963).

  5. Samuel Purchas (Hakluytos Posthumus), Pilgrimes, 20 vols. (Glasgow, 1905-07), vi, 444.

  6. Cit. C. L. R. Boxer, Portuguese society in the tropics [8, *], 2.

  7. João Lúcio de Azevedo, Os Jesuitas no Grão Para . . . , (Coimbra, 1930), 65.

  8. Qu. Gilberto Freyre, The Mansions and the Slaves, Eng. tr. (New York, 1970), 178.

  9. R & P, House of Commons Select Committee report, 1790, 211.

  10. P. Hentzer, A Journey into England, 1598, tr. Horace Walpole, ed. (London, 1757), 109.

  11. R & P, 1790, vol. 67, 316.

  12. C. J. Abbey and J. H. Overton, The English Church in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1878), II, 106.

  13. Higgins in Hutt committee, 535.

  14. AGI, Mexico leg. 258, qu. Palmer [8, 1], 81.

  15. Freyre [8, 8], xxiii.

  16. Ambrosio Fernandes Branão, Diálogos das grandezas do Brasil, ed. José Antonio Gonçalves de Mello (Recife, 1968), 44.

  17. Letter April 6, 1570, in Coll y Toste, Boletín Histórico de Puerto Rico XI, 199f.

  18. Emilio A. Coni, Agricultura, comercio e industria coloniales (Buenos Aires, 1941), 15.

  19. Here the figures of C, 166-77, have been again corrected by the estimates imaginatively suggested by Doña Enriqueta Vila Vilar.

  20. Hugh Crow, Memoirs (London, 1830), 21.

  21. Tomás de Mercado, Suma de Tratos y Contratos (Salamanca, 1569), lib. 2, cap. 20.

  22. Bartolomé Frias de Albornoz, Arte de los contratos (Valencia, 1573), cit. Saco [6, 14], 1, 237.

  23. Discussed in Marcel Bataillon, Bulletin Hispanique 54, 368.

  24. Juan Suárez de Peralta, Noticias Históricas de la Nueva España (Madrid, 1878), 50. (“No hay otra diferencia más de ser más subidos de color y mas prietos.”)

  25. Letter of July 24, 1604, qu. in Francisco Rodrigues, Historia da companhia de Jesus na assistência da Portugal, vol. iii, 2 (Porto, 1944), 458.

  26. Alonso de Sandoval, S.J., De Instauranda Aethiopium Salute, Historia de Aethiopia . . . , ed. Enriqueta Vila Vilar (Madrid, 1987).