The Slave Trade

by Hugh Thomas

  32. Condesa de Merlin, La Havane, 3 vols. (Paris, 1844), II, 88.

  33. José Pablo Valiente and Diego de Gandóqui to the Council of Indies, September 5, 1792, AGI, Indif. gen. leg. 2827, f. 1315; for the second voyage, see f. 1318.

  34. Briggs [25, 2].

  35. Essex Institute MSS letters, in Elizabeth Donnan, “The New England Slave Trade,” The New England Quarterly III (1930), 266.

  36. Hope [14, 21], 107-9; also Jay Coughtry, The Notorious Triangle (Philadelphia, 1981), 47.

  37. Federico Brito Figueroa, Estructura ecónomica de la Venezuela colonial (Caracas, 1963), 128; see for Barry, AGI, Indif. gen. leg. 2827 f. 1-199.

  38. James Beattie, Elements of Moral Science, 2 vols. (London, 1790).

  39. Hopkins, Works [26, 31], I, 152.

  40. PH, 30, 1439.

  41. Shelburne’s autobiography in Lord Edward Fitzmaurice’s Life (London, 1875-1876).

  27. WHY SHOULD WE SEE GREAT BRITAIN GETTING ALL THE SLAVE TRADE?

  1. PH, 31, 1321.

  2. The Letter Journal of George Canning 1793-1795, ed. Peter Jupp, Royal Historical Society (1991), 215-16.

  3. PH, 32, 737, 866.

  4. Clarkson [19, 32], II, 469.

  5. Furneaux [25, 26], 180.

  6. PH, 33, 563-79.

  7. James Stephen, The Crisis in the Sugar Colonies (London, 1802), 137.

  8. Seymour Dreschler, Econocide, British Slavery in the Era of Abolition (Pittsburgh, 1977), 27.

  9. Qu. Stuart Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society (Cambridge, 1985), 341.

  10. James Stephen’s annotation on a copy of the Foreign Slave Bill, cit. Dreschler [27, 7], 73.

  11. AGI, Indif. gen. leg. 2827, April 15, 1803.

  12. Annals of Congress, April 26, 1800, X, 686.

  13. Ibid.

  14. Qu. George Brooks, Yankee Traders, Old Coasters, and African Middlemen (Boston, 1970).

  15. R. I. and S. Wilberforce [25, 26], 1, 343.

  16. Knutsford [21, 12], 258.

  17. Pierre Labarthe, Voyage à la côte de Guinée (Paris, 1802).

  18. Saugera [14, 13], 128.

  19. Saugera [14, 13], 134.

  20. D, IV, 248.

  21. D, IV, 249.

  22. Isidoro Antillón, Fragmentos de la conferencia pronunciada en la Real Academia matritense, de derecho Español y público el día 2 de abril de 1802 (Mallorca, 1811). There is a copy in the British Library.

  23. Bernardino de Andrade, Planta da Praça e Bissau, 50, cit. Rodney [23, 23], 257.

  24. PD, v. 2, 1803-4, 439.

  25. R. I. and S. Wilberforce [25, 26], Life, III, 1802.

  26. Annual message of President Jefferson, 1806, in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. H. A. Washington (New York, 1853-1854).

  27. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (Chapel Hill, 1955), 162-63.

  28. Dubois [24, 29], 103-4.

  29. House Reports, 21 Cong., 1 sess., III, no. 348, 77. See The Life of William Harris Crawford, by Philip Green (Charlotte, 1965).

  30. Clarkson [19, 33], II, 352.

  31. A. Aspinall, The Later Correspondence of George III (London, 1962), vol. 4., 517-18.

  32. PD, vol. 7, June 19, 1806.

  33. PD, vol. 9, March 23, 1807.

  34. Loc. cit.

  35. Loc. cit.

  36. Loc. cit.

  37. Crow [8, 20], 137.

  38. Clarence to Sir Samuel Hawker, qu. Ziegler [26, 27], 99.

  39. PD, vol. 7, col. 31-34.

  40. Henry Brougham, An Inquiry into the Colonial Policy of the European Powers, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1803), vol. 2, 490-91.

  BOOK VI: THE ILLEGAL ERA

  28. I SEE . . . WE HAVE NOT YET BEGUN THE GOLDEN AGE

  1. Park [19, 27], 9.

  2. Lords select committee, 1843, 199.

  3. Ibid., 226.

  4. Béraud, Note sur le Dahomé (1866), cit. Law [18, 6], 67.

  5. René Caillé, Journal d’un voyage à Temboteu et à Jenne, 3 vols. (Paris, 1830), I, 460.

  6. Al-Nasiri, qu. Lewis [1, 6].

  7. E. C. Martin [12, 27], 153.

  8. See James Tuckey, Narrative of an Expedition to Explore the River Zaire (London, 1818).

  9. J. Adams, Sketches Taken During the Ten Years Voyage to Africa Between the Years 1786-1800 (London, 1822).

  10. Crow [8, 20], 137; Verger [13, 27], 274-75.

  11. In his “Analysis,” qu. Rev. R. Walsh, Notices of Brazil (London, 1830), 318.

  12. H. M. Brackenridge, Voyage to South America . . . , 2 vols. (London, 1819), I, 139.

  13. Alexander von Humboldt, Viaje a los regiones equinoctiales . . . (Caracas, 1966), I, 63.

  14. D, III, 101, and Briggs [25, 2], II, 517.

  15. “The Rhode Island Slave Trade in 1816,” Proceedings of the Rhode Island Historical Society VI (Jan. 1899), 226.

  16. Howe [14, 21], 191.

  17. House Journal, 11 Cong., 3d session, VII, 435.

  18. D, IV, 249.

  19. John L. Spears, The American Slave Trade (London, 1900), 122.

  20. Drake [19, 25], 52. “Picanninny” is of course a word deriving from the Spanish pequeno niño.

  21. R & P 1790, vol. 73, 16.

  22. R & P 1790, vol. 83, 43.

  23. R & P 1790, vol. 82, 53.

  24. Hutt committee, I, 422.

  25. PD, 1st series, vol. 19, 233.

  26. James Prior, Voyage Along the Eastern Coast of Africa [etc.] . . . (London, 1819), 99.

  27. James F. King, “The Latin American Republics and the Suppression of the Slave Trade,” HAHR XXIV (1944), 391.

  28. John Lynch, The Spanish American Revolutions (London, 1986), 85.

  29. Archivo Nacional de Cuba real consulado, leg. 74, no. 2836, qu. José Luciano Franco, Comercio clandetino de esclavos (Havana, 1985), 121.

  30. AGI, Indif. gen. leg. 2827, f. 1303-27. Aguilar said that he approached “al principal socio de la mencionada compañia don Pedro de la Cuesta y Manzanal intersandolo para que me ayudase a llevar adelante el . . . commercio directo de Negros a la costa de Africa desde nos puertos con buques capitaines y tripulación española.”

  31. Speech printed in Enriqueta Vila Vilar, Los abolicionistas españoles, siglo XIX (Madrid, 1996), 106.

  32. “Se trata de nuestras vidas, de toda nuestra fortuna, y de nuestros descendientes”). In Cuba, there was not a hacienda which had “los negros que deba tener” (AGI, Indif., gen. leg. 2827, ff. 1436-84).

  33. Ramirez, Instrucciones a Power, in Luis Díaz Soler, Historia de la esclavitux md negra en Puerto Rico (Madrid, 1953), 126.

  34. See commentary in H. G. Soulsby, The Right of Search and the Slave Trade in Anglo-American Relations (Baltimore, 1933), 17.

  35. Davis [26, 5], II, 69.

  36. Duke of Wellington, Supplementary Despatches, 15 vols., ed. by the 2nd Duke (London, 1858-72), vol. 9, 165 (July 29, 1814); see also Betty Fladeland, “Abolitionist Pressures on the Concert of Europe,” Journal of Modern History XXXVIII (1966), 361.

  37. Castlereagh to Henry Wellesley, August 1, 1814, in Memoir and Correspondence of Castlereagh, 3rd series, ed. by the Marquis of Londonderry, 2 vols. (1848-53), vol. 2, 73.

  38. Francis Dorothy Cartwright, ed. The Life and Correspondence of Major Cartwright, 2 vols. (London, 1826), 2, 84.

  39. Earl Leslie Griggs, Clarkson, the Friend of Slaves (London, 1936), 116.

  40. General Treaty signed in Congress at Vienna (London, 1816), 132.

  41. Serge Daget, Répertoire des expéditions françaises a la traite illégale (Nantes, 1988), 4.

  42. Daget [28, 41], 10; also Charles Cunat, Pierre Surcouf (Paris, 1847).

  43. J. Dodson, Report of Cases Argued Before the High Court of Admiralty (London, 1828), ii, 263-64; see also Daget [28, 42], 21-22.

  44. Archivo nacional de Cuba, Asuntos Políticos, leg. 110, no. 73 qu. Franco [28, 29], 261.

  45. PD, 1st ser., vol. 31, 172.

  29. THE SLAVER IS MORE CRIMINAL THAN
THE ASSASSIN

  1. Table Talk of Samuel Rogers (London, 1903), 198.

  2. The Diary of John Quincy Adams, ed. Allan Nevins (New York, 1928), 177-78.

  3. Memoir . . . of Castlereagh [28, 37], 1853, xi, 309.

  4. Ibid., xii, 361.

  5. Stern, Gesichtes Europas, 1, 474, qu. Sir Charles Webster, The Foreign Policy of Castlereagh (London, 1925), 168.

  6. W. E. F. Ward, The Royal Navy and the Slavers (London, 1969), 44.

  7. Ward [29, 6], 84-86.

  8. Ward [29, 6], 98.

  9. Qu. Deveaux [16, 20], 290.

  10. Canning to Stratford Canning in Washington, BFSP X, 254.

  11. Goethe, in Conversations with Eckermann (London, 1930), 329 (Sept. 1, 1829).

  12. PD, 1st ser., vol. 37, col. 251.

  13. Frances Calderón de la Barca, Life in Mexico, ed. Howard T. and Marion Hall Fisher (New York, 1966), 26.

  14. David Murray, Odious Commerce (Cambridge, 1983), 56.

  15. Tacón to the ministers of foreign affairs and the navy, in AHN Estado, Leg. 8035, June 27, 1844. The paragraph is one of the most important in the history of the slave trade: “al efecto creé deber observar que al concluirse el tratado de 1817 se comunicó una Rl. Orden reservada á los capitanes generales de las Islas de Cuba y Puerto Rico, y al Intendente, superintendente delegado de ellas, para que se disimilase le importación de negros procedentes de Africa, fundandose en que se consideraban necesarios para la conservación y fomento de la agriculture.” I found this document thanks to David Murray’s reference in Odious Commerce.

  16. Howe [14, 21], 210.

  17. Op. cit., 208.

  18. Saco [6, 14], III, 141.

  19. Memoria presented by Fr. Varela in ibid., 1-17.

  20. Juan Bernardo O’Gabán, Observaciones sobre la suerte de los negros . . . (Madrid, 1821), 7.

  21. Kilbee to Canning, February 25, 1825, published in PP, 1825.

  22. Foreign Slave Trade: abstract of the information, 36-37, qu. Conrad [22, 3], 63.

  23. Leslie Bethell, The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade (Cambridge, 1970), 32-47.

  24. Qu. Rodrigues [14, 14], 148.

  25. Walsh [28, 11], 1, 465; II, 328, 322.

  26. Conrad [22, 3], 80-81, for commentary.

  27. Nina Rodrigues, Os Africanos no Brazil (São Paulo, 1933).

  28. Larry Yarak, Asante and the Dutch (Oxford, 1990), 123; for Duboissee, Daget [28, 14], 291 ff.

  29. Ward [29, 6], 82.

  30. FRUS, vol. V, 72.

  31. William Wetmore Story, Life and Letters of Joseph Story, 2 vols. (Boston, 1851), I, 336-47.

  32. House Docs., 16 Cong., 1 sess., III, no. 42, 7.

  33. Drake [19, 25].

  34. C, 232 ff.

  35. For the relationship, see Howe [14, 21], 213; see also Samuel Eliot Morison, Old Bruin (Boston, 1967).

  36. Ward [29, 6], 77.

  37. BFSP, 1820-21, 397-400.

  38. Memoirs of John Q. Adams Comprising Portions of His Diary . . . , 12 vols., ed. C. F. Adams (Philadelphia, 1874-1877), V, 416.

  39. Daget [28, 42], 37ff.

  40. Op. cit., 43.

  41. Serge Daget, “L’abolition de la traite des noirs en France,” Cahiers d’Études Africaines 11 (1971), 14-58. The speech of Broglie is in his “Discours prononcé le 28 mars 1822.”

  42. Duchesse de Duras, Ourika (Paris, 1825).

  43. Victor Hugo, Bug-Jargal (Paris, 1833).

  44. Daget [28, 42], 126-27.

  45. Op. cit., passim.

  46. Serge Daget in La France et L’abolition de la traite des noirs (Thesis) (Paris, 1969), 304.

  47. C. Lloyd, The Navy and the Slave Trade (London, 1949), 50; an excellent account which inspired this one.

  30. ONLY THE POOR SPEAK ILL OF THE SLAVE TRADE

  1. A lavoura da Bahia . . . (Bahia, 1874), qu. Conrad [22, 3], 68.

  2. George Gardner, Travels in the Interior of Brazil, 1836-1841 (London, 1846), 1.

  3. Thomas Ewbank, Life in Brazil (New York, 1856), 282.

  4. Cit. Conrad [22, 3], 86.

  5. Freyre [8, 8], 49.

  6. Qu. Bethell [29, 23], 84.

  7. Freyre [8, 8], 346.

  8. Humboldt [28, 13], 212.

  9. Commons select committee 1850, 80.

  10. Commons select committee 1853, 96.

  11. Rafael Labra, La abolición de la esclavitud en el orden económico (Madrid, 1873).

  12. Kilbee and Macleay to Canning, January 1, 1827, in PP, 1827.

  13. Palmerston’s comments in 1849, Hutt committee II, 19.

  14. Archivo Nacional (Havana) Reales Ordenes y Cédulas, leg. 178, no. 40, qu. Franco [28, 20], 325; Vives to minister of foreign affairs, Jan. 6, 1825, qu. Murray [29, 14], 85.

  15. PRO Commissioners in Havana (Kilbee and Maclean) to Canning, March 19, 1827, FO 84/68, item 10. The letter included a translation of one from Vives which said that from the examination of the logbook of the ship concerned, it could not be suspected that the vessel had touched at any port in Africa, much less had carried slaves to Cuba.

  16. George Villiers to the Foreign Minister, in AHN, Madrid, Estado leg. 5034/4.

  17. L. M. Sears, “Nicholas P. Trist, A Diplomat with Ideals,” Miss. Valley Hist. Rev., June 1924.

  18. Evidence of Judge Macaulay, in The Trial of Pedro de Zulueta (London, 1844), 11.

  19. Merlin [26, 32], 1, 310.

  20. Corbière [16, 25], 192.

  21. All these references in Calderón de la Barca [29, 13], 9-29.

  22. Loc. cit.

  23. Merlin [26, 32], 1, 302.

  24. Edward F. Atkins, Sixty Years in Cuba (Cambridge, Mass., 1926), 12.

  25. Carlos Martí, Los Catalanes en América (Cuba) (Havana 1921), 26.

  26. Angel Bahamonde and José Cayuela, Hacia las Américas (Madrid, 1992), 201-22.

  27. See the will of Don Tiburcio in Angel Mari Arrieta, La emigración alavesa a América en el siglo XIX (Vitoria, 1992), 461, kindly shown me by Don Julián de Zulueta of Ronda. Also see Murray [29, 11], 313; Franklin Knight, “Origins of Wealth and the Sugar Revolution in Cuba,” HAHR 57 (1977); A. N. Gallenga, The Pearl of the Antilles (London, 1873); and also Franco [28, 21], 251.

  28. Ward [28, 20], 144.

  29. Bahamonde and Cayuela [30, 26].

  30. For the trial of Pedro de Zulueta, see Appendix 2.

  31. Herbert Maxwell, Life and Letters of George Fourth Earl of Clarendon (London, 1913), I, 94.

  31. ACTIVE EXERTIONS

  1. A. E. M. Ashley, Life of Palmerston (London, 1846-65), II, 227.

  2. Joseph Denman, West India Interests, African Emigration and the Slave Trade (London, 1848), 12.

  3. PP, 1842, XI, pt. 1, Appendix and Index, No. 7, 29.

  4. CO 82/6 1143 FP Nicolls to Hay, Dec. 10, 1833, in Kenneth Onwuka Dike, Trade and Politics in the Niger Valley (Oxford, 1956), 65.

  5. Spears [28, 19], 145.

  6. Denman evidence in Lords Select Committee on West Africa 1842, 405.

  7. Murray [29, 4], 93ff, and also W. L. Mathieson, Great Britain and the Slave Trade (London, 1929), 13-17.

  8. AHN, Estado leg. 8035/4. A typical letter from George Villiers in Madrid included statements such as “I deeply regret to have . . . to communicate to your Excellency that certain authorities of Her Catholic Majesty in the Havannah instead of zealously endeavouring to carry into effect the Treaty of 1835 . . . appear to countenance the means which are reported to for its evasion.”

  9. Sir Charles Webster, The foreign policy of Lord Palmerston, 1830-1841, 492.

  10. PD, 3d series, vol. 50, col. 309, 383. The Duke’s protest is in col. 386.

  11. Commander Riley in Hutt committee, II, 25.

  12. Francis Swanzy in Lords select committee, 1843, 67.

  13. Webster [31, 9].

  14. Miller [29, 11], 366.

  15. Palmerston to Stevenson, August 27, 1841, in Soulsby [28, 34], 54.

  16. Palmerston to Stevenson, August 27, 1841, in Souls
by [28, 34], 60.

  17. Kenneth Bourne, Palmerston (London, 1982), 596; Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston (London, 1970), 281-82.

  18. Qu. Bethell [29, 23], 207.

  19. David Turnbull, Travels in the West (London, 1840), 60.

  20. Arthur P. Corwin, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba (Austin, 1967), 70.

  21. Mariano Torrente, La cuestión importante sobre la esclavitud (Madrid, 1841), 4-7.

  22. AHN, Estado leg. 8035, June 27, 1844.

  23. Centón epistolario, vol. v, 14, 24, 31.

  24. Murray [29, 4], 177.

  25. Hutt committee, 1, 109.

  26. Hutt committee, 1, 88.

  27. Soulsby [28, 34], 100ff.

  28. The letter is published in Commons Select Committee 1850, 130.

  29. Hutt committee, I, 88.

  32. SLAVE HARBORS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

  1. Daget [12, 16], 419.

  2. J. C. Furnas, “Patrolling the Middle Passage,” American Heritage IX, 6 (October 1958).

  3. Hutt committee, 1, 170.

  4. Tacón’s comment is in a report by him in AHN, Estado.

  5. PRO 84/95, f. 82, where Lord Ponsonby is shown to have reported that British capital was indirectly concerned in the Brazilian slave trade on a vast scale: there were few merchants in Rio “who do not annually receive large shipments of goods for the carrying on” the trade in slaves (June 27, 1829). This is qu. by David Eltis, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New York, 1987), 83 and 326. He discusses these links with perspicacity. “It is calculated,” Lord Ponsonby continued, “that one third of all British manufactures imported into this harbour [Rio] consists in articles eventually used in the commerce with the coast of Africa.”

  6. Lords select committee, 1843, 210.

  7. Lords select committee, 1843, 767.

  8. Hutt committee, II, 212.

  9. Wise to Buchanan, Mar. 6, 1846, Despatches XV, qu. L. F. Hill, in Diplomatic Relations between the United States and Brazil, (Durham, N.C., 1932), 141.

  10. Lords select committee, 1843, 767.

  11. Hutt committee, II, 21.

  12. Theodore Canot, Memoirs of a Slave Trader (New York, 1850), 50. For this interesting figure see also the following: L. G. Bouge, “Théophile Conneau, alias Theodore Canot,” Revue d’Histoire des colonies XL (1953), 1, no. 138, 249-63; Roger Pasquier, RFHR LV (1968), no. 200, 352-54; and, S. Daget, “Encore Théodore Canot . . . ,” Annales Université d’Abidjan ser. I (histoire) V (1977), 39-53; and, Svend E. Holsoe, “Théodore Canot at Cape Mount,” Liberian Studies Journal 44 (1972), 263-81.