History of the African slave trade in North America
Before we moved to Rhode Island last year, I was familiar with Newport as the home of the Newport Jazz and Folk festivals. Indeed, we attended one afternoon of performances at the Newport Jazz Festival this summer. Newport is only an hour from our home in Rumford RI.
Recently, I read in The New York Review of Books that Newport RI was once the epicenter of the North American African slave trade. This surprising (to me) news provoked me to read “American Slavers: Merchants, Mariners, and the Transatlantic Commerce in Captives, 1644–1865” by Sean M. Kelley.
Indeed, during colonial times, Newport became the major North American port through which British slavers disembarked their captives. Eventually, ships going out to Africa from Newport added to the trade and created a large cadre of experienced sailors and captains to exploit the African captive market.
Lacking much in the way of goods to exchange, eventually Rhode Island slavers settled on rum, which eventually displaced French brandy among the African slave sellers. This led to the infamous triangle of molasses in the West Indies to Rhode Island for rum, then rum to West Africa for slaves, then slaves back to North America.
American Slavers is segmented into (1) the colonial trade from 1644 until the American Revolution, (2) the American trade from the Revolution until 1808, when importation of slaves from Africa became illegal in the US, and (3) from 1808 until the end of slavery in the US at the end of the Civil War. The book gives detailed numbers of ships sailed, captives traded and destinations during these period, as well as specific anecdotes to illustrate the typical voyage and its economics. In addition to North America, the Caribbean and South America feature prominently as destinations for captives, while England, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal were major sources of capital, ships and legal support at various times.
There is a detailed chapter on the human experience of the African slave trade, both from the point of view of the African captives and the African politics that sustained their capture and sale, to the experiences of the captains and crews of the ships that transported them.
For those curious about the economics that drove the African slave trade, both on the African and North American sides, this book is an excellent resource. The writing is lucid and there are some useful tables and charts. US history right up to the present is intimately tied to slavery and its legacy. For those who want to learn more about the drivers for “The Peculiar Institution” and its complex and fraught history, I can recommend this book.
Brown University, famously RI’s best known higher-ed institution, has admitted strong ties to the Slave Trade, back in the day.
Fifteen years after its publication, Brown’s watershed Slavery and Justice Report is reinvigorated
News from Brown – November 12, 2021
SLAVERY, THE SLAVE TRADE, AND BROWN UNIVERSITY
Fred:
It is probably the length of it. Also, too many links will get you tossed.
Excellent review. Thank you.
See also:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/05/books/review/the-half-has-never-been-told-by-edward-e-baptist.html?ref=books
October 4, 2014
A Brutal Process
By ERIC FONER
THE HALF HAS NEVER BEEN TOLD
Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
By Edward E. Baptist
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/04/books/the-half-has-never-been-told-follows-the-money-of-slavery.html
October 3, 2014
Harvesting Cotton-Field Capitalism
Edward Baptist’s New Book Follows the Money on Slavery
By FELICIA R. LEE
“Have you been happier in slavery or free?” a young Works Project Administration interviewer in 1937 asked Lorenzo Ivy, a former slave, in Danville, Va. Ivy responded with a memory of seeing chained African-Americans marching farther South to be sold.
“Truly, son, the half has never been told,” he said….
Brown University (founded 1764), certainly the best known higher ed institution in RI, disavowed its involvement with the slave trade many years ago, and then revisited the topic some years later. You could look it up. I did but my post didn’t make it past moderation. Do the google on ‘Fifteen years after its publication, Brown’s watershed Slavery and Justice Report is reinvigorated’.
Joel:
This would be interesting to review. Anything clarifying why we did what we did and benefited from it might explain the nature and reasoning behind the slave trade.
“The book gives detailed numbers of ships sailed, captives traded and destinations during these periods, as well as specific anecdotes to illustrate the typical voyage and its economics. “
@Bill,
Interesting, and complicated. The short story is “follow the money,” but different people had different investments in the African slave trade. If I had taken better notes, I could unpack that more here. Best to read the book.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Simmons
Born the last of twelve to a Texas sharecropping couple to become head of Brown from October 14, 2001 – June 30, 2012.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2023/10/05/ruth-simmons-education-us-amanpour.cnn
According to “Thundersticks”, an account of the introduction of firearms to the natives of North America, slavery in the South antedated the African connection. In the North, the usual trade was pelts for firearms. In the South, it was slaves for firearms. The groups with modern arms had an advantage in enslaving people from other less well armed groups, but it wasn’t long before the supply in the South began to dry up. Slavery might have been a native tradition, but not at the scale the invaders desired. That’s when the import trade began in earnest.
Wikipedia – Triangular Trade
… Triangular trade usually evolves when a region has export commodities that are not required in the region from which its major imports come. It has been used to offset trade imbalances between different regions.
The Atlantic slave trade used a system of three-way transatlantic exchanges – known historically as the triangular trade – which operated between Europe, Africa, and the Americas from the 16th to 19th centuries. Slave ships were outfitted in Europe, and shipped manufactured European goods to West Africa to buy slaves for sale in the Americas, where ship holds were filled with American commodities for Europe. This trade, in trade volume, was primarily with South America but a classic example developed in 20th century study of the triangular trade is the colonial molasses trade, which involved the circuitous trading of slaves, sugar (often in liquid form, as molasses), and rum between West Africa, the West Indies and the northern colonies of British North America in the 17th and 18th centuries. The slaves grew the sugar that was used to brew rum, which in turn was traded for more slaves. In this circuit, the sea lane west from Africa to the West Indies (and later, also to Brazil) was known as the Middle Passage; its cargo consisted of abducted or recently purchased African people. …
For a cliometric approach you may want to try “Time on The Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery” by Fogel and Engerman.
@lj,
No doubt interesting, but orthogonal to the book I reviewed, which concerned the economics of the African slave trade in America, not the economics of American slavery.
It happens that Winston Niles Rumfoord, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s favorite characters (starting in Sirens of Titan), made his home in Newport, RI. Not in Rumford.
“Winston Niles Rumfoord is a wealthy member of the American elite class who lives on a magnificent and eccentric estate in Newport, Rhode Island.”
“When Winston Niles Rumfoord flies his spacecraft into a chrono-synclastic infundibulum he is converted into pure energy, and only materializes when his waveforms intercept Earth or some other planet. As a result, he only gets home to Newport, Rhode Island, once every 59 days, and then only for an hour.”
Lo those many years ago, before it apparently occurred to folks that ‘owning another person’ was never enlightened (shall we say), slavery had been practiced for a loooong time.
Merchants had ships, the Atlantic was waiting, winds were ample. One could get rich trading. Slave traders in Africa were willing. Crops needed harvesting. What could possibly be wrong with the concept? (Eventually, the owned people would have owned families, and so be self-replenishing. How great was that!) Keep the ships loaded with something saleable on every leg of the journey.
Again, what could we be wrong with that? As some of my Quaker ancestors declared,
It’s abhorent to own another human being. You can’t do that and be one of us.
Thus the meme had been created. Only about two hundred years ago. It caught on.