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BOB — University of Nebraska Press / Page 331 / / The Transatlantic Slave Trade / James A. Rawley 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [First Page] [331], (1) Lines: 0 to 17 ——— 2.76pt PgVar ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [331], (1) 16. the american slave market The North American carrying trade centered in New England, where Newport was the pre-eminent port and Bristol held second place. Beyond New England the major carrying ports were New York and Philadelphia, of which New York was far more important. Below the Delaware River merchants and shipowners accounted for a very small proportion of the American share in the Atlantic slave trade. To this great slave-employing area locally owned vessels brought small parcels from the West Indies and infrequently from Africa. Here the slave merchants acted as factors for the slavers of old and New England. In this chapter we shall first concern ourselves with the carrying trades of New York and Pennsylvania, similar in their economic dependency upon the West Indies, but different in their political and cultural outlooks. We shall then move on to examine the slave trade to the Tobacco Coast of Maryland and Virginia, where importation into North America got its start. And finally we shall survey the lower South, with special attention to the great entrepôt of Charleston, South Carolina, the major receiving port of North America, a supplier to neighboring North Carolina and Georgia, and scene of the last great surge of lawful slave importation with the repeal of the state prohibition and the opening of the new Louisiana market. New York with its magnificent harbor at the mouth of the Hudson River and its central location between New England and the Southern colonies, held natural advantages as a commercial port. With little of its own produce to export, and with a small population in the hinterland, colonial New York under English rule had a chronic currency shortage that it partially redressed through maritime trade. In search of specie and reexports for England, New York vessels frequently voyaged to the Caribbean, sometimes taking on slaves for sale on the mainland. With more frequency than has been realized, New York vessels plowed the seas to Africa, sometimes reaching to distant Madagascar, returning with slaves for American markets. Under Dutch rule, as we earlier saw, New York participated in the Atlantic BOB — University of Nebraska Press / Page 332 / / The Transatlantic Slave Trade / James A. Rawley 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [332], (2) Lines: 17 to 21 ——— 0.0pt PgVar ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [332], (2) slave trade.After the English conquest the RoyalAfrican Company neglected the New York labor market, which relied upon slaves for use both as domestics and artisans. Between 1660 on the eve of conquest and 1700 just after the opening of free trade in slaves, the black population of the province of New York grew from about six hundred to an estimated 2,256. In the new century there were two sudden increases in the black population; the larger of these took place in the second decade when it more than doubled,attaining 5,700. The second occurred in the two decades, 1750–70, when the black population grew by more than 70 percent, attaining 19,000. Few slaves were imported after 1770, but largely by natural increase the black population of New York rose to 39,000 in 1810. From as early as 1640 New York had the largest African American population of all the colonies north of Maryland.1 Needing specie and slaves, excluded from West Africa by royal monopoly, New Yorkers in the last decades of the seventeenth century ventured into the Madagascar slave trade. The principal adventurer in this period was Frederick Philipse, born in Holland and trained as a carpenter, whose ambition lifted him to the status of wealthy merchant and member of the royal council in the English province of New York. Greedy for the immense profits he dreamed of securing through selling supplies to the pirates of Madagascar in exchange for slaves and gold, Philipse fitted out a series of voyages...

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