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One: The Politics of Slave-Trade Escalation, 1672–1712
- The University of North Carolina Press
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ONE The Politics of Slave-Trade Escalation, 1672–1712 The Royal African Company of England shipped more enslaved African women, men, and children to the Americas than any other single institution during the entire period of the transatlantic slave trade. From its foundation in 1672 to the early 1720s, the African Company transported close to 150,000 enslaved Africans, mostly to the British Caribbean. It played a central role in establishing England’s transatlantic slave trade, stealing market share from the Dutch and French slave trades, and in Africanizing the populations of England ’s Caribbean plantations. In 1673, soon after the company’s foundation, the English had a 33 percent share in the transatlantic slave trade. By 1683, that share had increased to 74 percent.1 Nevertheless, from the mid-1670s forward the company’s monopolistic restrictions precipitated complaints from many American colonists and transatlantic English merchants. Independent slave traders, known from 1698 as the “separate traders to Africa,” mounted a campaign to satisfy the demand for slaves. In the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, they were able to carry on a political movement that transformed the contours and capacity of Britain’s slave trade. The annual average peacetime capacity of the trade when the African Company’s monopoly came closest to being enforceable, from 1673 to 1688, was twenty-three voyages. An equivalent period of peace after deregulation, from 1714 to 1729, saw free trade produce an average of seventy-seven voyages annually. Between 1687 and 1720, the company’s market share reduced from 97 percent to 4 percent. Despite the remarkable scale of human trafficking conducted by the company, its maximum capacity could not match that of the deregulated trade. Even if the African Company had endured the changing political climate of the 1690s, England’s contribution to 1. See The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (Voyages Data Set), “Estimates” spreadsheet (2010), http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/database/download.faces#extended. All statistics relating to slave-trade numbers are drawn from this invaluable source, unless otherwise stated. For the data on which Figures 1–3 are based, see Appendix 1, below. 12 . DEREGULATION, 1672–1712 the transatlantic slave trade would have been far smaller and, in all likelihood, would have lagged behind those of its European competitors. If we assume an average of 350 slaves per voyage, this 230 percent increase accounted for an additional 1,474,200 slaves between 1729 and 1807.2 The separate traders’ victory affected the geography of the British slave trade in ways that became formative for the trade’s zenith in the second half of the eighteenth century. The separate traders were a broadly based interest group that sought to wrest control of the slave trade from the African Company in London and extend the opportunity of slave trading to provincial “outports,” such as Bristol and Liverpool. The average number of slave voyages that departed from an English port outside London between 1672 and 1711 was five per year. From 1712 to 1751, that annual average improved 2. This dramatic increase of 230 percent in the trade’s capacity is all the more remarkable because it took place when sugar and tobacco prices were declining. 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 Netherlands Portugal/Brazil France Great Britain 1 7 5 0 1 7 4 5 1 7 4 0 1 7 3 5 1 7 3 0 1 7 2 5 1 7 2 0 1 7 1 5 1 7 1 0 1 7 0 5 1 7 0 0 1 6 9 5 1 6 9 0 1 6 8 5 1 6 8 0 1 6 7 5 Number of Voyages FIGURE 1. Slave-Trading Voyages, Great Britain, France, Portugal/Brazil, and the Netherlands, 1672–1752. Data represents five-year running averages. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (Voyages Data Set), “Estimates” spreadsheet (2010), http://www .slavevoyages.org/tast/database/download.faces#extended. [100.26.140.179] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 14:00 GMT) The Politics of Slave-Trade Escalation . 13 to forty-six (in the same periods, the averages for London decreased slightly from twenty-four to twenty-three). The great cloth-producing areas for the company, such as Kidderminster, declined as the West Country suppliers for the separate traders grew. The statutory deregulation of the trade that occurred in 1698 with An Act to Settle the Trade to Africa produced a craze for independent slave trading in the capital. A large proportion of the voyages...