Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780714643908 ROUTES TO SLAVERY Studies in Slave and Post-Slave Societies and Cultures GAD HEUMAN Co-Editors: JAMES WALVIN THE SLAVES’ ECONOMY Independent Production b\ Slaves in the Americas Edited by IRA BERLIN and PHILIP D. MORGAN THE ECONOMICS OF THE INDIAN OCEAN SLAVE TRADE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Edited by WILLIAM GERVASE CLARENCE-SMITH OUT OF THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE Runaways, Resistance and Marronage in Africa and the New World GAD HEUMAN Edited by THE BUSINESS OF ABOLISHING THE BRITISH SLAVE TRADE, 1783-1807 JUDITH JENNINGS AGAINST THE ODDS Free Blacks in the Slave Societies ofthe Americas Edited by JANE LANDERS UNFREE LABOUR IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ATLANTIC WORLD Edited by PAUL E. LOVEJOY and NICHOLAS ROGERS RECONSTRUCTING THE BLACK PAST Blacks in Britain, 1780-1830 NORMA MYERS SMALL ISLANDS, LARGE QUESTIONS Society, Culture and Resistance in the Post-Emancipation Caribbean Edited by KAREN FOG OLWIG THE HUMAN COMMODITY Perspectives on the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade Edited by ELIZABETH SAVAGE THE WAGES OF SLAVERY From Chattel Slavery' to Wage Labour in Africa, the Caribbean and England Edited by MICHAEL TWADDLE ROUTES TO SLAVERY Direction, Ethnicity and Mortality the Transatlantic Slave Trade Edited by David Eltis and David Richardson FRANK CASS LONDON PORTLAND, OR • , First published in Great Britain by FRANK CASS & CO LTD Newbury House, 900 Eastern Avenue London IG2 7HH, England and in the United States by FRANK CASS do ISBS 5804 N.E. Hassalo Street, Portland, Oregon 97213-3644 Copyright © 1997 Frank Cass & Co. Ltd. Library ot Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record of this book is available from the Library of Congress. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0-7146-4820-5 (hb) 0-7146-4390-4 (pb) This group of studies first appeared in a Special Issue on ‘Direction, Ethnicity and Mortality in the Transatlantic Slave Trade’ in Slavery and Abolition, Vol. No. 1 8, 1 published by Frank Cass & Co. Ltd. All lights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval svstem o> transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopving. recording, or othenvise. w ithout the prior permission ofFrank Cass and Company Limited. Printed in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd. Contents The ‘Numbers Game’ and Routes to Slavery David Eltis and David Richardson 1 West Africa and the Transatlantic Slave Trade: David Eltis and New Evidence of Long-Run Trends David Richardson 16 Long-Term Trends in African Mortality in Herbert S. Klein and the Transatlantic Slave Trade Stanley L. Engerman 36 Crew Mortality in the Transatlantic Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century Stephen D. Behrendt 49 ‘My own nation’: Igbo Exiles in the Diaspora Douglas B. Chambers 72 ‘Of a nation which others do not understand’ Bambara Slaves and African Ethnicity in Colonial Louisiana, 1718-60 Peter Caron 98 The Cultural Implications of the Atlantic Slave Trade: African Regional Origins, American Destinations and New World Developments Philip D. Morgan 122 Notes on Contributors 146 147 Index nil43006150651 380. 144 Rou Routes to slavery : direction, ethnicity, and mortality in the transatlantic slave trade 0 V % The ‘Numbers Game’ and Routes to Slavery DAVID ELTIS and DAVID RICHARDSON Despite a major research effort in the last few decades, less is known about the movement of African peoples to the New World than the much smaller movement of their European counterparts before the mid-nineteenth century. Given that the record keepers were Europeans who regarded Africans as outsiders, it is likely that we shall never have as much information on the personal lives of individual Africans making the Atlantic crossing as we do of Europeans. But on the identities of large groups entering the African stream as well as the size and demographic characteristics of these groups, the picture is much less discouraging. Indeed, in a few years it may well be the case that in these areas, and in the early modern period at least, we will actually know more about these aspects of African than of European transatlantic migration. As knowledge of the patterns of the trade is basic to evaluations of the cultural implications of long-distance movements of people, this is an exciting prospect. One of the developments that has made it possible is, of course, the computer revolution and the related, but ultimately more important, explosion in archival research that has occurred since the late 1960s. Historians are sometimes prone to exaggerate the significance of published works, but the largest single influence over the exploitation of the archives was arguably the publication in 1969 of Philip Curtin’s Census of the Atlantic slave trade.' It was a landmark in the historiography not Just of the slave trade but in the larger fields of slavery and migration. Drawing almost exclusively on previously published work, Curtin provided the first detailed assessment of the overall volume of the transatlantic traffic in enslaved Africans between 1500 and 1867. His estimates of the trade - up to 11.8 million slaves embarked at the coast of Africa and 9.4 million arrivals in the Americas - was substantially lower than most of the figures previously assumed by historians, some of which were several times greater than those calculated by Curtin.- Curtin’s book provided, however, more than a reassessment of the overall dimensions of the Atlantic slave trade, valuable though that was. In the course of producing his census, he also 2 ROUTES TO SLAVERY generated data on temporal changes in the scale of the trade in slaves; on mortality levels of slaves in the Atlantic crossing or middle passage; on the numbers of slaves carried by different national carriers; and on shifts in the geographical distribution of slave departures from Africa and of slave arrivals in the Americas. In each ot these areas, Curtin’s findings represented a major advance on existing knowledge of the transatlantic slave trade. The radical nature of Curtin’s revision of the most frequently cited of the earlier estimates of the magnitude of the Atlantic slave trade provoked a lively and, at times, heated debate.’ Most discussion centred on the last two centuries ot the trade, for which records are most abundant and when the movement ot African slaves across the Atlantic was unquestionably at its height. Disagreements continue over estimates of the scale of slave shipments by some countries.’ Consequently, the ‘numbers game’ relating to the volume of the Atlantic slave trade is likely to remain a significant historical industry for some time to come. The latest estimates tend, nevertheless, to corroborate Curtin’s overall assessment of the trade, at least for the period from 1650 to 1870, though they also suggest that he probably overestimated slave shipments before 1700 and underestimated them in the nineteenth century.^ On the basis of the most recent surveys, it appears that some 10.1 million people left Africa for America in 1660-1867, most of them carried in British, Portuguese, and French ships. This is close to Curtin’s assessment which suggested that between 1650 and 1870 some 10.5 million entered the transatlantic traffic, with some 8.9 million surviving the Atlantic crossing. Assuming that, at most, one million slaves were shipped from Africa before 1650, then the most recent evidence suggests that perhaps 11 million Africans were forced to leave their homeland for America between 1500 and 1870. Further refinements of estimates of the magnitude of the Atlantic slave trade will doubtless occur. But an important by-product of these efforts to quantify the trade has been the discovery of new records in Europe and America relating to the shipping and sale of African slaves. Such records have generally been regarded as the most reliable sources for gauging the dimensions of the trade in slaves. The discovery and analysis of such records has, therefore, been a major feature of debates since 1969 over the volume of the slave trade. A review of the shipping records unearthed since Curtin produced his census is outside the scope of this paper, but it is important to note that the discovery of such records has resulted in the publication of several compilations of voyage histories as well as the creation of various unpublished data sets of voyages. Some of the latter have been lodged in archives in Britain and the United States. Among the larger published