A transatlantic commodity: Irish salt beef in the French Atlantic World

History Workshop Journal

Volumn 63, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 18-47

  Mandelblatt, Bertie ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34447525473     PISSN: 13633554     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/hwj/dbm028     Document Type: Article

References (161)

1. At this time, these islands numbered principally St Christophe (St Kitts), Martinique and Guadeloupe, although small settlements existed officially on Grenada, St Vincent, Marie-Galante, Saint Barthélémy, Saint-Martin, and Sainte-Croix, and unofficially on the western section of Hisapaniola in what would become Saint-Domingue.
2. Colbert was Ministère de la Marine (Navy Minister).
3. 8A1 f.264, 8 Feb. 1674: Author's translation. All translations are the author's unless otherwise noted,.
4. For a fuller discussion on de Baas's conflicts with Colbert over the presence of foreign traders in the Caribbean, see Stewart L. Mims, Colbert's West India Policy, Newhaven CT, 1912, pp. 209-19.
5. 8A1 f. 266-267 8 Feb. 1674.
6. 8A1 f. 204-209, 28 Dec. 1672.
7. 8A1 f. 199 (20 Nov. 1672).
8. Clarence P. Gould, 'Trade Between the Windward Islands and the Continental Colonies of the French Empire, 1683-1763', Mississippi Valley Historical Review 25: 4, 1939, p. 473.
9. Louis M. Cullen, An Economic History of Ireland since 1660, London, 1972, pp. 55-56;
10. Léon Vignols, 'L'Importation en France an XVIIIe siècle du boeuf salé d'Irlande: Ses emplois, les tentatives pour s'en passer', Revue historique 159, Sept.-Oct. 1928, p. 80;
11. Joseph T. Leydon, 'The Irish Provisions Trade to the Caribbean, c. 1650-1780: An Historical Geography', PhD thesis, University of Toronto, 1995, p. 114.
12. Francisque Michel, Histoire du commerce et de la navigation à Bordeaux, principalement sous l'administration anglaise, Bordeaux, 1870, vol. 2, p. 24.
13. These documents include acts of royal and colonial administration; correspondence between the King and his ministers, and colonial officials and the directors of chartered companies; and the travel accounts produced by the French Jesuit and Dominican missionaries.
14. This short list reads in full: '... lard, salt beef, flour, wine, eau-de-vie, fabric, furniture, sails, tools for the slaves, [and] livestock...', Jacques Savary, Le parfait negociant ou instruction generale pour ce qui regarde le Commerce ... [sic], Paris, 1675, Book 2, p. 138.
15. Jacques Savary des Bruslons, Dictionnaire universel de commerce ... Paris, 1723, vol. 1, p. 380, entry under 'Boeuf: Marchandises propres an commerce que l'on tire du Boeuf'.
16. Article 11 reads: '[Trade restrictions on foreign imports notwithstanding] it is permitted to import salt beef from foreign countries through the [specified] ports to be transported to the said islands and colonies, and it will be exempt from all entry and exit duties, on the condition that upon arrival it remain enclosed in warehouses, on pain of confiscation': Lettres Patentes du Rois portant Reglement pour le Commerce des Colonies Francoises, du mois d'Avril 1717. Reprinted in Nouveau commentaire sur l'ordonnance de la marine du mois d'août 1681, ed. René-Josué Valin, La Rochelle, 1766.
17. Cullen, Economic History of Ireland, pp. 11-13, 21, 55-8;
18. Louis M. Cullen, Anglo-Irish Trade, 1660-1800, Manchester, 1968, pp. 18-19;
19. R. C. Nash, 'Irish Atlantic Trade in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries', William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, 42: 3, July 1985, pp. 341-4, 348, 350;
20. John O'Donovan, The Economic History of Live Stock in Ireland, Dublin, 1940, pp. 106, 113-14;
21. Thomas M. Truxes, Irish-Arnerican Trade, 1660-1783, Cambridge, 1988, pp. 150-1, 252.
22. Michel, Histoire du commerce et de la navigation à Bordeaux;
23. e siècle, Paris, 1974;
24. Christian Huetz de Lemps, Géographie du commerce de Bordeaux à la fin du règne de Louis XIV, Mouton, 1975;
25. Mims, Colbert's West India Policy, pp. 313-4, 321, 325.
26. Ian Cook, 'Follow the Thing: Papaya', Antipode 36, 2004, pp. 642-64.
27. Daniel Miller, 'Coca-Cola: A Black Sweet drink from Trinidad' in Material Cultures: Why Some Things Matter, ed. Daniel Miller, London, 1998, pp. 169-88.
28. David Hancock, 'Commerce and Conversation in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic: The Invention of Madeira Wine', Journal of Interdisciplinary History 29, autumn 1998, pp. 197-219.
29. Frederick H. Smith, Caribbean Run: A Social and Economic History, Gainesville, Florida, 2005.
30. José C. Curto, Enslaving Spirits: The Portuguese-Brazilian Alcohol Trade at Luanda and its Hinterland, 1550-1830, Leiden, 2004.
31. Arjun Appadurai, 'Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value', in his The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective Cambridge, 1986, p. 5.
32. According to Dale Tomich annual French sugar production increased from 80,646 metric tons to 102,891 between the end of the Seven Years War and the outbreak of the Haitian revolution, while that of the British West Indies increased from 70,593 to 100,015: Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar: Martinique and the World Economy, 1830-1848, Baltimore, 1990, pp. 17-18.
33. Commenting on the exponential growth of French sugar production in the ancien régime, Robert Louis Stein in The French Sugar Business in the Eighteenth Century, London, 1988 notes simply that 'arrivals of French colonial sugar tripled every sixty years from 1670 to 1790' (p. 96); in terms of the value of this sugar, it rose from 45,000,000 livres tournois in 1770 to 75,000,000 in 1790 (p. 104).
34. Tomich, Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar, p. 18.
35. There are many sources, slightly divergent, for population statistics of Saint-Domingue. Representative of them are Antoine Gisler's figures in his L'Esclavage des Antilles françaises, XVII-XIX siècle: contribution au problème de l'esclavage, Fribourg, 1965. He puts the 1789 population at 520,000, made up of 40,000 whites, 28,000 free people of colour and 452,000 black slaves (p. 34).
36. John G. Clark, La Rochelle and the Atlantic Economy during the Eighteenth Century, Baltimore, 1981, p. 136.
37. Jean-Pierre Poussou, 'L'Âge atlantique de l'économie française (vers 1680-1780)', Information historique 59: 1, 1997, p. 22.
38. Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, New York, 1985.
39. e siècles, Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe, 1974;
40. Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau, Les traites négrières: Essai d'histoire globale, Paris, 2004;
41. Robert Louis Stein, The French Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century: an Old Regime Business, Madison, Wisconsin, 1979,
42. and The French Sugar Business in the Eighteenth Century, Baton Rouge, 1988;
43. David Geggus, 'The French Slave Trade: An Overview', William and Mary Quarterly, series 3, 58: 1, 2001, pp. 119-38;
44. Robin Law, Ouidah: The Social History of a West African Slaving Port, 1727-1892, Athens, Ohio, 2005;
45. e siècle, Paris, 1985;
46. and Tomich, Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar.
47. Judith Carney, Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas, Cambridge, Mass., 2001; 'With Grains in her Hair: Rice in Colonial Brazil', Slavery and Abolition 25: 1, 2004, pp. 1-27;
48. 'Rice and Memory in the Age of Enslavement: Atlantic Passages to Suriname', Slavery and Abolition 26: 3, December 2005, pp. 325-47;
49. 'African Rice in the Columbian Exchange', Journal of African History 42: 3, 2001, pp. 377-96.
50. Carney, 'Rice and Memory', p. 326.
51. John H. Parry, 'Plantation and Provision Ground: An Historical Sketch of the Introduction of Food Crops into Jamaica', Revista de Historia de America 39, 1955, p. 1.
52. Appadurai, The Social Life of Things, p. 3.
53. Appadurai, The Social Life of Things, p. 13.
54. Deborah Leslie and Suzanne Reimer, 'Spatializing Commodity Chains', Progress in Human Geography 23: 3, 1999, pp. 402, 410.
55. Miles Ogborn, 'Editorial: Atlantic Geographies', Social and Cultural Geography 6: 3, June 2005, p. 379.
56. Truxes, Irish-American Trade, pp. 16, 147-69.
57. Truxes, Irish-American Trade, p. 147;
58. Leydon, 'Irish Provisions Trade', p. 99.
59. Leydon, 'Irish Provisions Trade', p. 98;
60. see Nash 'Irish Atlantic Trade', pp. 337-8 for discussion of the difference between the mainland and West Indian markets.
61. Nash, 'Irish Atlantic Trade', pp. 343-4;
62. Leydon, 'Irish Provisions Trade', pp. 113-4.
63. Leydon, 'Irish Provisions Trade', pp. 100-6: Leydon is concerned in the main with the British market, although he states that 'Irish provisions were also used to supply the navies of France, Spain, Portugal and Holland...' (p. 105);
64. Cullen, Economic History of Ireland, p. 12.
65. Cullen, Economic History of Ireland, p. 12.
66. Cullen, Economic History of Ireland, pp. 13-18;
67. Leydon, 'Irish Provisions Trade', p. 74.
68. Cullen, Economic History of Ireland, p. 56: 'In 1667, to relieve low prices in Ireland, the English Government had actually agreed to license Irish trade, including trade in beef, with enemy countries';
69. see also, Cullen, Anglo-Irish Trade, 1660-1800, pp. 33-4.
70. O'Donovan, pp. 46-76;
71. Leydon, 'Irish Provisions Trade', pp. 111-12.
72. Leydon, 'Irish Provisions Trade', pp. 91-5;
73. Truxes, Irish-American Trade, pp. 16-17, 150-154;
74. Cullen, Anglo-Irish Trade..., pp. 12-17.
75. Truxes, Irish-American Trade, pp. 150-1.
76. Truxes, Irish-American Trade, p. 17. Dublin, the next largest port exporting salt beef, that year exported 5,590 barrels.
77. Truxes, Irish-American Trade, p. 16.
78. Cullen sets Cork's population in the late eighteenth century at seventy to eighty thousand: Economic History of Ireland, p. 85;
79. Leydon ('Irish Provisions Trade', p. 94) reports a rise from 17,000 to almost 60,000.
80. See Leydon, 'Irish Provisions Trade', pp. 76-9 for a description of the Irish processing of cattle into salt beef, and Daniel Baugh, British Naval Administration in the Age of Walpole, Princeton, 1965, pp. 427-8 for a slightly different procedure.
81. See Jean-Claude Hocquet, principally Le sel de la terre, Paris, 1989 and Le sel et le pouvoir: De l'an mil à la Révolution française, Paris, 1984. Salt was one reason for early European interest in the Caribbean islands, and the salt pans of Martinique were heavily used by the French in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries;
82. see Cornelius Ch. Goslinga, The Dutch in the Caribbean and on the Wild Coast, 1580-1680, Assen, Netherlands, 1971, pp. 47-9 for a discussion of the Dutch and their search for salt.
83. Vignols, 'L'Importation ... du boeuf salé d'Irlande', pp. 91-4;
84. Cullen, Anglo-Irish Trade, p. 18.
85. Vignols, 'L'Importation... du boeuf salé d'Irlande', p. 81;
86. O'Donovan, Live Stock in Ireland, pp. 151, 154.
87. For more on Irish resident communities in French Atlantic port cities, see the following section of this paper.
88. This story is recounted in Vignols, 'L'Importation... du boeuf salé d'Irlande', p. 92.
89. Truxes, Irish-American Trade, p. 151;
90. Leydon, 'Irish Provisions Trade', p. 115.
91. Anon, Observations on the Embargo lately laid on the Exports of Beef, Pork, and Butter from Ireland, London, 1756, p. 14.
92. Journals of the House of Commons of the Kingdom of Ireland, Dublin, 1797, vol. 9, Part 1, 361,
93. cited in Truxes, Irish-American Trade, p. 238.
94. Article XXII of the Code Noir, reprinted in Louis-Médéric Moreau de Saint-Méry, Loix et constitutions des colonies françaises de l'Amérique sous le vent... 1784-1790, vol. 1, p. 418. A necessary question, of course, concerns the extent to which the Code Noir was followed by French slave owners in the Caribbean - the literature suggests that it was at best followed selectively, in some places (Martinique), at some points in time.
95. See Debien, 'La nourriture des esclaves sur les plantations des Antilles françaises aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles', Caribbean Studies 4: 2, July 1964, pp. 79. Indeed, it must be noted that there is considerable debate about the amount of meat French slaves were given.
96. Nash, 'Irish Atlantic Trade', pp. 335-6: 'A British owner typically supplied his slaves with a pint or two of corn per day and a pound of cod per week.' This is confirmed by the author of the Observations on the Embargo... pp. 14-15: '... our more frugal planters, who are not under the same arbitrary injunctions, do not give any flesh meat to their slaves above two or three times in the whole year'.
97. Savary des Bruslons, Dictionnaire universel, vol. 1, p. 956-7, entry under 'Commerce d'Angleterre, d'Ecosse et d'Irelande';
98. Vignols contends that the poor quality of Irish beef was one of the many claims of fraudulent practices levelled universally against merchants trading in all colonial commodities on all sides of the triangular trade: 'L'Importation... du boeuf salé d'Irlande', p. 87.
99. Truxes, Irish-American Trade, p. 238.
100. Truxes, Irish-American Trade, App. II, A.I, 'Exports of Irish Beef', pp. 262-3;
101. 'Irish Atlantic Trade', pp. 341-2.
102. Cullen, Anglo-Irish Trade, p. 19;
103. Truxes, Irish-American Trade, App. II, A.I 'Exports of Irish Beef, pp. 262-3.
104. Cullen, Economic History of Ireland, p. 55.
105. Cullen, Louis M., 'The Irish Merchant Communities of Bordeaux, La Rochelle and Cognac in the Eighteenth Century', in Négoce et industrie en France et en Irlande aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles, Actes du Colloque Franco-Irlandais d'Histoire, ed. Louis M. Cullen and Paul Butel, Bordeaux, 1980, pp. 51-2.
106. Vignols, 'L'Importation ... du boeuf salé d'Irlande', p. 81;
107. Savary des Bruslons, Dictionnaire Universel, Vol. 3 (Supplement), p. 74, entry under 'Boeuf salé d'Irelande';
108. Moreau de Saint-Méry, Loix et constitutions, vol. 1, p. 478.
109. Ancien régime France was divided into three principal trading areas with differing tax regimes, each essentially representing a free-trade zone. The cinq grosses fermes was the central trading area around Paris and the west of France.
110. Reprinted in Moreau de Saint-Méry, Loix et constitutions, vol. 1, p. 478.
111. Incidentally, these same Irish communities were heavily involved in the brandy and cognac trade in France during the eighteenth century; Hennessy and Martell are two such families that have left a long legacy.
112. Butel, Les négociants bordelais, pp. 161-2.
113. Cullen, 'The Irish Merchant Communities', pp. 52-3.
114. John Mannion, 'The Waterford Merchants and the Irish-Newfoundland Provisions Trade', in Négoce et industrie en France et en Irlande ed. Cullen and Butel, p. 37.
115. John Mannion, 'Victualling a Fishery: The Newfoundland Diet and the Origins of the Irish Provisions Trade, 1675-1700', International Journal of Maritime History 12: 1, 2000, pp. 18-19.
116. Cullen, 'Irish Merchant Communities', p. 61.
117. See Jean Tarrade, Le Commerce colonial de la France à la fin de l'ancien régime: L'évolution du régime de l'Exclusif de 1763 à 1789, Paris, 1972, vol.1, pp. 83-8 for a full description of the tenets of l'Exclusif.
118. As Mims notes (Colbert's West India Policy, pp. 310-1), the need for locally available material resources is more complex than it might appear. It was never simply a question of what could be produced locally as much as what planters felt it was in their economic interest to produce locally.
119. James Pritchard, In Search of Empire: The French in the Americas, 1670-1730, Cambridge, 2004, pp. 190-3;
120. Lilian Hiliare-Perez, L'Expérience de la mer: Les Européens et les espaces maritimes au XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 1997, pp. 233-4;
121. and especially Tarrade, Le Commerce colonial, pp. 95-112.
122. Colbert became comptroller-general in 1665 and minister of the Marine in 1669.
123. Mims, Colbert's West India Policy, pp. 208-9, 312-3.
124. Colbert briefly pursued a plan to develop French Canada as a locale where salted provisions could be produced to support the colonial populations of the islands. See Mims, Colbert's West India Policy, pp. 314-9, for a discussion of these ill-fated efforts.
125. On intercolonial trade more generally during this early period, see Pritchard, In Search of Empire, pp. 197-201;
126. Clarence P. Gould 'Trade between the Windward Islands and the Continental Colonies of the French, 1683-1763', Mississippi Valley Historical Review 25: 4, March 1939, pp. 473-90;
127. Allana G. Reid, 'Intercolonial Trade during the French Regime', Canadian Historical Review 32: 3, September 1951, pp. 236-51.
128. Arrêt du Conseil d'Etat, pour la décharge de tous les droits de Ville sur les Bestiaux, Vins, Eaux-de-Vie, Chairs, Farines et autres denrées, pour être envoyées dans les Pays de la concession de la Compagnie des Indes Occidentales, 12 Feb. 1665. Reprinted in Moreau de Saint-Méry, Loix et constitutions, vol. 1, p. 134.
129. Reprinted in George Depping, Correspondance administrative sous le règne de Louis XIV, entre le cabinet et le roi, les secrétaires d'État, le chancelier de France et les intendants et gouverneurs de province... Paris, 1852, vol. 3, pp. 521-2.
130. Reprinted in Depping, Correspondance administrative, vol. 3, p. 531.
131. Ordonnance da Roi, qui défend le transport des Boeufs, Lards, Toiles et autres Marchandises étrangeres des Pays étrangères [sic] dans les Isles..., 4 Nov. 1671. Reprinted in Moreau de Saint-Méry, Loix et constitutions, vol. 1, pp. 253-4.
132. For more on the complex interplay of public and private interest and its relationship with colonial trade policies, beginning with Colbert's tenure, see Jonathan Howes Webster, 'The Concerns of Bordeaux's Merchants and the Formation of Royal Commercial Policy for the West Indies', Proceedings of the Western Society for French History 2, 1974, pp. 12-20;
133. Thomas J. Schaeper, 'Colonial Trade Policies Late in the Reign of Louis XIV', Revue française d'histoire d'outre-mer 67, 1980, pp. 203-15;
134. Charles Cole, Colbert and a Century of French Mercantilism, London, 1964;
135. Pierre H. Boulle, 'French Mercantilism, Commercial Companies and Colonial Profitability', in Companies and Trade: Essays on Overseas Trading Companies During the Ancien Regime, ed. Leonard Blussé and Femme Gaastra, The Hague, 1981, pp. 97-114;
136. Philippe Minard, 'Colbertism Continued?: The Inspectorate of Manufactures and Strategies of Exchange in Eighteenth Century France', French Historical Studies 23: 3, 2000, pp. 477-96.
137. Archives nationales, Marine, A1.66. no. 54.
138. For references to all the decrees in this series, see Lawrence C. Wroth and Gertrude L. Wroth, Acts of French Royal Administration concerning Canada, Guiana, the West Indies and Louisiana prior to 1791, New York, 1930.
139. Lettres-Patentes du Roi, en forme d'Edit, concernant le Commerce étranger aux Isles et Colonies de l'Amérique. Du mois d'Octobre 1727. Reprinted in Moreau de Saint-Méry, Loix et constitutions vol. 3, p. 224.
140. Cullen, Economic History of Ireland, p. 55; for commentary on the 1727-41 legislation (some of it conflicting) see also Vignols, 'L'Importation ... du boeuf salé d'Irlande', p. 85;
141. Nash, 'Irish Atlantic Trade', p. 342;
142. see Michel, Histoire du commerce et de la navigation à Bordeaux pp. 372-3 for a discussion of the opposition of Bordeaux merchants to this legislation on the grounds of decreased exports to Ireland in wine, eaux-de-vie and prunes.
143. Pritchard, In Search of Empire, App. 1, p. 424.
144. Stanley L. Engerman, 'France, Britain and the Economic Growth of Colonial North America', in The Early Modern Atlantic Economy, ed. John J. McKusker and Kenneth Morgan, Cambridge, 2000, p. 238.
145. Debien, Les Esclaves aux Antilles françaises, p. 171.
146. Debien, Les Esclaves aux Antilles françaises, p. 215.
147. Vignols, 'L'Importation... du boeuf salé d'Irlande', p. 86.
148. Debien, Les Esclaves aux Antilles françaises, p. 172.
149. Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre, Histoire generale des Antilles habitées par les François, Paris, 1667-71, vol. 2, p. 457.
150. Savary des Bruslons, Dictionnaire Universel, vol. 1, p. 889, entry under 'Commerce de France: Commerce de Nantes'.
151. Vignols, L'Importation ... du boeuf salé d'Irlande p. 89;
152. see also Debien Les Esclaves aux Antilles françaises, pp. 173-4 for two accounts of salt-tortoise expeditions.
153. Louis Sala-Molins, Le Code Noir, ou le calvaire de Canaan, Paris, 1987.
154. e siècle: Les deux Amériques et la Pacifique, Paris, 1998, p. 58;
155. e siècle, Montréal, 1990, pp. 4, 59-60.
156. Poussou, Bonnichon and de Lemps, Espaces coloniaux et espaces maritimes, pp. 60-1.
157. A proportion of the cod consumed in the French Antilles arrived, in fact, via France. French fishermen transported it to French ports where it was purchased and shipped back across the Atlantic; its price was two to three times that of cod shipped directly from the eastern seaboard.
158. Brière, La pêche française, p. 257.
159. See Tarrade, Le Commerce colonial, vol. 1, pp. 14-43 for an admirable summary of this balancing act.
160. For a discussion of this question of slave time/space, see Dale Tomich, 'Une petite Guinée: Provision Ground and Plantation in Martinique, 1830-1848', Slavery and Abolition 12: 1, May 1991, pp. 69-74.
161. 8A1 f. 199 (20 Nov. 1672) [partially Stewart L. Mims's translation].