African guardians, European slave ships, and the changing dynamics of power in the early modern Atlantic

William and Mary Quarterly

Volumn 64, Issue 4, 2007, Pages 679-716

  Smallwood, Stephanie E ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 67449152173     PISSN: 00435597     EISSN: 1933-769     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/25096747     Document Type: Article

References (101)

1. David Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (Cambridge, 2000), 157 ("naked physical force")
2. See P. E. H. Hair, Adam Jones, and Robin Law, eds., Barbot on Guinea: The Writings of Jean Barbot on West Africa, 1678-1712 (London, 1992), 1: xxviii-xxx
3. See also G. R. Crone and R. A. Skelton, "English Collections of Voyages and Travels, 1625-1846," in Richard Hakluyt and His Successors: A Volume Issued to Commemorate the Centenary of the Hakluyt Society, ed. Edward Lynam (London, 1946), 63-140
4. Colin Steele, English Interpreters of the Iberian New World from Purchas to Stevens: A Bibliographical Study, 1603-1726 (Oxford, Eng., 1975)
5. On slave ship crews, see James A. Rawley, The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History (New York, 1981), 259
6. Eltis, Rise of African Slavery, 119 (table 5-1), 125-27, 158-59
7. David Richardson, "Shipboard Revolts, African Authority, and the Atlantic Slave Trade," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 58, no. 1 (January 2001): 69-92, esp. 73-75
8. John Newton, The Journal of a Slave Trader, 1750-1754, ed. Bernard Martin and Mark Spurrell (London, 1962), 22 (quotation, Dec. 7, 1750)
9. David Eltis et al., eds., The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM (Cambridge, 1999), no. 90350
10. James Barbot's Voyage to the Congo River," in Donnan, Documents Illustrative of Slave Trade, 1: 451-65 ("pieces of iron," 457)
11. Hugh Crow, Memoirs of the Late Captain Hugh Crow, of Liverpool; Comprising a Narrative of His Life, Together with Descriptive Sketches of the Western Coast of Africa . . . (1830
12. For other examples of slaves who turned requests for their assistance into opportunities to revolt, see Eltis, Rise of African Slavery, 233
13. Eltis et al., Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, no. 9714. Chartered in 1672, the Royal African Company enjoyed monopoly privileges on English trade in Africa until 1698
14. Bolster, Black Jacks, 51-52
15. See also Joseph C. Miller, Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730-1830 (Madison, Wis., 1988)
16. On the "unusual" Brazilian "use of slave sailors in international shipping," including ships plying the slave trade routes linking Brazilian and African ports, see Herbert S. Klein, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean (Oxford, Eng., 1986), 76-77
17. Richardson, WMQ 58
18. Stephen D. Behrendt, David Eltis, and David Richardson, "The Costs of Coercion: African Agency in the Pre-Modern Atlantic World," Economic History Review 54, no. 3 (August 2001): 454-76
19. See Robin Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa, 1550-1750: The Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on an African Society (Oxford, Eng., 1991), 22, 118-19
20. Eltis et al., Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, nos. 9657, 14909. In the seventeenth century, the Royal African Company used the phrase Windward Coast to refer to area west of the Gold Coast, from roughly Cape Mount to Cape Three Points (present-day Liberia and Ivory Coast). In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the phrase also designated parts of Sierra Leone
21. On the varied uses of the phrase, see Adam Jones and Marion Johnson, "Slaves from the Windward Coast," Journal of African History 21, no. 1 (1980): 17-34, esp. 21
22. Eltis et al., Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, query with the following parameters: twenty-five-year period 〈1676-1700〉; region where slaves embarked 〈Bight of Benin〉; first owner of venture 〈Royal African Company〉
23. See Davies, Royal African Company, 194-95, 197 (quotation), 201
24. Quaqua Coast" was another term for the Ivory Coast (Phillips, Journal of a Voyage, 197)
25. Davies, Royal African Company, 200 (quotation)
26. For shipowners the windward trade also compensated for the inconvenience of taking the major part of their freight payments in slaves. See Ernst van den Boogaart, "The Trade between Western Africa and the Atlantic World, 1600-1690: Estimates of Trends in Composition and Value," Journal of African History 33, no. 3 (1992): 369-85
27. David Eltis, "The Relative Importance of Slaves and Commodities in the Atlantic Trade of Seventeenth-Century Africa," Journal of African History 35, no. 2 (1994): 237-49
28. See also Phillips, Journal of a Voyage, 198
29. Walter Rodney, "Gold and Slaves on the Gold Coast," Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana 10 (1969): 13-28
30. Kwame Yeboa Daaku, Trade and Politics on the Gold Coast, 1600-1720: A Study of the African Reaction to European Trade (Oxford, Eng., 1970)
31. Ray A. Kea, Settlements, Trade, and Politics in the Seventeenth-Century Gold Coast (Baltimore, 1982)
32. Stephanie E. Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora (Cambridge, Mass., 2007)
33. On the practice of slaving both on the Gold Coast and in the Bight of Benin, see Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery, 86-94
34. Phillips, Journal of a Voyage, 226 ("chanc'd to be")
35. "El individuo que cuidaba de las armas y bodega de un buque," the antiquated usage given in Timoteo O'Scanlan, ed., Diccionario Marítimo Español (1831
36. Charles A. Le Guin, "Sea Life in Seventeenth-Century England," American Neptune 27, no. 2 (April 1967): 111-34
37. Ivana Elbl, "The Volume of the Early Atlantic Slave Trade, 1450-1521," Journal of African History 38, no. 1 (1997): 31-75, esp. 44-45 (quotation, 45)
38. See also A. F. C. Ryder, "An Early Portuguese Trading Voyage to the Forcados River," Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 1, no. 4 (December 1959): 294-321, esp. 300-321
39. Ryder, Benin and the Europeans, 1485-1897 (Harlow, Eng., 1969), 47-53
40. Robert Garfield, A History of São Tomé Island, 1470-1655: The Key to Guinea (San Francisco, Calif., 1992)
41. Pérez-Mallaína, Spain's Men of the Sea, 210 ("neither the shipowners")
42. Carlo M. Cipolla, Guns and Sails in the Early Phase of European Expansion, 1400-1700 (London, 1965), 75-89 (quotation, 81)
43. Davis, Rise of the English Shipping Industry, 44-45
44. On the development of gunpowder technology in early modern Europe generally, see Bert S. Hall, Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe: Gunpowder, Technology, and Tactics (Baltimore, 1997)
45. On the uses of gun technology at sea specifically, see John Francis Guilmartin Jr., Gunpowder and Galleys: Changing Technology and Mediterranean Warfare at Sea in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1974)
46. Ian Friel, The Good Ship: Ships, Shipbuilding, and Technology in England, 1200-1520 (Baltimore, 1995)
47. Goodman, Spanish Naval Power; Jan Glete, Warfare at Sea, 1500-1650: Maritime Conflicts and the Transformation of Europe (London, 2000), 17-39
48. Hall, Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe
49. Glete, Warfare at Sea
50. See Roger C. Smith, Vanguard of Empire: Ships of Exploration in the Age of Columbus (Oxford, Eng., 1993), 154, 160 (quotation)
51. Cipolla, Guns and Sails, 71-72
52. John L. Vogt, "The Early Sao Tome-Principe Slave Trade with Mina, 1500-1540," International Journal of African Historical Studies 6, no. 3 (1973): 453-67 ("rose up," 461)
53. A license granted by the Spanish crown in 1518 to deliver four thousand slaves to the Spanish American colonies was the first instance allowing transport of slaves directly from Africa to the New World. See "Permission Granted to the Governor of Bresa for Four Thousand Slaves," in Donnan, Documents Illustrative of Slave Trade, 1: 41-42
54. Brooks, Eurafricans in Western Africa: Commerce, Social Status, Gender, and Religious Observance from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Athens, Ohio, 2003), 52-54
55. Peter C. W. Gutkind, "Trade and Labor in Early Precolonial African History: The Canoemen of Southern Ghana," in The Workers of African Trade, ed. Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch and Paul E. Lovejoy (Beverly Hills, Calif., 1985), 25-49, esp. 25-29
56. Gutkind, "The Boatmen of Ghana: The Possibilities of a Pre-Colonial African Labor History," in Confrontation, Class Consciousness, and the Labor Process: Studies in Proletarian Class Formation, ed. Michael Hanagan and Charles Stephenson (Westport, Conn., 1986), 123-66
57. See also Robert Smith, "The Canoe in West African History," Journal of African History 11, no. 4 (1970): 515-33, esp. 516-17, 524
58. Vogt, International Journal of African Historical Studies 6
59. Vogt, Portuguese Rule on the Gold Coast, 37, 46-48, 57-58
60. J. D. Fage, "Slaves and Society in Western Africa, c. 1445-c. 1700," Journal of African History, 21, no. 3 (1980): 298
61. Vogt, International Journal of African Historical Studies 6: 460
62. Gutkind, "Trade and Labor," 29, 32
63. Brooks, Landlords and Strangers, 79, 124, 136
64. On slaves working as interpreters aboard Portuguese slave ships, see Saunders, Social History of Black Slaves, 12
65. Igor Kopytoff and Suzanne Miers, "African 'Slavery' as an Institution of Marginality," in Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Miers and Kopytoff (Madison, Wis., 1977), 3-81
66. Robert Harms, "Slave Systems in Africa," History in Africa 5 (1978): 327-35
67. Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge, 1983)
68. Claude Meillassoux, The Anthropology of Slavery: The Womb of Iron and Gold, trans. Alide Dasnois (Chicago, 1991)
69. Toyin Falola and Lovejoy, "Pawnship in Historical Perspective," in Pawnship in Africa: Debt Bondage in Historical Perspective, ed. Falola and Lovejoy (Boulder, Colo., 1994), 1-26
70. Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, Wis., 1969), 99, 115-16 (table 33)
71. Klein, African Slavery in Latin America, 19-20, 28
72. See Wallerstein, The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1974), esp. chap. 4, "From Seville to Amsterdam: The Failure of Empire," 164-221
73. J. H. Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance: Discovery, Exploration and Settlement 1450 to 1650 (Berkeley, Calif., 1981), esp. 123-24
74. Pérez-Mallaína, Spain's Men of the Sea, 192 ("No medieval law code"), 196 ("courts of admiralty")
75. See also William McFee, The Law of the Sea (Philadelphia, 1950), 49
76. Rediker, Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, 212 n. 19. Notwithstanding criticism of Marcus Rediker's insistence that crewmen were thoroughly subordinated to the needs of merchant capital by the eighteenth century, there is little reason to question the expanded power captains held on behalf of merchant capital, the growing divergence of interests between captains and crews, and the increasingly sharp antagonism between the two groups
77. In her study of English merchant shipping, Dorothy Burwash notes that the greater equality between commander and crew that prevailed in medieval maritime culture continued to be felt in the early sixteenth century because "there was not as yet an unbridgeable gap between capital and labour." See Burwash, English Merchant Shipping, 1460-1540 (1947
78. See Daniel Vickers et al., "Roundtable: Marcus Rediker," International Journal of Maritime History 1, no. 1 (June 1989): 311-57
79. For a dissenting view, see Kenneth R. Andrews, Ships, Money and Politics: Seafaring and Naval Enterprise in the Reign of Charles I (Cambridge, 1991), 14, 62-83
80. Eltis et al., Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, no. 77218. The most measurable advance came with development of the flintlock mechanism in the seventeenth century
81. Eltis et al., Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, no. 90466
82. Rediker, Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, 49-50 ("must neither have")
83. For an account of that process, see Rediker, Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, esp. chap. 5
84. "The Seaman as the 'Spirit of Rebellion': Authority, Violence, and Labor Discipline," 205-53
85. See also Emma Christopher, Slave Ship Sailors and Their Captive Cargoes, 1730-1807 (Cambridge, 2006), chap. 1 (23-50)
86. Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, 1976), 365-88
87. Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 299-333
88. On slave drivers, whom Genovese calls "The Men Between," see Peter M. Voelz, Slave and Soldier: The Military Impact of Blacks in the Colonial Americas (New York, 1993)
89. Gutkind, "Trade and Labor," 29-38
90. See Postma, Dutch in the Atlantic Slave Trade, 72
91. Law, Slave Coast of West Africa, 24
92. On the English derivation of the term grometto (also grommetto) from the Portuguese grumete, see Walter Rodney, "African Slavery and Other Forms of Social Oppression on the Upper Guinea Coast in the Context of the Atlantic Slave-Trade," Journal of African History 7, no. 3 (1966): 438
93. Eltis, Rise of African Slavery, 148 n. 53
94. Eltis, Rise of African Slavery, 228 (quotation)
95. On Kruan history and involvement in the maritime-world, see Brooks, Landlords and Strangers, 4-5, 21, 24, 291
96. For other eighteenth- and nineteenth-century examples of slaves functioning like guardians, see Crow, Memoirs of the Late Captain Crow, 34-38
97. Conneau, Slaver's Log Book, 84
98. Johnson, "Time and Revolution in African America," 158 (quotation)
99. On Akan warrior culture reconstituted in the Americas, see esp. John Thornton, "The Coromantees: An African Cultural Group in Colonial North America and the Caribbean," Journal of Caribbean History 32, nos. 1-2 (1998): 161-78
100. Thornton, "War, the State, and Religious Norms in 'Coromantee' Thought: The Ideology of an African American Nation," in Possible Pasts: Becoming Colonial in Early America, ed. Robert Blair St. George (Ithaca, N.Y., 2000), 181-200
101. Johnson, "Time and Revolution in African America," 149