Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T21:35:17.234Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Richard Harris, Slave Trader Spokesman

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

James A. Rawley
Get access

Extract

“So little is known of the separate traders,” lamented the historian of the Royal African Company, K. G. Davies, that he was reduced to perceptive speculation about their activity. The authority, Basil Williams, writing about the period 1714–1760, asserted, “The traffic in negro slaves was carried on mainly by the Royal African Company.…“ In actuality a great deal can be discovered about the separate traders and their activity. The papers of Humphry Morice provide a rich source for a merchant who was perhaps London's and Great Britain's foremost slave trader in the 1720s. The assertion that the traffic in Negro slaves was carried on mainly by the Royal African Company is easily refuted by materials in the Public Record Office. London separate traders dominated the trade for the first three decades of the eighteenth century giving way to Bristol traders in the 1730s, who in turn gave way to Liverpool ascendancy in the 1740s.

The English slave trade between 1699 and 1729, energized by the end of monopoly and the booming international market for slaves in America, grew prodigiously. In these years England accounted for nearly one-half of all slaves exported from the west coast of Africa. London alone accounted for two-thirds of all slaves delivered by English ships.

Although the period falls half a century and more before the classic exposition of the advantages of free trade over monopoly by Adam Smith, an English free trade doctrine had found expression in Sir Dudley North's pamphlet, Discourses upon Trade (1691), and parlimentary proceedings. Interlopers in the slave trade, smugglers in the lucrative Spanish-American trade who opposed parliamentary restriction on their activity, separate traders whose participation in the trade became legalized in 1698, and a variety of commercial, industrial, and planting interests all contributed in their fashion to an outlook favoring free trade in slaves.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , Fall 1991 , pp. 439 - 458
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Davies, K. G., The Royal African Company (New York, 1970), p. 148 Google Scholar. Williams, Basil, The Whig Supremacy, 1714–1760 (Oxford, 1939), p. 296 Google Scholar.

2 Rawley, James A., “Humphry Morice: Foremost London Slave Merchant of His Time,” in De La Traile a L'Esclavage, ed., Daget, Serge (Nantes, 1988), pp. 269–81Google Scholar. Idem, “The Port of London and the Eighteenth Century Slave Trade: Historians, Sources, and a Reappraisal,” African Economic History 9 (1980): 85–100. Idem, The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History (New York, 1981), ch. 10.

3 Richardson, David, “The Eighteenth-Century British Slave-Trade: Estimates of its Volume and Coastal Distribution in Africa,” Research in Economic History, 12 (1989): 185–87Google Scholar.

4 Britain, Great, The Journal of the House of Commons (London, 1547–), 10–11 Google Scholar, passim; the quotation is in 11: 622 (hereafter cited as Commons Journals). Davies, , Royal African Company, p. 152 Google Scholar. Galenson, David, Traders, Planters, and Slaves, Market Behavior in Early English America (Cambridge, 1988), p. 153 Google Scholar, demonstrates “that a large competitive market existed in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century.”

5 Donnan, Elizabeth, ed., Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade, 4 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1930), 1: 42 Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Donnan, Documents). Davis, David Brion, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca, 1966), pp. 210, 209Google Scholar.

6 “A Defence of the Observations on the Assiento Trade. By the Author of the Observations on the Assiento Trade” (London, 1728)Google Scholar. Gentleman's Magazine 4 (September 1734): 511. Searches at the National Register of Archives and the London Record Office proved unproductive; perhaps subsequent investigation will add biographical details.

7 Davies, , Royal African Company, pp. 372–73Google Scholar. Public Record Office, CO 388/25.

8 Britain, Great, Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies (London, 1860–1954), 1719–1729, pp. 187, 211 Google Scholar. Ibid., 1728–1729, pp. 186–87 (hereafter cited as CSPQ. British Library, Add. MSS 4045, f. 37.

9 9 and 10 Wm. III. c. 26. The text is printed in Donnan, , Documents, I: 421–29Google Scholar.

10 Britain, Great, Journal of the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, 1704–1782, 14 vols. (London, 1920–1938), 1704–1734 Google Scholar, passim (hereafter cited as Journal of the Commissioners).

11 Ibid., 1704–1709, pp. 436, 437, 444.

12 P.R.O., CO 388/11. I. 13, 16, 17.

13 B.L., Add. MSS, 14034, ff. 99–108. Commons Journals (London, 1547–), 15: 599 Google ScholarPubMed.

14 P.R.O., CO 324/9, pp. 165–170. CO 388/11. Journal of the Commissioners, 1704–1709, pp. 560–61Google ScholarPubMed.

15 Ibid., p. 562. P.R.O., T70/175, pp. 68–69.

16 P.R.O., CO 390/12, pp. 172–282.

17 Commons Journals, 16: 71, 160 Google Scholar. P.R.O., T70/175, p. 100.

18 Commons Journals, 16: 235, 242, 246 Google Scholar. Journal of the Commissioners, 1709–1715, pp. 77 et seq. Google ScholarPubMed P.R.O., CO 389/21, 7–16; printed in Donnan, , Documents, 2: 102–07Google Scholar.

19 Commons Journals, 16: 319–20 and passim Google Scholar.

20 Ibid., pp. 300, 310, 312, 317–19. Davies, , Royal African Company, p. 150 Google Scholar.

21 Journal of the Commissioners, 1708–1715, p. 191 Google ScholarPubMed. CSPC, 1710–1711, p. 247.

22 P.R.O., CO 388/13, no. 102. CSPC, 1710–1711, pp. 306–08, 326.

23 Ibid., pp. 336–37.

24 P.R.O., CO 389/21; Donnan, , Documents, 2: 134–40Google Scholar.

25 Journal of the Commissioners, 1709–1715, pp. 288–89, 293, 333, 335, 344–46Google ScholarPubMed.

26 Commons Journals, 17: 164–65. 10 Ann. c 24Google Scholar.

27 Commons Journals, 17: 319 Google Scholar. Britain, Great, The Manuscripts of the House of Lords, 10, n. s., 1712–1713 (London, 1953), pp. 73–174 Google Scholar.

28 P.R.O., CO 389/21, pp. 441–57. Donnan, , Documents, 2: 137 Google Scholar.

29 Chandos Papers, Henry E. Huntington Library, passim. P.R.O., T70/172, pp. 8–9, 11–14, 15–17, 21–23 (for quotation). P.R.O., CO 388/25.

30 Journal of the Commissioners, 1726–1727, pp. 232ff.Google ScholarPubMed, especially pp. 250, 251, 257, 267 for Harris.

31 P.R.O., CO 389/28, pp. 305–12. Donnan, , Documents, 2: 337–39Google Scholar.

32 Commons Journals, 21: 522–23 et. seq.Google Scholar

33 Gray, Lewis Cecil, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1933), 1: 356 Google Scholar. Wax, Darold D., “Negro Import Duties in Colonial Virginia: A Study in British Commercial Policy and Local Public Policy,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 79 (January 1971): 29–41 Google Scholar.

34 P.R.O., CO 5/1319, no. 31, pp. 128–29.

35 CSPC, 1722–1723, p. 384.

36 Journal of the Commissioners, 1723–1728, pp. 64–66 Google ScholarPubMed. Grant, W. L. and Munro, Jame, editors, Acts of the Privy Council: Colonial Series, 1613–1783, 3: 64 (hereafter cited as APCCS)Google Scholar.

37 Ibid., pp. 64–65. Journal of the Commissioners, pp. 369–370. APCCS, 3: 393, 395.

38 Curtin, Philip D., The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, 1969), p. 140 Google Scholar. Journal of the Commissioners, 1715–1718, pp. 121–22Google ScholarPubMed. APCCS, II, 728–729.

39 P.R.O., CO 137/16, pp. 17–18. CSPC, 1724–1725, p. 282. Journal of the Commissioners, 1723–1728, pp. 149–50Google Scholar.

40 Ibid., pp. 150–51. CSPC, 1724–1725, pp. 347–48.

41 P.R.O., CO 137/16 R 5. Pitman, Frank Wesley, The Development of the British West Indies, 1700–1763 (New Haven, 1917), pp. 81–82 Google Scholar.

42 CSPC, 1726–1727, p. 393.

43 Journal of the Commissioners, 1728–1734, p. 223 Google ScholarPubMed. APCCS, 3: 164.

44 Journal of the Commissioners, 1728–1734, pp. 307–09Google ScholarPubMed. APCCS, 3: p. 164.

45 CSPCC, 1734–1735, pp. 62–63. APCCS, 3: 165.

46 Donnan, DocumentsD, 2: 156. B.L., Add. MSS, 25556, f. 34, ff. 172–173.

47 Journal of the Commissioners, 1715–1718, pp. 91–93, 99 Google Scholar.

48 Ibid., pp. 190–91.

49 Ibid., pp. 118.

50 Ibid., pp. 236–37.

51 CSPC, 1722–1723, p. 182.

52 P/R.O., CO 389/28, pp. 356–57. Britain, Great, The Journals of the House of Lords (London, 1578–), 33: 523 Google Scholar.

53 P/R.O., CO 137/8, p. 40.

54 CSPC, 1714–1715, pp. 58–60.

55 Ibid., pp. 115–18.

56 Journal of the Commissioners, 1718–1720, pp. 199–200 Google ScholarPubMed.

57 CSPC, 1724–1725, pp. 104–05.

58 Journal of the Commissioners, 1728–1734, pp. 253–54Google ScholarPubMed.

59 Ibid., p. 223. APCCS, 3: 162.

60 Ibid., p. 347. CSPC, 1731, pp. 224–25, 293–95. Sheridan, Richard B., Sugar and Slavery. An Economic History of the British West Indies, 1623–1775 (Baltimore, 1973), pp. 288–89Google Scholar.