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Measuring the Atlantic Slave Trade: An Assessment of Curtin and Anstey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

J. E. Inikori
J. E. Inikori
Affiliation:
Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria
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Extract

The main historical problem to which Professor Curtin addressed himself in the Census relates to the total number of slaves imported from Africa into all the slave-importing Atlantic regions during the entire period of the Atlantic slave trade. The estimates of the Census put the total number at 9,566,000. It is conceded that the actual number may be either somewhat lower or higher. But Professor Curtin concludes that ‘it is extremely unlikely that the ultimate total will turn out to be less than 8,000,000 or more than 10,500,00’. After examining Professor Curtin's methods of computation and the quality of the data employed, these confident limits were found to be unwarranted and misleading. The evidence relating to the size of the slave populations of the importing regions and to the demographic processes among the slaves suggests very strongly a substantial upward revision of the import estimates of the Census, especially those for Spanish, Portuguese and French America. An estimate of British slave exports from 1750 to 1807, on the basis of hitherto unused records, points to the fact that unless complete shipping data are employed in the slave export estimates the numbers computed will continue to be far below the actual numbers.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , April 1976 , pp. 197 - 223
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

1 Curtin, Philip D., The Atlantic Slave Trade; A Census (Madison, 1969)Google Scholar. Throughout this paper the book is referred to as the Census. A part of the material upon which this paper is based was obtained during my postgraduate research in Britain from April 1969 to June 1971, under the University of Ibadan Scholarship. The other part was collected during a one-year stay in Britain made possible by an award of a Study Fellowship by Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria, and a Commonwealth Academic Staff Fellowship award by the Commonwealth Universities’, Association. I am grateful to all these institutions for their generosity. The first draft of the paper was read for me with comments by Professor J. R. Gray of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. However, whatever errors there may be in the paper are entirely mine.

2 Curtin, Census, p. xviii.

3 Ibid., p. 87.

4 Curtin, , Census, 32, n. 26Google Scholar. In my own calculations I employed the more practical form of the compound interest formula. Using Curtin's notations, this may be stated as follows:

where r is the annual average rate of growth of slave population,

t is the length in years of the given period,

N 0 is the size of the slave population at the beginning of the period,

Nt, is the size of the slave population at the end of the period.

This form of the formula gives the same results for r as those obtained by Curtin.

5 The second part of the formula is stated as follows: T = m/r (N1–N 0) where T is the total number of slaves imported during the given period, and m is the annual rate of slave import. In the Census, T is given as ‘the average annual number’, of slaves imported during the given period. This is probably a misprint, because all the calculations in the book treat T as the total number of slaves imported during the given period. See Curtin, Census, 32, n. 26.

6 524. k. 14 (British Museum), Report of the Lords of the Committee of Council appointed for the consideration of all matters relating to Trade and Foreign Plantations (1789), part III, Antigua, A. No. 15.

7 Curtin, Census, 58–9.

8 Report of the Lords of the Committee of Council…, part III, Jamiaca.

9 British Parliamentary Papers, Accts. & Papers, 1789, vol. 84, part III, Jamaica.

10 British Parl. Papers, Accts. & Papers, 1789, vol. 84, part IV, No. 15, Supplement No. 3, Barbados.

11 Roberts, G. W., The Population of Jamaica (New Haven, 1957), 5Google Scholar. By 1817 deaths still exceeded births among the slaves in Jamaica, so that the slave population figures for 1817 ought to have been much less than those for 1808. In fact, the former are higher than the latter. See Roberts, op. cit., Table 6, p. 39, for figures of births and deaths, 1820–9.

12 René, Michel, Hilliard D'Auberteuil, Considérations sur l'état présent de la Colonie frariçaise de Saint-Domingue (2 vols., vol. 11, Paris 1777), 200.Google Scholar

13 Peytraud, L., L'Esclavage mix Antilles françaises avant 1789 d'après des documents inidéts des Archives Coloniales (Paris, 1897), 139.Google Scholar

14 Curtin, Census, Table 19, p. 79.

15 A committee of Jamaican House of Assembly reported in 1788 that ‘from the examination of Mr. Lindo, it appears, that out of 7,873 Negroes consigned to him as a factor in the years 1786, 1787 and 1788, and reported at the Custom House, no less than 363 perished’, before the day of sale. (Report of the Lords of the Committee of Council…, part III, Jamaica).

16 This was the general view of contemporary writers in the New World. In his evidence before a committee of enquiry in 1788, James Ramsay summarized these views, citing Long, Edward, Robertson, , and D'Auberteuil, Hilliard. British Part. Papers, Accts. & Papers, 1789, vol. 84, part III, Evidence of James Ramsay.Google Scholar

17 P.R.O., BT. 6/10, p. 25.

18 D'Auberteuil, Hilliard, Considérations, 1, 45.Google Scholar

19 BT. 6/10, pp. 95–6. There is some misprint here in the figure quoted from D'Auberteuil's book. The mortality rate among the slaves in Saint-Domingue as stated in D'Auberteuil's book is 1/15th p.a. of the whole slave population, not 1/5th as stated in the source referred to above.

20 Curtin, Census, 63.

21 Br. Parl. Papers, Accts. & Papers, 1789, vol. 84, part IV, no. 15, Supplement No. 3, Barbados.

22 P.R.O., Bt. 6/10, pp. 43–4.

23 Report of the Lords of the Committee of Council…, part III, Antigua, A. no. 15. The disasters of this period also affected the other European colonies. The French and the Spanish islands were said to have suffered more than the British islands. See the second report of the committee of Jamaican House of Assembly, 12 Nov. 1788, in Report of the Lords of the Committee of Council…, part III, Jamaica.

24 Curtin, P.D., ‘Epidemiology and the Slave Trade’, Political Science Quarterly, lxxxiii (1968), 215Google Scholar. This is so for many reasons. The massive imports during periods of rapid growth mean massive losses during the seasoning period. It also means a rapidly growing proportion of African-born slaves in the total slave population. Death rates among the former were usually very high, and birth rates among them very low.

25 Curtin, Census, Table 19, p. 78.

26 Curtin, Census, Table 14, p. 59.

27 These figures were summed up from the Census, Table 13, p. 55; import estimates for Jamaica, pp. 52–3; Table 14, p. 59; Table 15, p. 62; Table 19, p. 78; Table 20, p. 79.

28 Curtin, Census, 141 and 146.

29 P.R.O., CO. 137/38, fol. 5. The figure of 353,200 stated in the Census, 52, is wrong. The gross imports are 497,736 and 137,114 were re-exported, leaving a net import of 360,622. The reference in the Census, 53, n. 1, is also wrong. The correct reference is stated above.

30 Curtin, Census, Table 39, p. 137.

31 Curtin, Census, Table 20, p. 79. There seems to be a misprint here. The period, ‘1739–88’, should, I think, read 1739–78.

32 Hilliard D'Auberteuil, Considerations, II, 63. Hilliard D'Auberteuil's work was widely read in Britain by people interested in the subject of slave trade and slavery in the New World. It was described by Stephen Fuller, the agent for Jamaica, as the work of a ‘respectable planter’, the evidence, ‘entirely disinterested’, and its ‘veracity has never yet been impeached’. See evidence of Stephen Fuller, BT. 6/10, p. 83. The 2 volumes of D'Auberteuil's book can be found in the British Museum, 278. f. 17.

33 Peytraud, L'Esclavage, 140.

34 T. 70/1585, Wm. Walton to George Case, Whitehaven, 19 Jan. 1805. Walton stated that ‘what I write is little more than a plain statement of facts with remarks thereon, which Dr. Bisset will be pleased to put into form and proper language to meet the public eye, adding or curtailing as he may think best'.

35 Ibid.

36 Davis, Ralph, The Rise of the Atlantic Economies (London, 1973), 55.Google Scholar

37 Curtin, Census, 35.

38 Mannix, Daniel P., Black Cargoes: A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1518–1865 (New York, 1962), 54.Google Scholar

39 P. D.Curtin, ‘Epidemiology’, 214.

40 Curtin, Census, Table 77, p. 268.

41 Ibid., 205.

42 Ibid., 207.

43 Vansina, Jan, Kingdoms of the Savanna (Madison, 1966), 184–5.Google Scholar

44 The several volumes of these records can be found in the Public Record Office, London. Microfilm copies of them are also available at the University of Ibadan Library.

45 See Harris, J. R., The Copper King: A Biography of Thomas Williams of Llanidan (Liverpool, 1964), 11Google Scholar, where Professor Harris shows the disparity between quantities of copper and copper products exported from Britain to the East Indies as shown by the books of the East India Company and the quantities recorded in the Inspector General's ledgers. For the exports to the African coast, see Inikori, J. E., ‘English Trade to Guinea: A Study in the Impact of Foreign Trade on the English Economy, 1750–1807’, (Ph.D. Thesis, University of Ibadan, 1973), 88–104.Google Scholar

46 These records can be found among the Chancery Masters Exhibits in the P.R.O. London; see in particular, C. 103/130, C. 103/131, C. 103/132; also Gill, Conrad, Merchants and Mariners of the 18th Century (London, 1961).Google Scholar

47 C. 103/130, Capt. Pearce to Thomas Hall, London, 15 Aug. 1734.

48 C. 103/130, Capt. Pearce to Thomas Hall, Bristol, 15 Oct. 1735.

49 C. 103/132, Senserf & Son to Thomas Hall, Rotterdam, 19 Feb. 1732. The firm's records contain other accounts for goods purchased in Holland for the slave trade.

50 T. 1/447/LA17, Memorial of the Merchants of Liverpool Trading to Africa to the Treasury, read 16 Mar. 176s.

51 C. 107/7, Part I John Kirkpatrick & Co. to James Rogers & Co., Ostend, 21 Mar. 1792.

52 Perhaps the largest of such establishments was Factory Point, belonging to Messrs. John and Thomas Hodgson, slave merchants in Liverpool, at the lies de Los. There is an oil painting of a ‘S.W. view’ of this establishment in a ship's journal in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (see LOG/M/21MS53/035, Journal of a voyage from London to Africa on board the Sandown by Samuel Gamble, 1793–4). In 1790 there were 41 vessels (sloops, schooners and boats) employed on the coast by this establishment. In that year two vessels brought goods from England on freight for the establishment (see Brit. Parl. Papers, Accts. & Papers, 1790, vol. 87, no. 698 (8), pp. 500–12).

53 BM. Add. MSS. 38, 416 fols. 88–90. The names of these ships and their captains are stated. The private records of the merchants abound with evidence relating to the involvement of British shipping in the slave trade of continental Europe.

54 BM. Add. MSS. 38,416, folio 216.

55 BT. 6/11, Evidence of John Dawson, 17 Jan. 1789.

56 House of Commons Journals, vol. xlvii, 27 April 1792, pp. 742–3. Some or all of the slaving activities of British ships involved in the Spanish trade at this time may have escaped being recorded by the British Custom House, particularly in the last quarter of the eighteenth century when the merchants did all they could to escape from the stringent regulations imposed on the carrying of slaves by vessels clearing from British ports for that trade.

57 Deane, Phyllis, ‘The Implications of Early National Income Estimates for the Measurement of Long-Term Economic Growth in the United Kingdom’, Econ. Dev. & Cultural Change, vol. vi, no. 1 (11 1955), 15–16.Google Scholar

58 Norris, Robert, A Short Account of the African Slave Trade (London, 1789), 28, 11.Google Scholar

59 Craig, R., ‘Capital Formation in Shipping’, in Higgins, J. P. P. & Pollard, S. (eds.), Aspects of Capital Investment in Great Britain 1750–1850 (London, 1971), 134–5.Google Scholar

60 Curtin, Census, 147.

61 BM. Add. MSS. 22,676, fols. 41 and 42.

62 CO. 388/25/S.44.

63 Curtin, Census, 135.

64 Customs 17/16, fol. 9.

65 BT. 6/3.

66 Ibid.; see Wm. Holy to Richard Cumberland, Custom House, London, 22 Mar. 1777; and Edward Stanley (Secretary to the Commissioners of the Customs) to Richard Cumberland, Custom House, London, 9 Apr. 1777.

67 BT. 6/7.

68 Wallace, James, A General and Descriptive History of the Ancient and Present State of the Town of Liverpool (Liverpool, 1793), 255.Google Scholar

69 BT. 6/185, Sir Charles Whitworth's State of the Trade of England. The accounts cover 1771–1801. Customs 17 covers 1772–1808. See Customs 17/5–29 for accounts covering 1777–1807.

70 Curtin, Census, 133–6.

71 39 Geo. 3 Cap. 80, Public General Acts, State Paper Room, British Museum.

72 BT. 6/3, folios 153–89.

73 Curtin, Census, 133.

74 BT. 6/3, folios 153–89, for London shipping to the African coast.

75 Curtin, Census, 133–4.

76 BT. 6/12, p. 350, Report of the Committee of the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa.

77 BM. Add. MSS. 38,416 fols. 154–6, James Jones to Lord Hawkesbury , Bristol, 26 July 1788.

78 CO. 388/45, part I, A List of Ships Employed in the Trade to Africa from the Port of Bristol the year 1749.

79 BT. 6/3.

80 The larger number of slaves per ship in the period 1777–88 is due to three main factors. Firstly, during the War of American Independence the number of ships going to the coast fell drastically. Consequently, slaves accumulated in the hands of traders on the coast, prices fell, and the ship masters were encouraged to overload their vessels. So a Bristol merchant wrote to a trader on the coast, ‘sorry to hear the times are so bad, depend on it that you will have slaves in greater plenty ere you've more ships …’, (T. 70/1534, John Cockburn to a trader on the coast, Bristol, 30 Nov. 1776). In Oct. 1780 a British official on the Gold Coast reported that three Liverpool ships were leaving the Gold Coast with 600 slaves each. These three ships bought their slaves at £8 10s. per head: ‘Captain Kendal informs me, that with his cargo £5,000 he has purchased 630 slaves, 180 oz. Gold dust, 6 butts palm oil and one ton ivory’. (T. 70/1539, Robert Stubbs to Christopher Court, Annamaboe, 28 Oct. 1780). Secondly, after the war much larger ships were built for the slave trade, and thirdly, the general supply and demand conditions then prevailing encouraged the ship masters to overcrowd their ships. This, partly, led to the legislation of 1788.

81 Curtin, Census, Table 41, p. 142.

82 Anstey, Roger, ‘The Volume and Profitability of the British Slave Trade, 1761–1807’, in Engerman, Stanley L. and Genovese, Eugene D. (eds.), Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere: Quantitative Studies (Princeton, 1975), 3–31.Google Scholar

83 Ibid., Table 4, p. 12. This figure has been revised slightly upward in Anstey's recent book, The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition 1760–1810 (London, 1975), 39. The new figure is 1,535,622.

84 P. D.Curtin, ‘Measuring the Atlantic Slave Trade’, in Engerman and Genovese, Race and Slavery, 107–10.

85 House of Lords Papers, Accounts & Papers, 1806, VII, no. 199. An account of the number of ships, their tonnage and men, which cleared from England for Africa and the West Indies, in the last ten years, distinguishing each year.

86 Anstey, ‘British Slave Trade’, 18, n. 44.

87 Ibid.

88 Ibid., p. 18, n. 44.

89 Customs 3/61–80; Customs 17/7–10. These values are as follows:

90 See in particular, Davenport Papers in the Raymond Richards Collection, University of Keele Library, Keele, U.K.

91 Anstey, ‘British Slave Trade’, 17–18; id., The Atlantic Slave Trade, 45.

92 Customs 17/24 & 26. The amount is very much smaller for other years.

93 Ibid.

94 Since the ships returning directly from Africa to England in 1802 and 1804 were made up partly by ships cleared out in 1801 and 1802, 1803 and 1804, respectively, the mean for those group years form the base of the percentages calculated.

95 Anstey, ‘British Slave Trade’, 4–6.

96 Ibid., 6.

97 The total number of ships cleared is 1,121. See BT. 6/3 & Customs 17.

98 Anstey, ‘British Slave Trade’, Table 1, p. 8.

99 Customs 17/7–12.

100 Anstey, ‘British Slave Trade’, 7–10.

101 Customs 17/13–22.

102 Anstey, ‘British Slave Trade’, pp. 10–11.

103 Customs 17/23–29.

104 Anstey, ‘British Slave Trade’, 18, n. 44, to which reference was made above.

105 For Anstey's assumptions about 193 ships, see above; for Anstey's computed figures, see Anstey, ‘British Slave Trade’, Table 1, p. 8; for the total number of ships cleared out for Africa from England in the period 1781–7, see Customs 17/7–10. Anstey's computed figure is 674 and the total clearance is 821.

106 See above, pp. 211–12.

107 See Anstey, ‘British Slave Trade’, 6.

108 Ibid., Table 1, p. 8.

109 Anstey, ‘British Slave Trade’, 9, n. 24,

110 D. Eltis, ‘The Direction and Fluctuation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade 1821–43: A Revision of the 1845 Parliamentary Paper’. Paper presented at the MSSB Conference on the Economics of the Slave Trade, Aug. 1975, Colby College, Waterville, Maine, U.S.A. I am grateful to Eltis for allowing me to make reference to this paper.

111 Pitman, F. W., The Development of the British West Indies 1700–1763 (Yale, 1917, 2nd edn., 1945, Reprint, 1967), 206 and 276Google Scholar, for corruption of British colonial customs officials.

112 House of Lords Record Office, Order Date 18 June 1799. This is what constitutes Anstey 's ‘Lords List A’ see Anstey, ‘British Slave Trade’, 7–9, n. 23.

113 House of Lords Record Office, Order Date 28 June 1799.

114 Ibid.

115 BM., British Parliamentary Papers, Accts. & Papers, 1792, vol. 93, no. 766. Number of vessels, their tonnage, arrived from Africa in the British West India Islands between 5 Jan. 1789 and 5 Jan. 1792, with the number of slaves imported therein, distinguishing each year…

116 Anstey, ‘British Slave Trade’, 9, n. 24. In fact, the slave merchants themselves often stated that the direct trade to foreign possessions constituted two-thirds of the whole British slave trade in the late eighteenth century.

117 P.R.O., C. 114/3, Pince v. Lumley.

118 39 Geo. 3 Cap. 80, 12 July 1799, Public General Acts, British Museum.

119 The partners', original intention was to send only one, but the failure of the captain to secure arrangements for landing the slaves in a foreign possession made a second ship necessary.

120 Anstey, ‘British Slave Trade’, 5–6, n. 13.

121 Roger Anstey, The Atlantic Slave Trade, 11–12, n. 31.

122 See J. E.Inikori, ‘English Trade to Guinea’, ch. v, where this is treated in great detail.

123 Curtin, , Census, 177–8.Google Scholar

124 D'Auberteuil, Hilliard, Considérations, 1, 64–7.Google Scholar

125 Ibid., 69.

126 Ibid., II, 60. Peytraud estimates that between 3,000 and 4,000 slaves were yearly imported into Saint-Dominguc by French traders from the Mozambique coast in the 1780s. (Peytraud, , L'Esclavage, 139.)Google Scholar

127 Curtin, , Census, Table 63, p. 211Google Scholar. This gives French export of 613,100 slaves from West Africa, as against only 356,000 from Central and East Africa in the years 1701–1810.

128 C. 103/130, Hamilton to Thomas Hall, Annamaboe, 30 Oct. 1741.

129 Curtin, , Census, 177–9Google Scholar. The figures are as follows:

This gives a total loss in transit of 43,442 slaves which is 7–97 per cent of 545,300 slaves exported.

130 Curtin, , Census, 217.Google Scholar

131 Mathias, Peter, ‘Living with the neighbours: The Role of Economic History’, in Harte, N. B. (ed.), The Study of Economic History: Collected Inaugural Lectures 1873–1970 (London, 1971), 373.Google Scholar