5 - Famine, civil war, and secession, 1750–1800

Summary

The second half of the eighteenth century was a period of crisis for Atlantic commerce and for the societies of the region. The crises of the eighteenth century were multifaceted, with their roots in the Atlantic world and in the reactions of Senegambians to the demands of Atlantic commerce. The decline of slave exports was one of the symptoms of change. French and British slaving activities had been growing steadily for decades. Although there is currently no consensus on the scale of the slave trade from Senegambia, a conservative estimate for the peak decades from 1720 to 1750 puts slave exports in the range of 5,500 to 3,500 a year. The nearly continuous expansion of slave exports in the first four decades of the eighteenth century was followed by an almost equally steady decline in the second half of the century.

Although many factors contributed to this decline, it was accelerated by conflicts in the wider Atlantic world. Because Senegambia was partitioned into trading spheres by France and Britain, it was affected by the economic difficulties and frequent wars that convulsed their slave empires in the second half of the century. The early eighteenth-century slave trade was highly profitable, as the boom in sugar production in the Americas fed decades of expansion. After 1750 saturated markets, rising prices of slaves in Africa, the growing debt of the American colonies and frequent wars between France and Britain complicated the balance sheet of the slave trade, and demanded more elaborate financing and a redivision of risks and profits.