4 - Merchants and slaves: slavery on Saint Louis and Gorée

Summary

At the end of the seventeenth century European concessionary companies began to occupy strategic points on the West African coast, and to fortify them as the outposts of trade monopolies granted by a European power. In the Lower Senegal two small islands, Saint Louis in the mouth of the Senegal River, and Gorée off the coast of Cap Vert, were occupied permanently, except in times of war, from the mid-seventeenth century onward. During the eighteenth century slave societies came into existence on both Saint Louis and Gorée. These societies were tributary to the Atlantic trade, whose interests they served. Yet even though they were fully integrated into the maritime economy of the eighteenth century, they maintained a distinct African culture that tied them historically to the mainland.

The history of these island societies is usually introduced through the signares, charming and hospitable local women, who welcomed European merchants, married them according to the customs of the country, and gave birth to the mulattoes of Saint Louis, the favored middlemen in the trade between European merchants and the mainland. Eighteenth-century travellers like Adanson described their reaction to the women of Saint Louis, who played such an important role in establishing contacts between European merchants and mainland society, in terms that reflected the world of the merchant directors. “Their skin is surprisingly delicate and soft; their mouth and lips are small; and their features are regular. There are some of them perfect beauties.” An English gentleman who had resided in Senegal, and who wrote the notes for the English edition of Adanson's work commented on this passage. “The vast numbers of children, and children's children, the French begat by them, and left there, prove our author is not singular in his opinion.”