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The Import of Firearms into West Africa 1750–1807: a quantitative analysis

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

A series of articles on firearms in Africa published in the Journal of African History in 1971 raised a number of questions which have not been given adequate attention since those articles appeared. In the present paper an attempt is therefore made to shed some light on some of these questions in relation to West Africa in the second half of the eighteenth century. On the basis of import figures from England total imports during this period was estimated to be between 283,000 and 394,000 guns per annum, excluding imports into the Congo–Loango area which Phyllis Martin estimated to be about 50,000 yearly at this time. These guns went largely to the major slave exporting regions of West Africa, especially the Bonny trading area. The sellers of slaves showed a very strong preference for firearms, which is an indication of a strong connexion between guns and the acquisition of slaves. This reinforces the gun-slave cycle thesis. The evidence fails to support the idea that firearms were used primarily for crop protection in West Africa in the eighteenth century. If this were so it should have been reflected in the European goods demanded by sellers of agricultural commodities. It is likely, however, that the use to which firearms were put in West Africa changed after 1900. While the quality of firearms imported into West Africa during the period of this study was generally low, it would seem that those firearms largely served the purposes for which the African buyers purchased them.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , July 1977 , pp. 339 - 368
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

1 J. Afr. Hist. xii, nos. 2 and 4 (1971)Google Scholar. These articles were the outcome of seminars on firearms in Africa held at the University of London from 1967 to 1970.

2 Public Record Office, Literary Search Room, Acts of the Privy Council Colonial Series IV 1745–1766, p. 18.Google Scholar

3 P.R.O., C.O. 267/6, Petition of Henry Hardware to Pitt. The ship mentioned in the petition had been seized by government officials and Hardware was asking for its release. In the same source, there is another petition dated 20 Mar. 1759, by ‘Mr. Hendry Hardware and other merchants trading to Africa’, asking for permission to export arms and ammunition ‘as usual’ to Africa, together with an Order in Council to that effect.

4 David Tuohy's Papers, Liverpool Record Office, 380 TUO. 2/4, Tuohy, David to Ryan, Messrs and Begone, , Liverpool, 5 Oct. 1775Google Scholar. Messrs Ryan and Begone had written to Tuohy on 24 Aug. and 30 Sept. 1775, asking him if he would agree to sell corn spirit at Liverpool on behalf of a friend of theirs on a commission basis. Corn spirit, often described as British brandy, was also exported to West Africa in large quantities at this time.

5 P.R.O., C.107/1, Cargo invoice of the sloop Fly, Richard Rogers, Master, and the account of trade with James Cleveland on the Windward Coast, 1787. James Cleveland was a European merchant resident on the coast. The Fly belonged to James Rogers & Co, slave merchants in Bristol.

6 The extant private records of this firm are in the Birmingham Reference Library. The firm was heavily involved in the production of guns for the West African trade. The correspondence between the partners from 1748 to 1754 shows that the firm supplied guns not only to British merchants trading to West Africa but also to Portuguese, French and other European merchants in the trade. In fact, the firm was aiso directiy concerned in the trade to West Africa, some of the letters containing references to guns sent to the coast by the firm for sale. The firm also held shares in slave trading ventures. One of the documents, Galton 564, shows a detailed account of one of such ventures made from Liverpool c. 1800, selling 527 slaves in the West Indies and returning a net profit of £6,430. Later in the eighteenth century, the firm changed from Farmer & Galton to Galton & Son. Although the firm benefited from war-time government demands, demand from the West African trade remained the main support of the firm and this is borne out by the firm's documents. For a general history of the firm and of the Galton family, see Smith, B. M. D., ‘The Galtons of Birmingham: Quaker Gun Merchants and Bankers, 1702–1831’, Business History, vol. 9, no. 2 (1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Samuel Galton had a lot of problems with his fellow Quakers for making guns for the African trade as they encouraged wars and slaving in Africa. Smith, op. cit. 144–5.

7 Galton 405/1, Galton, Samuel to MrFarmer, , 9 Mar. 1754.Google Scholar

8 Ibid.Galton, Samuel to MrFarmer, , 3 June 1754.Google Scholar

9 Ibid.Galton, Samuel to MrFanner, , Birmingham 9 Dec. 1754Google Scholar. The reference to Manchester relates to the city's cotton textile industry, another important industry connected with the West African trade. The Hadley mentioned in the letter was a major rival of Farmer and Galton in the supply of guns for the West African trade. He played a major role in the workmen's riots against Farmer, and Galton, in 1772Google Scholar. See below.

10 Galton 550, Case against Thomas Hadley and others, Evidence of Samuel Galton, and witnesses.

11 P.R.O., C.107/10, Goodrich, John to Rogers, James, 11 July 1792.Google Scholar

12 Ibid. Samuel Galton & Son to James Rogers & Co, Birmingham, 27 June 1792. The Mr Whately referred to in the letter is John Whately who was also heavily involved in the manufacture of guns for the West African trade in our period. See P.R.O., BT.6/10, PP. 354–7. ‘Representation of Mr John Whately dated Birmingham 27 March, 1788, on the importance of the manufacture of guns carried on there, which in times of peace is chiefly supported by the African Trade, to the Lords of the Committee of the Council of Trade’.

13 P.R.O., C.107/10, Grice, Joseph to James Rogers & Co, Birmingham 27 June 1792.Google Scholar

14 Ibid.Whately, Henry P. to James Rogers & Co, Birmingham, 27 June 1792Google Scholar. Henry Whately was the son of John Whately mentioned earlier. See n. 12 above.

15 Museum, British, House of Commons Journals, vol. lx, (15 01 1805 to 7 01 1806), 28 Feb. 1805, Petition of Birmingham Gun-Manufacturers, p. 100.Google Scholar

16 Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmond, Life of William, Earl of Shelburne, (1875), 1, 400 and 404Google Scholar, quoted by Smith, , ‘The Galtons of Birmingham’, 139.Google Scholar

17 P.R.O., Customs 3 and 17, for the eighteenth century.

18 At the time when English trade to West Africa was under the Royal African Company's monopoly the guns for the trade were produced mainly by London gunsmiths. It was after the trade had been thrown open to all English merchants in 1698 that Birmingham gradually became the main centre of supply. But tenders made to the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa for the supply of guns show that many London gun-makers continued to produce guns for the West African trade throughout the second half of the eighteenth century. (For these tenders, see T.70/1516–86.) The growth of trade to Africa in the outports, particularly Bristol and Liverpool, also attracted the gun-making industry to these ports. In Liverpool, the scale of operation of at least two of the producers can be gauged from the available evidence. One of them is John Parr, who stated in his will, dated 19 June 1794, that he had been ‘largely concerned in the Gun Trade for a great number of years and for the greater convenience and more extensively carrying on the same [1] have erected very large and commodious workshops and warehouses adjoining and contiguous to my messuage or Dwelling house in Argyle Street and extending also to Pitt Street upon ground held by me under lease from the Corporation of Liverpool for three lives and twenty-one years which workshops and warehouses with the messuage and appurtenance I compute and value at three thousand pounds’ (Lancashire Record Office, Preston, Will of John Parr of Liverpool, Gunsmith). The other Liverpool gun-maker is Thomas Falkner (or Faulkner). Between Aug. and Dec. 1771, he supplied 4,991 guns to a single slave-trading firm, Samuel Sandys & Co of Liverpool, for five of their vessels, the Barbadaes Packet, Meredith, Snota Juno, Saville, and the Cavendish (P.R.O., C.109/401).

It is o the basis of this type of evidence that we made the very conservative guess that sources of supply in England, other than Birmingham, must have produced for the West African trade at least 50,000 guns per annum, on the average, during our period.

19 See Kea, R. A., ‘Firearms and Warfare on the Gold and Slave Coasts from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth centuries’, J. Afr. Hist, xii (1971), 200, n. 97Google Scholar; Bosman, William, A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea (London, 1705), 184–5Google Scholar; Martin, Phyllis, ‘The Trade of Loango in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries’, in Gray, J. R. and Birmingham, D. (eds.), Pre-Colonial African Trade: Essays on Trade in Central and Eastern Africa Before 1900 (London, 1970), 152–3.Google Scholar

20 P.R.O., T.70/1538, ‘A calculation on the supposed number of negroes purchased annually on the coast of Africa between the Port of Sallee in South Barbary and the River Congo’, by John Roberts. John Roberts was formerly the governor, treasurer and one of the chief agents of the Royal African Company at Cape Coast Castle. Thomas Melvil succeeded him at Cape Coast Castle on 20 June 1751. Roberts then became a private merchant in partnership with Husband and Boteler. See T.70/1525 and T.70/1526.

21 Martin, , ‘The Trade of Loango’, 152–3.Google Scholar

22 Since the British Customs records and other evidence relating to English import and export trade to West Africa during our period often refer generally to Africa without specifying regions, some doubts may arise as to whether English merchants were not also trading guns to areas outside West Africa proper, other than the quantity going to the Loango region. However, there is sufficient evidence to dispel such doubts. The term, ‘African trade’, was usually used interchangeably with the term, ‘slave trade’, in England in the eighteenth century. This was because, apart from the trade to Mediterranean Africa, which was recorded with the trade to the Mediterranean region generally, English trade to Africa so recorded was overwhelmingly in slaves during the century. In a forthcoming paper I have shown that the trade in slaves made up about 91 per cent of the total, by value. Apart from the slaves purchased from the Loango region, broadly denned, all the other slaves purchased by English merchants during our period came from West Africa proper. The remaining 9 percent of the trade was in Senegalgum, redwood, ivory, gold dust, palm oil, and some other very minor products. Again, apart from those that came from the Loango region, these products were purchased from West Africa proper. Furthermore, we shall show later in this paper that the guns were employed almost entirely to pay for slaves purchased. It is therefore very certain that apart from the quantity going to the Loango region the guns stated here were all going to West Africa proper.

23 Young, D. W., ‘History of the Birmingham Gun Trade’ (Master of Commerce thesis, University of Birmingham, 1936), 39.Google Scholar

24 British Parliamentary Papers, Accounts & Papers, 1790, vol. 87, no. 698 (9), p. 586Google Scholar. Evidence of Falconbridge, Alexander, 8 Mar. 1790Google Scholar. Falconbridge made four trading voyages to the coast of Africa as a surgeon, from 1780 to 1787.

25 White, Gavin, ‘Firearms in Africa: An Introduction’, J. Afr. Hist, xii (1971), 178–9Google Scholar. Some of the papers in the 1971 volume of this Journal also mention firing of salutes on ceremonial occasions as another important use to which the firearms were put.

26 Gemery, H. A. and Hogendorn, J. S., ‘Technological Change, Slavery, and the Slave Trade’, in Dewey, C. J. and Hopkins, A. G. (eds.), Studies in the Economic History of India and Africa (London, forthcoming).Google Scholar

27 P.R.O., C.107/15.

28 P.R.O., C.107/5. Brig. Sarah, Captain John Goodrich, Master. Trade Book Commencing from 18 Dec. 1789.

29 See Davidson, Basil, ‘Slaves or Captives?: Some Notes on Fantasy and Fact’, in Huggins, N. I., Kilson, M. and Fox, D. M. (eds.), Key Issues in the Afro-American Experience, i (New York, 1971), 69.Google Scholar

30 It should also be noted that there was no automatic relationship between the quantity of firearms acquired by a territory or state and its intentions or capability of building an empire. As we shall show later, the Bonny trading area was one of the largest areas importing firearms in West Africa during our period. Yet Bonny was not the centre of a large empire at this time. However, the slaves sold in the Bonny trading area were actually supplied mainly by the Aro Chuku people, so that the guns obtained through the sale of the slaves were simply passing through Bonny to these people who were feared for their military might and their famous oracle.

While there was no automatic relationship between the quantity of firearms and state-building, there can be no doubt that the proliferation of firearms on the West African coast and its hinterland in the eighteenth century, connected with slaving as it was, helped powerfully to create unpeaceful conditions generally in the African regions affected. See Manning, Patrick, ‘Slaves, Palm Oil, and Political Power on the West African Coast’, Afr. Hist. Stud. ii, 2 (1969), 288, n. 19Google Scholar, where the point about the quantity of firearms and political power is briefly discussed. Manning's argument is open to criticism, even as a model. The fact that the state which imported the largest number of firearms was not also the largest or most ‘powerful’ state only shows that other factors were also important, without disproving the point that firearms were critical to the security of some states and/or to their expansion. One has to take into account what the political conditions of the states in question would have been without firearms. On the other hand, the port of arrival may be different from the final destination of the firearms. Hence, the quantity of firearms imported into the Delta ports is not an accurate index of the number of firearms the Delta states actually retained and used.

31 See Appendix II below for sources.

32 A General and Descriptive History of the Ancient and present state of the Town of Liverpool (Liverpool, 1795), 230–1.Google Scholar

33 P.R.O., C.107/15. This vessel was earlier referred to above.

34 P.R.O., C.107/10, John Simmons to Captain John Fitz Henry of Bristol, Liverpool, 9 Jan. 1792.

35 P.R.O., C.107/1. The vessel belonged to James Rogers & Co of Bristol.

36 P.R.O., C.114/157. This vessel belonged to Thomas Lumley & Co of London.

37 P.R.O., C.107/5. The vessel belonged to Rogers & Co of Bristol.

38 Martin, , ‘The Trade of Loango’, 152–3.Google Scholar

39 The firearms included in the cargoes of ships sailing to West Africa in the second half of the eighteenth century are usually described in some detail in the merchants' private records. See Appendix II for references to these records. The difference between Appendix II and Table 4 totals is due to the fact that a few of the guns in Appendix II are not described in the records.

40 Apparently these were guns made to Danish pattern. In November, 1791, Samuel Galton & Son, a large gun-making firm in Birmingham, wrote to Rogers & Co, of Bristol, that ‘the African captains are apt to confound Danes with Danish. By Danes we understand Dutch guns with black stocks, and barrels 4 feet 3 or 4 inches long, narrow bore’. But what Danish guns are is not stated. C.107/7 Part I, Galton & Son to Rogers & C.O., Birmingham, 17 Nov. 1791.

41 See White, Gavin, ‘Firearms in Africa’, 177Google Scholar, for a description. Some of the other types included in the table are also described by White.

42 P.R.O., C.107/10, Galton, Samuel to James Rogers & Co, Birmingham, 23 Jan. 1792Google Scholar. Apart from some special guns, such as those specifically referred to as elephant guns and those sent to the rulers as presents, of which very small numbers were brought to the coast by the merchants, the main difference between the major types of guns imported into West Africa during our period seems to have been the quality of the materials used in making them. The relatively more expensive ones were made with walnut and better iron, while the cheaper ones were made with beech wood and probably inferior iron. On present evidence it is not possible to relate different types to different uses. But it is very unlikely that the major types imported—the Tower guns imported into Calabar, the Bonny muskets imported into Bonny, the Danish guns imported into Senegambia, Sierra Leone and the Windward Coast, etc.—were put to significantly differing uses.

43 Smith, , ‘The Galtons of Birmingham’, 139.Google Scholar

44 Observations on the Manufacture of Firearms for Military purposes, on the number supplied from Birmingham to British Government (1829), 45–6Google Scholar. Birmingham Reference Library L65.52.

45 P.R.O., T.70/1516, Incorporated Company of Gunmakers to the Committee of the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa, London 8 Mar. 1750.

46 P.R.O., C.107/7 Part 2, Whately, John to James Rogers & Co, Birmingham, 25 Feb. 1788Google Scholar. The Mr Parr mentioned in this letter is John Parr, a large gunmaker in Liverpool in the late eighteenth century. This letter indirectly confirms our earlier conclusion that Tower guns were the most popular in Old Calabar.

47 P.R.O., C.107/9, Samuel Galton & Son to James Rogers & Co, Birmingham, 10 Aug. 1789.