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The Trade in African Slaves to Rio de Janeiro, 1795–1811: Estimates of Mortality and Patterns of Voyages1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Herbert S. Klein
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Extract

Despite its basic importance for an understanding of African History, the Atlantic slave-trade still remains one of the most unexplored aspects of modern African development. Except for a few pioneer works, there have been no systematic studies of numbers, origins, mortality, routes and volume of traffic. The present study is based on archival material in Brazil and is an exploration in depth of one major route, the West African to Rio de Janeiro shipping route in the period 1795–1811. During this time some 170,000 African slaves were shipped from Africa, suffering a mortality rate of 95 per thousand.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , October 1969 , pp. 533 - 549
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969

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References

2 Among these works are the brilliant analysis of the Nantes trade in the eighteenth century by Gaston-Martin, , Nantes au XVIIIe siècle, l'ère des négriers (1714–1774) (Paris, 1931);Google Scholar the studies on African origins by Philip, D. Curtin and Jan, Vansina, ‘Sources of the nineteenth century Atlantic slave trade,’ J. Afr. Hist. v, no. 2 (1964), 185–208;Google Scholar and the monumental study of Pierre, Verger, Flux et reflux de la traite des nègres entre le Golfe de Benin et Bahia de Todos os Santos du XVIIe au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1968).Google ScholarFédéric, Mauro, Le Portugal et l'Atlantique au XVIIe siècle 1570–1670 (Paris, 1960), has several excellent chapters on the early development of the African–Brazilian trade, while Elena S. F. de Studer (on Argentina) and Rolando Mellafe (on Chile) have done detailed analysis of local routes in Latin America. Along with these general aspects of the trade detailed studies of individual traders are quite numerous, with the works of Dieudonne Rinchon being quite outstanding.Google Scholar

3 The low estimate was made by the leading U.S. scholar on slavery, U. B. Phillips, who declared that ‘the mortality on the average ship may be roughly conjectured from the available data at eight or ten percent’. Phillips, U. B., American Negro Slavery (New York, 1940 ed.), 38. At the other end, were the old estimates first made by the Belgian scholar Dieudonne Rinchon, who took the unusual position that mortality was actually higher in the nineteenth century than in earlier periods. Largely basing himself on the erroneous estimates of James Bandinel, Rinchon estimated a 20% mortality rate prior to 1800, and a 50% mortality rate at the apogee of the trade in the nineteenth century.Google ScholarDieudonne, Rinchon, La Traite et l'esclavage des congolais par les européens (Bruxelles, 1929), 209. Bandinel, in a much cited memorandum he presented to the House of Commons, calculated that from 1778 to 1815 some 363,000 Africans were imported into all the Americas and estimated the loss, by extrapolation from extremely fragmentary evidence, at 14% per annum. With little serious justification, he then claimed that annual losses from 1814 to 1847 were 25%, with total imports being 872,000. Great Britain, Parliament, House of Commons,Google ScholarSelect Committee on Slave Trade, Second Report (30 05 1848), Appendix, no. 2, 179.Google Scholar

4 Higham, C. S. S., The Development of the Leeward Islands Under the Restoration, 1660–1668 (Cambridge, 1921), 158, table v.Google Scholar

5 Weldemar, Westergaard, The Danish West Indies Under Company Rule (1671–1754) (New York, 1917), 144.Google Scholar

6 Gaston-Martin, , Nantes au XVIIIe siècle, 115.Google Scholar

7 Cited in Thomas, Fowell Buxton, The African Slave Trade and its Remedy (London, 1840), pp. 172–3. Buxton also provides various educated guesses made by contemporary ‘experts’ which varied from zo to 33.3%. In the Bandinel memorandum on the mortality in the slave trade from Africa to the West Indies there was provided a rather detailed summary of contemporary expressions on the trade. It was noted by many slave captains that, excluding extraordinary mortality due to epidemics such as smallpox, the prime cause of mortality was dysentery, and that length of stay along the coast to pick up cargoes usually increased the mortality rates. Select Committee on Slave Trade,Google ScholarSecond Report (30 05 1848), Appendix, no. I, 175–7.Google Scholar

8 Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, 1845, XLIX, 593–633. I am indebted to Philip Curtin for this latter calculation. Professor Curtin's forthcoming book, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census, deals extensively with these British records as well as all aspects of the trade.Google Scholar

9 Mauricio, Goulart, Escravidāo africana no Brasil (das origenes a extinçāo) (Sāo Paulo, 1949), 278.Google Scholar

10 Arquivo Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, Codice 242.

11 This is a composite formula document, with the data taken from several different entries in ibid. As for the official Portuguese titles, the two notaries are listed as follows: Ribeiro is Escrivão de Marinha da Real Fazenda; Villela is Escriāvo dos Armazéns Reaes da Intendência da Maranha. Caetino de Lima is Chefe de Esquadra, Intendente da Mann-ha. As for the designation of children, standing children (crias de pé) were defined in a 1758 tax law as being of a height of four palm lengths or below, and were required to pay only half the usual export tax to the Portuguese Crown on exiting from Africa. The children at the breast (crias de peito) were considered as tax free when accompanying the mother. This decree of 25 January 1758 is reprinted in Goulart, , Escravidão africana, 197.Google Scholar

12 Also, in many cases, the arquiaçáo figure bears no relationship to the figures presented in the rest of the text. Therefore, all the figures in the following tables which are listed as ‘total shipped’ from Africa are my own additions from the data supplied in the figures of total landed alive, slaves in crew and death figures.

13 Though comparable mortality figures are unavailable, there do exist alternate figures on total importations. Using a different set of documents, Mauricio Goulart in his study of the Brazilian slave trade gives import figures for Rio de Janeiro for the six-year period from 1801−6, which add up to 53,797. Goulart, , Escravidão africana, 267. This compares to my own codice calculations of 58,782 for the same period, with the difference of 3,410 probably being accounted for by the failure of the Goulart figures to account for Costa da Mina and Mozambique imports. This data, as in many other cases, comes from the Goulart study, which is unquestionably the best single work to date on the African Slave Trade to Brazil and supersedes the traditional study ofGoogle ScholarAffonso, de E. Taunay, ‘Subsídios pam a hist'ria do tráfico africano no Brasil,’ Anais do Museu Paulista, x (1941).Google Scholar

14 Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers (1845), XLIX, 593–6. British Foreign Office sources estimated 92 ships with over 40,000 slaves arrived in or near the port of Rio de Janeiro in 1837. These were gross estimates, whereas the 1810s and 1820s figures provided detailed listings for each ship. For the 1837 figureGoogle Scholar see Buxton, , The African Slave Trade, 25 n.Google Scholar

15 U.S. Department of the Navy, Hydrographic Office, Atlas of Pilot Charts, Central American Waters and South Atlantic Ocean (H.O. Publ. no. 576, 2nd ed., 1955).Google Scholar

16 Ibid. and U.S. Department of the Navy, Oceanographic Office, Sailing Directions for South America (H.O. Publ. no. 23; 6th edition, 1967), 258.Google Scholar

17 As reported by English slave captains, see Bandinel documents in Select Committee, Second Report (30 05 1848), 175–7.Google Scholar

18 Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, 1845, XLIX, 593–6.Google Scholar

19 There were 173 curvetas, 95 bergantims and 55 galeras out of 354 arrivals (which is the total number of arrivals where ship's type is given).

20 While the curveta, or corveta, and the galera are described simply as three-masted vessels, the bergantim seems to have had one large mast, a traquete mast and a lateen mast. These are the descriptions provided in Eduardo, de Far, Novo diccionario da lingua portugueza (2nd ed.; Lisbon, 1851), I, 842; II, 588 and III, 294;Google Scholar also see Humberto, Leitāo and José, Vicente Lopes, Dicionário da Linguagem da Marinha Antiga e Actual (Lisbon, 1963).Google Scholar

21 Tonnage estimates for bergantims, or brigs, for example, ranged from a low of 121 tons to a high of 369 tons for such types of vessels engaged in the slave-trade which arrived in the port of Rio de Janeiro in 1847. These were estimates reported by the local British consul and reprinted in Great Britain, Parliament, House of Commons, Select Committee on Slave Trade, First Report (18 04 1848), 272.Google Scholar

22 Pierre, Verger, ‘Mouvements des navires entre Bahia et le Golfe du Bénin (XVIIe- XIXe siècle),’ Revue française d'Histoire d'Outre-Mer, 56 année, LV, no. 198 (1968), 18–19.Google Scholar

23 Ibid. p. 22. The only data I could find on this problem for Rio de Janeiro was the arrival and departure date of the 300-ton bergantim General Rigo, which arrived in Rio from Benguela on 21 10 1847 with a crew of 15 and left again for Benguela on 13 December 1847. If the stay of the General Rigo was at all typical, then it would seem that the turn around time for a slaver in the port of Rio de Janeiro was probably of the order of two months. The arrival and departure of the General RigoGoogle Scholar is reported in Great Britain, Parliament, House of Commons, Select Committee on Slave Trade, Third Report (25 07 1848), 204.Google Scholar It would also appear that several of the Portuguese vessels engaged in the Rio de Janeiro to Africa trip also made side trips to Buenos Aires with cargoes of slaves. See the detached charts entitled ‘Buques negreros Ilegados al Rio de la Plata desde 1742 haste 1806’, especially nos. 3−10 in Elena, F. S. de Studer, La trata de negros en el Rio de la Plata durante el sigle xviii (Buenos Aires, 1958). Something like half of the Negroes imported into Buenos Aires between 1742–1806 came from Brazil, with almost half of these Brazilian imports (at a minimum some 5600 slaves) coming from Rio de Janeiro.Google ScholarIbid., 323–4.

24 Verger, , ‘Mouvements des navires’, 23.Google Scholar

25 From several sources Goulart gives the following breakdowns by ports from 1801–1839; Rio de Janeiro, 570,000; Bahia, 220,000; Pernambuco, 150,000; and Maranho with 40,000, for a grand total of 980,000 for this 39-year period. He estimates (without breakdown by ports) another 370,000 slave importations for the final period of the trade from 1840–51 and arrives at a grand total of million to 3.6 million as the total number of Africans imported into Brazil in the three and a half centuries of the trade. Goulart, , Escravidão Africana, 271–2.Google Scholar

26 Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, 1845, XLIX, 593–6.Google Scholar

27 Glass, D. V., ‘Population and population movements in England and Wales, 1700 to 1850,’ in Glass, D. V. and Eversley, D. E. C., Population in History (London, 1965), 241, table 8.Google Scholar

28 Jacques, Dupaquier, ‘Sur la population française au XVIIe et au XVIIe siècle,’ Revue historique, 92e année, CCXXXIX (01–03 1968), 65.Google Scholar

29 Meuvret, J., ‘Demographic crisis in France from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century’, in Population in History, 513. On the other hand, Louis Henry has indicated that mortality rates during the plague in Amsterdam in the seventeenth century were in the 125 per thousand to 170 per thousand range.Google ScholarLouis, Henry, Manuel de démographie historique (Genève–Paris, 1967), 54.Google Scholar

30 Philip, D. Curtin, ‘Epidemiology and the slave trade,’ Political Science Quarterly, LXXXIII, no. 2 (06, 1968), 202–3.Google Scholar

31 Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, LV (1850), 75.Google Scholar

32 Great Britain, Parliament, House of Commons, Committee of the Whole House, Minutes of the Evidence taken [on] …. the Bill for providing Temporary Regulations respecting the Transportation of the Natives of Africa in British Ships …. (20 April 1789), part II. Gaston-Martin, in his review of slave mortality noted that the ‘mortality of members, of the crew [of the slavers] is virtually identical to that of the slave cargo’.Google ScholarGaston-Martin, , Nantes au XVIIIe siècle, 116.Google Scholar