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Bristol, Africa and the Eighteenth Century Slave Trade To BRISTOL RECORD SOCIETY'S PUBLICATIONS General Editor: JOSEPH BE1TEY, M.A., Ph.D., F.S.A. Assistant Editor: MISS ELIZABETH RALPH, M.A., F.S.A. VOL. XLII BRISTOL, AFRICA AND THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SLAVE TRADE TO AMERICA VOL. 3 THE YEARS OF DECLINE 1746-1769 BRISTOL, AFRICA AND THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SLAVE TRADE TO AMERICA VOL. 3 THE YEARS OF DECLINE 1746-1769 EDITED BY DAYID RICHARDSON Printed for the BRISTOL RECORD SOCIETY 1991 ISBN 0 901538 12 4 ISSN 0305 8730 © David Richardson Bristol Record Society wishes to express its gratitude to the Marc Fitch Fund and to the University of Bristol Publications Fund for generous grants in support of this volume. Produced for the Society by Alan Sutton Publishing Limited, Stroud, Glos. Printed in Great Britain CONTENTS Page Acknowledgements vi Introduction . vii Note on transcription xxxii List of abbreviations xxxiii ·Text 1 Index 235 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In the process of ·compiling and editing the information on Bristol voyages to Africa contained in this volume I have received assistance and advice from various individuals and organisations. The task of collecting the material was made much easier from the outset by the generous help and advice I received from the staff at the Public Record Office, the Bristol Record Office, the Bristol Central Library and the Bristol Society of Merchant Venturers. I am grateful to the Society of Merchant Venturers for permission to consult its records and to cite material from them. I am also indebted to the British Academy for its generosity in awarding me a grant in order to allow me to complete my research on Bristol voyages to Africa. Publication of the volume has been generously assisted by grants from the Bristol University Publications Fund and the Marc Fitch Fund. Finally, I am very grateful to Miss Mary Williams, former City Archivist in Bristol, and Professor Patrick McGrath, formerly General Editor of the Bristol Record Society, for their warm response to my original proposal for a series of volumes on Bristol voyages to Africa, and to Dr Joseph Bettey, the Society's present General Editor, for his patience and assistance in producing this third volume on African voyages. vi INTRODUCTION Bristol's emergence as a major slaving port was one of the more striking features of the development of British trade to Africa during the first forty years of the eighteenth century. Reflected in a growth in annual clearances of ships to Africa from less than 5 around 1700 to 50 or more at various times during the 1730s, the rapid expansion of Bristol's trade to Africa contributed substantially to the general increase in British slaving activity that occurred in the quarter century after 1713 and made it Britain's premier slaving port during the decade prior to the War of Jenkins' Ear. Bristol's ascendancy in Britain's African trade was relatively short lived, however, for after the outbreak of war with France in 1743, clearances of ships from Bristol to Africa fell abruptly and allowed Liverpool to begin to dominate the British slave trade. Despite conceding supremacy to its northern rival, Bristol's interest in the African trade revived strongly during the closing years of the War of Austrian Succession and generally remained substantial during the 1750s and 1760s. The data collected in this volume show, in fact, that Bristol merchants fitted out almost 600 voyages to Africa, the vast majority for slaves, between 1746 and 1769. The level of annual clearances of ships from Bristol to Africa in these decades still remained nevertheless only about half what it was at the peak of the port's involvement in the African trade in 1728-32 and 1737-8. The modest nature of the recovery of Bristol's African trade after the slump of 1743-6 is intriguing, for British trade in general with Africa expanded rapidly after 1748, largely as a result of a substantial growth in demand for slaves in the Caribbean and North America during the quarter century before the American Revolution. 1 The latest figures available suggest that exports of slaves from Africa by the British doubled during this period, rising from about 20,000 a year around 1750 to about 40,000 a year in the early 1770s. This expansion in slave shipments was reflected in turn by an increase in clearances of ships from British ports to Africa from approximately 90 to 160-190 a year. Almost all of this increase was accounted for by ports in north-west England, notably Liverpool, as well as London. Not surprisingly, therefore, Bristol's share of Britain's trade to Africa fell sharply from 1 David Richardson, "The Slave Trade, Sugar, and British Economic Growth, 1748-1776", Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XVII: no. 4 (1987), pp. 739-769. vii over 40 per cent in the 1730s to around 15 per cent in the early 1770s. 2 Despite their diminished importance in the Africa trade, Bristol merchants still remained one of the largest British and indeed European groups of investors in the Atlantic slave trade in the 1750s and 1760s. As a result, the material on Bristol voyages to Africa presented in this volume is an important source of information about the conduct and organisation of the Atlantic slave trade from Africa to America in these years. In the remaining sections of this introduction, I shall first discuss the major sources of evidence available for tracing Bristol voyages to Africa between 1746 and 1769 and then outline the major features of Bristol's slave trade in this period. /. SOURCES AND METHODOLOGY Although there are very few surviving collections of papers of Bristol merchants involved in the African trade in the early eighteenth century, official commercial and shipping records, as earlier volumes in this series have shown, still provide a large amount of information about the voyages of Bristol ships to Africa during the first half of the eighteenth century. Particularly useful in this respect are the Exchequer K.R. Port Books (PRO E190 series), the Mediterranean Passes (PRO ADM 7 series), the Bristol Wharfage Books (Society of Merchant Venturers Hall), and the Colonial Naval Office Shipping Lists (PRO CO series). The nature of these records and the sort of information they supply have been discussed in earlier volumes in this series and readers are referred to them for a detailed discussion of these matters. On certain aspects of Bristol's trade to Africa in the early eighteenth century, particularly its distribution along the coast and the numbers of slaves loaded per ship, these records provide only limited evidence. Nevertheless, they do supply important information about the ships involved in the African trade, their owners, their voyage patterns, and the numbers of slaves delivered to America. These records continue to supply vital data about Bristol voyages to Africa during the 25 years covered by the present volume. Sadly, there are no outward overseas Port Books available for Bristol between 1743 and 1751 and the inward books cease altogether after 1742. There is, however, a fairly continuous series of outward books from 1752 to 1769 and beyond, as well as good, though not complete, 2 Detailed estimates of the level of British slaving activity are to be found in David Richardson, "The Eighteenth-Century British Slave Trade: Estimates of its Volume and Distribution", Research in Economic History, XII (1989), pp. 151-195. These figures are slightly amended in David Richardson, "Slave Exports from West and West-Central Africa, 170(}..1810: New Estimates of Volume and Distribution", Journal of African History, 30 (1989), pp. 1-22. viii series of Mediterranean Passes and Wharfage Books throughout the period from 1746 to 1769. 3 As in earlier years, the survival rate of Naval Office Shipping Lists varies considerably from one colony to another in this period. There are only scattered lists for Barbados and apparently none at all for the four Leeward Islands of Antigua, Montserrat, Nevis and St Kitts. The lack of lists for Antigua and St Kitts is especially disappointing, for other evidence suggests these two colonies were important markets for Bristol slave traders in the quarter century after 1745. By comparison with the smaller British islands in the Caribbean, there are relatively good series of Naval Office Shipping Lists for South Carolina, Virginia and Jamaica throughout the period as well as lists for Grenada, one of the West Indian islands ceded by France to Britain in 1763, from 1764 to 1767. 4 The comparatively high survival rate of Jamaican lists after 1745 is important, for the island was the largest single market for slaves supplied by Bristol traders in this period. Information about Bristol voyages to Africa in 174(M)9 is also to be found in several other sources. Three deserve to be noted. First, there are several surveys of British trade to Africa during this period. These include a record kept by Gilbert Petrie, an official of the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa, of British &hips trading at the Gold Coast between 1755 and 1768; lists of Bristol ships trading to Africa in 1747, 1749 and 1754, together with the costs of their outlays, expected numbers of slaves, and intended trading location at the coast; and an annual listing of ships clearing Bristol for Africa that covers the whole period from 1750 to 1776. 5 Contained in the Board of Trade papers, this last document is particularly useful, for it lists the names of ships and their masters and allows one to cover some of the gaps that exist in other sources, notably the Port Books and Mediterranean Passes. Second, there is from 1752 onward a fairly complete series of a local newspaper, Felix Parley's Bristol Journal.
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