Lecture 2

The History of the International Slave Trade

  • 1520 – 1870:  40,000 slave shipments between Africa and the Western Hemisphere

  • 11 million African slaves transported of which 9.5 million survived the voyage. 

  • Approximately 15 percent of slaves die – 15 percent of European crews die as well

  • 361,000 (3.8 percent) to mainland North America – primarily Virginia and Carolinas  

  • 4 million were transported to Brazil (by Portugal);
    2.5 million to the Spanish Empire including Cuba (by Spain); 
    2 million to the British West Indies, Barbados and Jamaica (by Britain);
    1.2 million to the French West Indies (by France);
    remaining to Dutch East Indies and Europe (by Netherlands, Danes, Swedes, and others)

Link:  slave trade maps

St. Paul  (Ephesians 6:5)  “…be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ.”

Servus

St. Bathilde

Ashanti Confederacy

Timbuktu

King Tegbesu of Dahomey

  • 1710 European slave traders paid £17 pounds per slave ($2,700 today)

  • 1760  £20 pounds  ($3,200)

  • Slaves sold for £28 – £35  ( $4,480 – $5,600) in Virginia 1700-1750

Captain John Hawkins 1562

Royal African Company (RAC)

Slave Code

South Seas Company

Bence Island (Bunce Island)  

Slaves transported into the Thirteen Colonies (primarily Virginia and the Carolinas  

  • 1700-1725:    37,000

  • 1726-1750:    96,000

  • 1751-1775:  116,900

  • total of 263,200 prior to American Revolution of 1776

Quakers (Religious Society of Friends)

Enlightenment

Justinian Code (Justinian’s Institutes)

Sir William Blackstone
Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769)

Granville Sharp

Habeas Corpus Act 1679

Jonathan Strong Case

Continental Congress (1774)

slave boycott

Zong

Gregson v. Gilbert (1783)

Abolition of the Slave Trade Act (1807)

Slavery Abolition Act (1833)