¹ Curtin, Philip D., The Atlantic Slave Trade: a Census (Madison, Wisconsin, 1969).Google Scholar

² Lovejoy, Paul E., ‘The volume of the Atlantic slave trade: a synthesis’, J. Afr. Hist., XXIII (1982), 473–501CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lovejoy, Paul E., Transformations in Slavery (Cambridge, 1983).Google Scholar

³ Lovejoy, , ‘Volume’, 497.Google Scholar

⁴ Inikori, Joseph E., ‘Measuring the Atlantic slave trade: an assessment of Curtin and Anstey’, J. Afr. Hist., XVII (1976), 197–223CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Inikori, Joseph E., ‘Measuring the Atlantic slave trade’, J. Afr. Hist., XVII (1976), 607–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones, Adam and Johnson, Marion, ‘Slaves from the Windward Coast’, J. Afr. Hist., XXI (1980), 17–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵ Lovejoy, , ‘Volume’, 485.Google Scholar

⁶ Mettas, Jean, Répertoire des expéditions négrières françaises au XVIII^e siècle, Tome i: Nantes, ed. Daget, Serge (Paris, 1978).Google Scholar A second volume of Mettas‘ material covering ports other than Nantes was published in 1984 and was edited by Serge and Michèle Daget.

⁷ Richardson, David, ‘The eighteenth-century British slave trade: estimates of its volume and distribution’, Research in Economic History, XII (1988).Google Scholar

⁸ Mettas, , Répertoire, vols. 1 and 2.Google Scholar

⁹ Stein, Robert L., The French Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century: an Old Regime Business (Madison, Wisconsin, 1979).Google Scholar See also Stein's, ‘Measuring the French slave trade, 1713–1792/3’, J. Afr. Hist., XIX (1978), 515–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁰ These were the figures assumed by Curtin, , Census, 211 for 1701–1710Google Scholar and by Anstey, Roger, ‘The slave trade of the continental powers, 1760–1810’, Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd series, xxx (1977), 264, for 1801–1810.Google Scholar

¹¹ For consistency I have added 5000 to Lovejoy‘s total for the French slave trade from 1701–93 in order to cover the period from 1794 to 1809. It should be noted that Lovejoy's estimate for the French trade in 1701–13 was 30,000 slaves; Lovejoy, , ‘Volume’, 484.Google Scholar

¹² Stein, , Slave Trade, 121.Google Scholar

¹³ Curtin, , Census, 212.Google Scholar It should be noted that available literature largely ignores shipments of slaves from Africa by vessels owned and outfitted in Caribbean ports. I make no attempt to estimate this element in the trade either, but there are signs that in certain periods at least substantial numbers of ships may have embarked on slaving voyages to Africa from Caribbean islands such as Barbados; Donnan, Elizabeth (ed.), Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, 4 volumes (Washington, D.C., 1930–1935), 11, 31–2.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Anstey, Roger, ‘The volume of the North American slave–carrying trade from Africa, 1761–1810’, Revue Française d'Histoire d'Outre-Mer, LXII (1975), 47–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁵ The Cuban data are to be found in Klein, Herbert S., ‘The Cuban slave trade in a period of transition, 1790–1843’, Revue Française d'Histoire d'Outre-Mer, LXII (1975), 72–3, 75Google Scholar; the South Carolina data in Annals of Congress, 16th Congress, 2nd Session, 1820–1821, 73–8Google Scholar; and the projection of slave imports into North America in Fogel, Robert W. and Engerman, Stanley L., Time on the Cross: the Economics of American Negro Slavery (Boston, 1974), 24–5.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Anstey, , ‘North America’, 63–4.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Higgins, W. Robert, ‘The geographical origins of Negro slaves in Colonial South Carolina’, South Atlantic Quarterly, LXX (1971), 34–47Google Scholar; Klein, Herbert S., ‘Slaves and shipping in eighteenth-century Virginia’, J. Interdisciplinary Hist, V (1975), 383–412CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Westbury, Susan, ‘Slaves of colonial Virginia: where they came from’, William and Mary Quarterly, XXXII (1985), 228–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Klein, Herbert S., ‘New evidence on the Virginia slave trade’, J. Interdisciplinary Hist, XVII (1987), 871–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Based on material published in Minchinton, Walter, King, Celia and Waite, Peter (eds), Virginia Slave Trade Statistics (Richmond, Virginia, 1984)Google Scholar, Klein indicates that some 13·2 per cent of the slaves recorded as arriving in Virginian ports between 1727 and 1769 had come from the British West Indies or other colonies in North America.

¹⁸ Rowland, Dunbar (ed.), Official Letter Books of W. C. C. Claiborne, 1801–1816, 6 volumes (Jackson, Mississippi, 1917), 11, 245–6, 257.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Curtin, , Census, 73, 139.Google Scholar

²⁰ Fogel, and Engerman, , Time on the Cross, 25.Google Scholar My shipping-based estimates of slave imports are derived primarily from evidence relating to Georgia, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Virginia. The main sources of data are PRO Colonial Office papers, Naval Office shipping lists; Minchinton, King and Waite (eds), Virginia Slave Trade; advertisements of slave sales in Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia listed in Donnan, , Documents, IVGoogle Scholar, passim; Wax, Darold, ‘Negro imports into Pennsylvania, 1720–66’, Pennsylvania History, XXXII (1965), 254–87Google Scholar; Lydon, James G., ‘New York and the African slave trade, 1700–74’, William and Mary Quarterly, XXXV (1978), 375–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Westbury, ‘Slaves of Virginia’; Shepherd, James F. and Walton, Gary M., Shipping, Maritime Trade and the Economic Development of Colonial North America (Cambridge, 1972), 141–4.Google Scholar

²¹ Curtin, , Census, 73.Google Scholar

²² Coughtry, Jay, The Notorious Triangle: Rhode Island and the African Slave Trade 1700–1807 (Philadelphia, 1981).Google Scholar

²³ Ibid. 25.

²⁴ Ibid.

²⁵ DuBois, William E. B., The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America 1638–1870 (Milwood, New York, 1973 ed.), 80–5.Google Scholar

²⁶ Coughtry, , Notorious Triangle, 26.Google Scholar

²⁷ Anstey, , ‘North America’, 55.Google Scholar

²⁸ It appears that Coughtry's listing of ships (Coughtry, Notorious Triangle, appendix) does not include all the Rhode Island slavers listed by Donnan, (Documents, IV, 504–22)Google Scholar as entering Charleston in 1804–7.

²⁹ For the influence of leading slave merchants such as the deWolfe family over the customs service at Bristol – the port which, on Coughtry's evidence, overshadowed Newport as Rhode Island's premier slaving centre from the mid-1790s onwards – see Howe, George, Mount Hope (New York, 1959), 108–10.Google Scholar

³⁰ Klein, , ‘Cuban slave trade’; Annals of Congress, 16th Congress, 2nd Session, 1820–1821, 73–8.Google Scholar

³¹ In using a minimum figure of 75 slaves per ship to identify United States ships arriving in Cuba directly from Africa, I differ from Klein, who defines direct shippers as those ‘carrying over 200 slaves’. It is apparent that the average number of slaves delivered by Rhode Island ships from Africa was considerably lower than Klein's figure, and that many reached America with no more than 75 slaves; hence the use of this figure in my calculations.

³² There was also a trade in slaves in this period to ports in Cuba other than Havana, and American ships were probably involved in this. Murray, David R., Odious Commerce (Cambridge, 1980), 17–19.Google Scholar

³³ Verger, Pierre, Flux et reflux de la traite des nègres entre le Golfe de Benin et Bahia de Todos os Santos du 17 et 18 siècles (The Hague, 1968)Google Scholar; Goulart, Mauricio, Escravidao Africana no Brasil (Sao Paulo, 1950), 202–17Google Scholar; Klein, Herbert S., The Middle Passage (Princeton, 1978), 23–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Miller, Joseph C., ‘Legal Portuguese slaving from Angola. Some preliminary indications of volume and direction, 1760–1830’, Revue Française d'Histoire d'Outre-Mer, LXII (1975), 135–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁴ Postma, Johannes, ‘The origins of African slaves: the Dutch activities on the Guinea Coast, 1675–1795’, in Engerman, Stanley L. and Genovese, Eugene D., Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere (Princeton, 1975), 33–49.Google Scholar

³⁵ Norregaard, Georg, Danish Settlements in West Africa, 1658–1850 (Boston, 1966)Google Scholar; Green-Pedersen, Svend E., ‘The scope and structure of the Danish negro slave trade’, Scandinavian Econ. Hist. Rev., XIX (1971), 147–97Google Scholar; Green-Pedersen, Svend E., ‘The history of the Danish negro slave trade, 1733–1807’, Revue Française d'Histoire d'Outre-Mer, LXII (1975), 196–220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁶ Curtin, , Census, 149–53, 163–203Google Scholar; Anstey, Roger, ‘The volume and profitability of the British slave trade, 1761–1807’, in Engerman, and Genovese, (eds), Race and slavery, 12–14.Google Scholar

³⁷ For the French trade in the second half of the eighteenth century, Curtin also used evidence about the African origins of slaves in the French Caribbean compiled by George Debien and other researchers. Curtin, , Census, 183–203.Google Scholar

³⁸ Jones and Johnson, ‘Windward Coast’.

³⁹ Curtin largely accepted Anstey's findings, though he proposed a different distribution of exports in the 1780s. Curtin, Philip D., ‘Measuring the Atlantic Slave trade’, in Engerman, and Genovese, (eds), Race and Slavery, 107–28.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Richardson, ‘Volume’.

⁴¹ Northrup, David, Trade without Rulers: Pre-Colonial Economic Developmnt in South-Eastern Nigeria (Oxford, 1978), 54.Google Scholar There is also evidence of English trading in slaves at Old Calabar in 1685–92. See Buisseret, David, ‘Slaves arriving in Jamaica, 1684–92’, Revue Française d'Histoire d'Outre-Mer, LXIV (1977), 85–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴² Based on Annals of Congress, 16th Congress, 2nd Session, 1820–1821, 73–8Google Scholar and customs and other data in Donnan, (ed.), Documents, IV, 504–22.Google Scholar

⁴³ Curtin, Philip D., Economic Change in Pre-Colonial Africa: Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison, Wisconsin, 1975), 161.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Donnan, (ed.), Documents, IV, 490n.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ PRO C 107/14, 18 December 1701, Thomas Walker to James Rogers.

⁴⁶ Coughtry, , Notorious Triangle, 105.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ PRO T 70/1263; BT 6/3, f. 84.

⁴⁸ On the tonnages of Rhode Island ships see Coughtry, Notorious Triangle, appendix.

⁴⁹ There is also evidence of shifts in the loading points of slaves in the Bight of Benin; see Manning, Patrick, Slavery, Colonialism and Economic Growth in Dahomey, 1640–1960 (Cambridge, 1982), 36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁰ Jones and Johnson, ‘Windward Coast’.

⁵¹ As noted earlier, Curtin acknowledged the possibility of significant North American slaving in the region after 1783 but did not attempt to quantify it.

⁵² It should be noted that whereas my figures cover all significant carriers, Lovejoy's estimates of the coastal distribution of slave exports are based only on British, Dutch, French and Portuguese data.

⁵³ On Bristol's prominent role in the early eighteenth century trade to the Bight of Biafra, see Richardson, David (ed.), Bristol, Africa and the Eighteenth-Century Slave Trade to America, Volume I: The Years of Expansion, 1698–1729, Bristol Record Society Publications, XXXVIII (1986)Google Scholar, introduction.

⁵⁴ See, for instance, Miller, Joseph C., ‘Slave prices in the Portuguese Southern Atlantic, 1600–1830’, in Lovejoy, Paul E. (ed.), Africans in Bondage: Studies in Slavery and the Slave Trade (Madison, Wisconsin, 1986), 69Google Scholar, where Miller suggests that ‘the Dutch, followed by the French and eventually the British, advanced south to Loango and toward Luanda’ in the early part of the eighteenth century (italics added).

⁵⁵ Palmer, Colin A., Human Cargoes: the British Slave Trade to Spanish America, 1700–1739 (Urbana, Illinois, 1981)Google Scholar; Palmer, Colin A., ‘The company trade and the numerical distribution of slaves to Spanish America, 1703–1739’, in Lovejoy, (ed.), Africans in Bondage, 27–43.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ For a discussion of sugar consumption in Britain, see Mintz, Sidney W., Sweetness and Power: the Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, 1985), 74–151Google Scholar; Sheridan, Richard B., Sugar and Slavery (Baltimore, 1973), 18–35.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Anstey, Roger, The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition 1760–1810 (London, 1975), 82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thornton, John, ‘The slave trade in eighteenth century Angola: effects on demographic structures’, Canadian J. African Studies, XIV (1980), 425–6.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Miller, , ‘Slave prices’, in Lovejoy, (ed.), Africans in Bondage, 56–7.Google Scholar Similarly, the surge in slave exports from Sierra Leone in 1750–80 also helps to explain the sharp rise in adult male slave prices in the region that Jones observes between 1763 and 1775; see Jones, Adam, From Slaves to Palm Kernels: a History of the Galinhas Country (West Africa) 1730–1890 (Wiesbaden, 1983), 30–1.Google Scholar