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The Contraband Slave Trade to Brazil and the Dynamics of US Participation, 1831–1856

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2015

LEONARDO MARQUES
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Abstract

This article explores the US contribution to the illegal transatlantic slave trade to Brazil and the tensions generated by this hemispheric connection in the mid-nineteenth century. It combines qualitative and quantitative approaches, based on diplomatic records and Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, in order to assess the size and variety of forms of US participation in the traffic to Brazil. More generally, the article examines the tensions caused by the rise of abolitionism and the limits to the enforcement of anti-slave trade legislation in the free trade international environment that emerged after the Napoleonic Wars. By framing the attitudes of the US government within a broader Atlantic context, this work shows why certain forms of US participation in the contraband slave trade (such as providing US-built ships) became more predominant than others (such as directly financing and organising slave voyages) by the mid-nineteenth century.

Spanish abstract

Este artículo explora la contribución estadounidense al tráfico ilegal transatlántico de esclavos a Brasil. El material combina perspectivas cualitativas y cuantitativas basadas en los registros diplomáticos y en el documento Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (Viajes: Base de Datos del Tráfico Transatlántico de Esclavos) con el fin de evaluar la dimensión y las formas de participación estadounidense en dicho tráfico a Brasil. De forma más general, el artículo examina las tensiones causadas por el surgimiento del abolicionismo y las limitaciones para la aplicación de la legislación anti-tráfico de esclavos en un ambiente de comercio libre internacional surgido tras las Guerras Napoleónicas. Al enmarcar las actitudes del gobierno norteamericano al interior de un contexto Atlántico más amplio, este trabajo muestra por qué ciertas formas de participación estadounidense en el contrabando del tráfico de esclavos (como proveer barcos construidas en Estados Unidos) fueron más predominantes que otras (como financiar y organizar directamente traslados de esclavos) a mediados del siglo XIX.

Portuguese abstract

O presente artigo explora a contribuição dos EUA para o tráfico transatlântico ilegal de escravos para o Brasil. Abordagens qualitativas e quantitativas são combinadas, com base em documentos diplomáticos e na Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, para estimar o volume e a variedade de formas de participação dos EUA no tráfico para o Brasil. De modo mais geral, o artigo examina as tensões geradas pela ascensão do abolicionismo e os obstáculos à execução da legislação anti-tráfico no ambiente internacional de livre comércio que emergiu após as Guerras Napoleônicas. Com o enquadramento das ações do governo dos EUA em um contexto atlântico mais amplo, este trabalho demonstra por que certas formas de participação dos EUA no contrabando negreiro (como o fornecimento de navios construídos no país) se tornaram mais predominantes que outras (como o financiamento e organização diretas de expedições negreiras) em meados do XIX.

Keywords

transatlantic slave tradeBrazilian empireBrazil-US relationsfree tradetráfico esclavo transatlánticoimperio brasileñorelaciones Brasil-EEUUlibre comerciotráfico escravo transatlânticoimpério Brasileirorelações Brasil-EUA
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 4 , November 2015 , pp. 659 - 684
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

1 William E. B. Du Bois, The Suppression of the African Slave-trade to the United States of America, 1638–1870 (New York, London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1896), p. 164.

2 Warren S. Howard, American Slavers and the Federal Law, 1837–1862 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1963); Robert Edgar Conrad, World of Sorrow: The African Slave Trade to Brazil (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1986); Gerald Horne, The Deepest South: The United States, Brazil, and the African Slave Trade (New York: New York University Press, 2007); Graden, Dale Torston, ‘O envolvimento dos Estados Unidos no comércio transatlântico de escravos para o Brasil, 1840–1858’, Afro-Ásia, 39 (2007), pp. 9–35Google Scholar.

3 The exception to this pattern was the few voyages organised by American southerners in the late 1850s. See Don Edward Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government's Relations to Slavery (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). On the impact of legislation see Finkelman, Paul. ‘Regulating the African Slave Trade’, Civil War History, 54: 4 (2008), pp. 379–405CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Ignoring this specific effect of US abolition of the slave trade has led some historians to overestimate the role of US citizens in the Brazilian slave trade. Michelle McDonald and Steven Topik recently argued, for example, that ‘North American merchantmen carried some of the greatest annual slave importations Brazil had known – until the Atlantic slave trade was terminated by the British navy in 1850’: Michelle Craig McDonald and Steven Topik, ‘Americanizing Coffee: The Refashioning of a Consumer Culture’, in Alexander Nützenadel and Frank Trentmann (eds.), Food and Globalization: Consumption, Markets and Politics in the Modern World (Oxfordand New York: Berg, 2008), p. 120. Gerald Horne takes a step further and states that ‘U.S. nationals were leaders in fomenting the illicit slave trade and, as a result, permanently transformed Brazil for all time’: Horne, The Deepest South, p. 33.

4 Eltis, David, ‘The British Contribution to the Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Slave Trade’, Economic History Review, 32: 2 (1979), pp. 211–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jennings, Lawrence C., ‘French Policy Towards Trading with African and Brazilian Slave Merchants, 1840–1853’, Journal of African History, 17: 4 (1976), pp. 515–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; George E. Brooks, Yankee Traders, Old Coasters & African Middlemen: A History of American Legitimate Trade with West Africa in the Nineteenth Century (Brookline, MA: Boston University Press, 1970).

5 Tod to Clayton, 8 Jan., 1850, Senate Documents (hereafter SD), 31 Cong., 2 sess., No. 6, p. 25.

6 Seymour Drescher, Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 316.

7 Leslie Bethell, The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade: Britain, Brazil and the Slave Trade Question, 1807–1869 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 27–61.

8 Despite the wording of the law, slaves found aboard seized ships, the emancipados, became, in fact, subject to a 14-year period of apprenticeship. The terms for some actually extended beyond 14 years, and for others less, but very few, if any, laboured on sugar or coffee estates and thus they cannot be considered as having the same status as slaves: see Beatriz Gallotti Mamigonian, ‘To Be Liberated African in Brazil: Labour and Citizenship in the Nineteenth Century’, unpubl. PhD dissertation, University of Waterloo, Canada, 2002. On the 1831 law, see the dossier organised by Mamigonian, Beatriz and Grinberg, Keila, ‘Para inglês ver? Revisitando a lei de 1831’, Estudos Afro-Asiáticos (2007), n. 1-2-3Google Scholar.

9 Tâmis Peixoto, ‘A política da escravidão no império do Brasil, 1826–1865’, unpubl. MA thesis, São Paulo: University of São Paulo, 2009, pp. 128–9. On the history of the Conservative Party, see the classic by Ilmar Rohloff de Mattos, O tempo saquarema: a formação do estado imperial (São Paulo: Hucitec, 2004), and Jeffrey D. Needell, The Party of Order: The Conservatives, the State, and Slavery in the Brazilian Monarchy, 1831–1871 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006).

10 David Eltis, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 195–6.

11 Cowper to Aberdeen, 1 Jan. 1844, British Parliamentary Papers, 1845, Volume L, Class B, p. 407.

12 McDonald and Topik, Americanizing Coffee, p. 110; see also Rafael Bivar Marquese and Dale W. Tomich, ‘O Vale Do Paraíba escravista e a formação do mercado mundial do café no século XIX’, in Keila Grinberg and Ricardo Salles (eds.), O Brasil imperial (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2009).

13 Bethell, The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade, pp. 167–8, 242–66.

14 Besides these two regions, Pernambuco and Amazonia received, respectively, 22,858 and 3,432 enslaved Africans. A further 5,236 slaves were disembarked in unspecified parts of Brazil.

15 Manolo Florentino, Em costas negras: uma história do tráfico atlântico de escravos entre a Africa e o Rio De Janeiro, séculos XVIII e XIX (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1997).

16 Eltis, Economic Growth, pp. 150–1.

17 On the prominent role played by the D'Wolf family in the US slave trade in the early nineteenth century, see Jay Coughtry, The Notorious Triangle: Rhode Island and the African Slave Trade, 1700–1807 (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1981) and Marques, Leonardo, ‘Slave Trading in a New World: The Strategies of North American Slave Traders in the Age of Abolition’, Journal of the Early Republic, 32: 2 (2012), pp. 233–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 In fact, by the early 1840s, a few Cuban slave traders had redirected their operations to Rio de Janeiro. Rovirosa, who also appears in the documents as Ruviroza y Urzellas, was the most successful one, becoming the fourth largest slave trader in Rio by the mid-1840s: Eltis, Economic Growth, p. 157. For an extended discussion of Fonseca, Rovirosa and other slave traders operating in Rio de Janeiro, see Roquinaldo Ferreira, Dos sertões ao Atlântico: tráfico ilegal de escravos e comércio lícito em Angola, 1830–1860, unpubl. MA thesis, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 1996, chap. 6.

19 Alcoforado, Joaquim de Paula Guedes, ‘História sobre o infame negócio de africanos da África oriental e ocidental, com todas as ocorrências desde 1831 a 1853’, transcribed by Ferreira, Roquinaldo, Estudos Afro-Asiáticos, 28 (1995), pp. 219–29Google Scholar. In their effort to suppress the transatlantic slave trade in the 1850s, Brazilian authorities employed some of the clandestine methods previously used by the British. It was in this context that they hired Joaquim de Paula Guedes Alcoforado, a former slave trader who had been supplying the British with intelligence on the contraband slave trade to Brazil: Bethell, The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade, pp. 351–2.

20 The numbers in parentheses following the names of vessels in this article are the identification numbers of voyages in www.slavevoyages.org.

21 http://slavevoyages.org/tast/database/search.faces?yearFrom=1837&yearTo=1866&anyowner=fonseca.

22 http://slavevoyages.org/tast/database/search.faces?yearFrom=1831&yearTo=1866&natinimp=9. For Fonseca's network in Angola, see Martin, Phyllis M., ‘Family Strategies in Nineteenth-Century Cabinda’, Journal of African History, 28: 1 (1987), pp. 65–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Wissenbach, Maria Cristina Cortez, ‘As feitorias de Urzela e o tráfico de escravos: Georg Tams, José Ribeiro Dos Santos e os negócios da África centro-ocidental na década de 1840’, Afro-Ásia, 43 (2011): pp. 43–90Google Scholar. For Mozambique, see Rocha, Aurélio, ‘Contribuição para o estudo das relações entre Moçambique e o Brasil – século XIX’, Studia, no. 51 (1992), pp. 109–10Google Scholar.

23 Jornal do Commercio, 15 Jan. 1840.

24 Laura Jarnagin Pang, A Confluence of Transatlantic Networks: Elites, Capitalism, and Confederate Migration to Brazil, Atlantic Crossings (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2008), p. 124.

25 Jornal do Commercio, 14 April 1828.

26 Slacum to Webster, 1 July 1843, House Documents (hereafter HD), 29 Cong., 1 sess., No. 43, 18–20.

27 Pang, A Confluence of Transatlantic Networks, p. 128.

28 In 1846 the Jornal do Commercio published a report on Brazilian exports. Seven merchant houses were responsible for half of all coffee exported to the United States, with Maxwell, Wright & Co at the top of the list. The other six houses were Charles Coleman & Co, Miller Le Cocq & Co, F. Le Breton & Co, Phipps Brothers & Co, Schroeder & Co, and Astley Algorri & Co. See Jornal do Commercio, 26 Jan. 1846.

29 Wise to Gordon, 25 Oct. 1844, HD, 28 Cong., 2 sess., No. 148, pp. 50–4; see also Howard, American Slavers, p. 296, note 6. On the anti-slave trade position of slaveholders in the Upper South see Donald L. Robinson, Slavery in the Structure of American Politics, 1765–1820 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), pp. 295–346.

30 Howard American Slavers, 224–6.

31 Wise to Buchanan, 1 May 1849, HD, 30 Cong., 2 sess., No. 61, p. 150.

32 Hamilton to Palmerston, 4 Nov. 1846 (Enclosure 2), British Parliamentary Papers, 1847–48, Volume LXVI, Class B, p. 220; Wise to Calhoun, 18 Feb. 1845, HD, 30th Cong., 2nd sess., No. 61, pp. 70–86.

33 Wise to Maxwell to Maxwell Wright, & Co, 9 Dec. 1844, Ibid., pp. 74–5, 84, 88.

34 Wise to Hamilton, 31 July, 1846, SD, 30 Cong., 1 sess., No. 28, pp. 21–2.

35 Wise to Hamilton, 1 Dec. 1844, HD, 28 Cong., 2 sess., No. 148, pp. 55–63.

36 Hamilton to Palmerston, 4 Nov. 1846 (Enclosure 2), British Parliamentary Papers, 1847–48, Volume LXIV, Class B., pp. 202–3.

37 Howden to Palmerston, 8 April 1846 (Enclosure 2), British Parliamentary Papers, 1849, Volume LV, Class B, p. 14.

38 Parks to Buchanan, 20 Aug. 1847, HD, 30 Cong., 2 sess., No. 61, p. 7.

39 Hesketh to Palmerston, 14 March 1850 (Enclosure 3), British Parliamentary Papers, 1851, Volume LVI pt. II, Class B, pp. 509–10.

40 Pessoas comprometidas nos crimes de moeda falsa e tráfico de escravos, 1836–1864, Série Justiça, IJ6, pasta 468, Arquivo Nacional do Rio de Janeiro.

41 See Jornal do Commercio, 10 Aug. 1833; 23 June 1835; 13 Jan. 1836; 25 Jan. 1836; 11 May 1836; 10 March 1837; 26 May 1838; 1 Sept. 1838; 19 Jan. 1840; 13 Feb. 1840.

42 Jornal do Commercio, 10 May 1847 and 7 July 1850.

43 Southern to Malmesbury, 7 Jan. 1853, British Parliamentary Papers, 1852–53, Volume CIII pt. III, Class B, pp. 209–10.

44 Southern to Souza, 22 Jan. 1853, ibid., p. 250.

45 Tod to Webster, 11 June 1851, SD, 32 Cong., 1 sess., No. 73, p. 4.

46 Hudson to Chargé d'Affaires at Montevideo, 25 Dec. 1848, British Parliamentary Papers, 1849, Volume LV, Class B, p. 75.

47 New York Herald, 30 Jan. 1849; Clapp was also part owner of the Martha, captured under similar circumstances: see Donald L. Canney, Africa Squadron: The U.S. Navy and the Slave Trade, 1842–1861, (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2006), chap. 9.

48 List of vessels sold at this port […], HD, 30 Cong., 2 sess., No. 6, p. 41; in the matter of the application of Louis Francois Desirée Krafft […], HD, 30 Cong., 2 sess., No. 61, p. 43.

49 The Deposition of Captain W. E. Anderson […]. SD, 32 Cong., 1 sess., No. 73, p. 7. For a longer description of the voyage see Graden, ‘O envolvimento dos Estados Unidos’, pp. 15–19.

50 Fanshawe to the Secretary of Admiralty, 20 March 1850 (Enclosure 4), British Parliamentary Papers, 1851, Volume LVI pt. I, Class A, 250. The British commander probably misspelt ‘Maneta’ for ‘Minetta’. The additional ‘Don Juan’ remains a mystery.

51 Melville & Hook to Aberdeen, 12 Nov. 1844 (Enclosure 2) and Melville & Hook to Aberdeen, 28 June 1845 (Enclosure 1), British Parliamentary Papers, 1846, Volume L, Class A, pp. 266, 313.

52 Hesketh to Palmerston, 4 May 1847, British Parliamentary Papers, 1847, Volume LXVI, Class B, p. 262.

53 Parks to Buchanan, 30 Nov. 1847, HD, 30 Cong., 2 sess., No. 61, p. 22.

54 For a summary of the debates on the abolition of the slave trade in 1850, see Márcia Regina Berbel, Rafael de Bivar Marquese, and Tâmis Parron. Escravidão e política: Brasil e Cuba, c. 1790–1850 (São Paulo: Editora Hucitec: FAPESP, 2010), pp. 322–45.

55 http://slavevoyages.org/tast/database/search.faces?yearFrom=1851&yearTo=1866&mjslptimp=50000.

56 Southern to Malmesbury, 1 May 1852, British Parliamentary Papers, 1852–53, Volume CIII pt. III, Class B, p. 98.

57 Schenck to Everett, 5 Feb. 1853, British Parliamentary Papers, 1854, Volume LXXIII, Class B, p. 638.

58 Bethell, The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade, pp. 370–1. Roquinaldo Ferreira discusses Marsden and the Bracuhi case in more detail based on his vast research at the Brazilian National Archives: see Ferreira, Dos sertões ao Atlântico, pp. 137–47.

59 Coxe to Marcy, 21 July 1853 (A.65), SD, 88, 33 Cong., 2 sess., No. 88, p. 8.

60 Ibid., pp. 9 (quotation), 14.

61 Ibid., p. 15. The original contract can be found at the Arquivo Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, Série Justiça, Maço IJ6 Folder 522.

62 Coxe to Marcy, 15 Aug. 1853 (D70), SD, 88, 33 Cong., 2 sess., No. 88, p. 29. Ferreira, Dos sertões ao Atlântico, p. 139.

63 Howard, American Slavers, p. 178.

64 On the Lyons-Seward treaty of 1862, see Mason, Matthew, ‘Keeping up Appearances: The International Politics of Slave Trade Abolition in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World’, William and Mary Quarterly, 66: 4 (2009), p. 830Google Scholar.

65 Eltis, Economic Growth and the Ending; Robin Law, ‘Abolition and Imperialism: International Law and the British Suppression of the Atlantic Slave Trade’, in Derek R. Peterson (ed.), Abolitionism and Imperialism in Britain, Africa, and the Atlantic (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2010), pp. 150–74; Eliga H. Gould, Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), pp. 157–77.