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Historical Slavery Resources

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RacingRodent

RacingRodent

Consul
I am starting this thread for those forumites looking to share or make use of resources pertaining to historical slavery in other parts of the world and cultures than Rome. Now since real world chattel slavery is still unfortunately an ongoing problem causing immense suffering to millions I would ask that nothing is posted applying to events later than 1950, the date might seem a bit arbitrary but it is widely accepted by many archaeological societies and associations as marking the boundary between historical and current so seems a less random cut off than most.

To start the ball rolling I have a link to the Measuring Worth website which is a useful resource across many subjects when trying to calculate the relative economic impact and value of past activities.

This particular article relates to slavery in the Antebellum United States primarily but should give people some pointers to the financial imperatives of slave ownership more generally

http://www.measuringworth.com/slavery.php
 
I've not yet read all this text, but it seems that it's certainly more profitable to do war, like Romans did, to have slaves than to buy them !

Interesting study , I'll entirely read it later ... Thanks my squirrel ...;)
 
Indeed, though war itself can be financially costly, it was certainly the main source of a constant supply of slaves for the Roman Empire, at times a market-crashing over-supply (a sort of European slave mountain :devil:).

The Atlantic slave-trade depended on war, or rather, armed slave-raiding, from the coast into the West African interior. The crucial role of some Africans in enslaving others, and the extent to which they profited, tends to be swept under the carpet.
 
Eulalia said:
Indeed, though war itself can be financially costly, it was certainly the main source of a constant supply of slaves for the Roman Empire, at times a market-crashing over-supply (a sort of European slave mountain :devil:).
Click to expand...

But wars were for a great part paid by loothing and after, by swaps with the submitted countries ...

The Atlantic slave-trade depended on war, or rather, armed slave-raiding, from the coast into the West African interior. The crucial role of some Africans in enslaving others, and the extent to which they profited, tends to be swept under the carpet.
Click to expand...

Arabians were also contributing in Africans'captures ...

And French ships were often used for the travel of the slaves between Africa and America ...
In fact, I'm wondering if there were not for the shipowners that this business was the most lucrative :
Nantes, in France, has certainly made its wealth due to the "Triangular trade " ...
 
Yes, the Arab slave-trading networks preceded and outlasted the European ones.

There were links between my part of Scotland in the 18th century,
where smuggling was the mainstay of the economy,
and Nantes, traders from our ports sailed down to West Africa to pick up slaves,
took them across to the West Indies, brought back rum and tobacco,
used depots in Nantes (where they also picked up brandy),
and smuggled the goods up here. :devil:​
 
Eulalia said:
Yes, the Arab slave-trading networks preceded and outlasted the European ones.
​
Click to expand...

Not to mention but in addition to the African trade there were slave being conveyed into and out of India and into and to a lesser extent out of China for many centuries before the Europeans happened on the Indian Ocean and this was largely dominated by the Arabs.
 
Is there any study existing about the commercial aspect of this trade , in the way of your study , RR ?

I know that a slave sold in America could produce an income until 4X more important that the engaged expense to carry him to America ... Is it true ?
 
In Nantes, there is now a Museum about this African trade ... and when you see the old buildings of the shipowners, you can think that it's not far from the reality !;)
 

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RacingRodent said:
I am starting this thread for those forumites looking to share or make use of resources pertaining to historical slavery in other parts of the world and cultures than Rome. Now since real world chattel slavery is still unfortunately an ongoing problem causing immense suffering to millions I would ask that nothing is posted applying to events later than 1950, the date might seem a bit arbitrary but it is widely accepted by many archaeological societies and associations as marking the boundary between historical and current so seems a less random cut off than most.

To start the ball rolling I have a link to the Measuring Worth website which is a useful resource across many subjects when trying to calculate the relative economic impact and value of past activities.

This particular article relates to slavery in the Antebellum United States primarily but should give people some pointers to the financial imperatives of slave ownership more generally

http://www.measuringworth.com/slavery.php
Click to expand...

Thanks for starting this RR!
 
messaline said:
In Nantes, there is now a Museum about this African trade ... and when you see the old buildings of the shipowners, you can think that it's not far from the reality !;)
Click to expand...
There's the International Slave trade Museum in Liverpool, at the Albert Dock.
The Bristol Museum of Industry has a Slavery Gallery, and I think the Museum of London has too.
There's an ongoing campaign to have something similar in Glasgow.
Those four cities benefitted most in Britain from the dreadful trade.
But I'm sure you'd find traces of Scots from Galloway and Dumfriesshire in the annals of Nantes,
they had depots, offices, houses there.
I'll have a look through some stuff I've got, may well have some notes on them in my archives...
 
A very important publication, vital for any serious research, is:
Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
David Eltis and David Richardson; Foreword by David Brion Davis; Afterword by David W. Blight 2010
http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300124606

What I've been able to find about Galloway slavers only gives global figures for the amounts made on voyages,
running into thousands (in modern terms millions), though these have to be set against the costs of shipping, as well as of the slaves themselves.
The boats involved were typically 100-180 ton vessels, carrying 200-300 slaves, though even a 70 ton brig carried 293 slaves, of which 239 survived the voyage.
 
This is a text that I've found on this site and perhaps a first explanation about my question ...
It was in French but RR has courteously translated it : :clapping::clapping::clapping:for him !!!

"Slave Trafficking has it made fortunes?


This key question is one of those which it is most difficult to answer precisely. The accepted opinion that the slave trade was a source of wealth unmatched for those engaged in it, a sort of Pactolus which overflowed: the owners were making a great train, the grateful king bestowed of a particle, and the captains were beautiful. We would abound in this direction by giving some names of slave ships particularly revealing: the Pactolus precisely the Lottery Wheel-of-Fortune or Pont d'Or.

It is well known that in France in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was enriched by the slave trade. Magnificent fortunes were built on the backs of slaves and luxurious mansions still hark back to this in Bordeaux and Nantes, in the Feydeau or the Fosse. Although trafficking continued long after it had banned is then the slavers first began their interest, otherwise they would not continue as they have. Philanthropy is not the first virtue of slave traffickers, you cannot imagine any other reason for the continuation of their business - even residual - until the mid-nineteenth century. The slave trade was indeed profitable to those who have practiced it. The question is by how much?

After being largely overestimated, the slave profits are being revised downwards, probably a bit too much. Many historians agree on the average profits of the order of 6 to 7% per year, that is to say little more than quiet investments father to 5% for notaries. This average rate is obviously not aware of a very wide range from a complete failure to a success story, 50% loss to 50% gain. For many ship owners drawn to trafficking, the concept of risk was part of the trip: an expedition to the coast of Africa was akin to a gamble of which was expected both the best and the worst. He tried his luck and was often not seen again: and in Bordeaux, 56% of shipping houses once engaged in trafficking. Some families, however, were enriched by the slave trade sending dozens of expeditions and making millions of livres in profits, as Michel Grou in Nantes, Le Havre Begouen-Demeaux, or Dynasty Nairac including Pierre-Paul and Elisha Bordeaux and Jean-Baptiste La Rochelle were most active. With money from trafficking, Pierre-Paul could build Nairac in 1775 in the heart of Bordeaux which cost him a whopping 233,000 livres and Elisha acquire Barsac a winery where he had built the castle which now bears his name.

These key players were not the only ones profiting monetarily from trafficking, a multitude of secondary actors and corporations, benefited indirectly. During discussions on the future of trafficking, proponents of the and the slave trade insisted that millions of people living in France would suffer greatly from its loss: first sailors, secondly, workers in shipbuilding, metallurgical and textile industries, refineries, artisans, shopkeepers, seamstresses, innkeepers, wine makers, their wives and children. That was the world. It does not matter to this population, which in its majority, was not aware of the slave work activity to speak of any fortune linked to trafficking. Little people, their income or their wages were usually poor and had little direct connection with the money made by the wealthy.


Finally the responsibility for slavery is not individual, it is collective. The accumulation of capital from trafficking and exploitation of slaves in the colonies has promoted economic growth in England and France. No doubt the Europeans enrichment owes much to the depredation of African lives. The latter would require and would get compensation, even after so long, it would only be fair."
 
messaline said:
I've not yet read all this text, but it seems that it's certainly more profitable to do war, like Romans did, to have slaves than to buy them !
Click to expand...
True. But, this is what would lead to their fall.
The Roman economy was built on conquest. But, unlike later empires, this conquest was not to aquire resources for international trade. It was to provide resources to feed Rome itself. Slaves, were, of course, among those resources.
The problem is that they soon reached the point where conquest became physically impossible or economically unsupportable. After the conquest of Britain & Dacia in the late First/early Second centuries, further expansion became pretty much unfeasible. The Empire was hemmed in on the south by the Sahara, to the East by the Parthians and to the north by the Germans. Part of the reason for the fall of the Western Empire was the inability to adapt to new economic circumstances & create an economy that could sustain & protect a stable empire. And part of this problem was an economic system based on slave labor. So, slavery was as much a part of the downfall of Rome as anything else.
 
A few back-of-an-envelope sums based on the notes I've got
suggest that a slave-trader sailing a vessel carrying 250 slaves in, say, 1750,
to cover the costs of fitting out, provisioning, crewing and insuring the vessel
would have needed to make at least £300 clear profit on average per slave.
If the typical sale-price in the West Indies was £600,
that implies the buying-price on the West African coast would have been <£300,
probably nearer £150.

It's hard to make comparisons with modern values,
but I guess £150 would correspond to what we'd pay today for a small car,
£600 to what a modern farmer might pay for a major piece of farm machinery like a harvester -
so, serious money for a single, deeply unmotivated, manual labourer!

Popular history in books, mags and museums,
emphasises the inhuman brutality of the slave-system,
the conspicuous wealth of traders and plantation-owners,
and the nobility of the campaigns that led to abolition -
all very rightly, but it can overlook the basic point
that it was an absurdly expensive, inefficient, poorly productive way of supplying labour.

In fact, the prosperity it brought to some individuals, families, and cities,
was generally short-lived - bankruptcies were endemic,
it's astonishing with hindsight how long it carried on!

(So what Naraku says about the Roman Empire applies pretty well,
mutatis mutandis, to the Atlantic slave-trade and plantation slavery)​
 
Eulalia said:
(So what Naraku says about the Roman Empire applies pretty well,
mutatis mutandis, to the Atlantic slave-trade and plantation slavery)​
Click to expand...
I'll looking for the archives of the biggest (slave-)traders in the 1500-1800 years The VOC the company who made the Dutch the richest and mightiest Nation in the world.
Exploration of these regions by European powers first began in the late 15th century and early 16th century, led by the Portuguese explorers.[3] The Portuguese described the entire region they discovered as the Indies. Eventually, the region would be broken up into a series of Indies. The East Indies, which was also called "Old Indies" or "Great Indies", consisting of India and the West Indies, also called "New Indies" or "Little Indies", consisting of the Americas.[4]
Our first slaves came from the East and latter from Africa.

These regions were important sources of trading goods, particularly cotton, indigo and spices after the establishment of European trading companies: the British East India Company and Dutch East India Company, among others, in the 17th century.

The New World was initially thought to be the easternmost part of the Indies by explorer Christopher Columbus, who had grossly underestimated the westerly distance from Europe to Asia. Later, to avoid confusion, the New World came to be called the "West Indies", while the original Indies came to be called the "East Indies".

The designation East Indian was once primarily used to describe people of all of the East Indies, in order to avoid the potential confusion from the term American Indian who were once simply referred to as Indians (see the Native American name controversy for more information).
They were with many (thousand) load in the (ship's) holds and transported to America and Europe. Many (sometimes 50%) died on their way in slavery and dumped in the oceans.
I'll look for more info
 
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messaline said:
In Nantes, there is now a Museum about this African trade ... and when you see the old buildings of the shipowners, you can think that it's not far from the reality !;)
Click to expand...
You forgot the mightiest country, the Oost-Indisch Huis (Dutch for "East India House") is an early 17th-century building in the centre of Amsterdam. It was a headquarters of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC).
Oih_amsterdam.jpg
DirectiekamerVOC.jpg
Bushuis-Adam-Kloveniersburggracht.jpg​
 
admihoek said:
You forgot the mightiest country, the Oost-Indisch Huis (Dutch for "East India House")
Click to expand...

Lots of countries took their turn being the mightiest in the woeful trade but certainly there was a definite period of VOC dominance. I'll see if I can dig up some solid references from my own resources and hopefully others will do the same :)
 
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