Early_British_Slave_Trade

Britain and the Slave Trade Exploration and Interest in the “New World” Britain’s involvement in the slave trade began with sailors and merchantmen’s increasing interest in the financial temptations of West Africa and other destinations such as the Americas or the New World and also the thrall of adventure and exploration. In the fifteenth century England became more enthusiastic about improving its international trade with others nations, headed by sailors and Merchantmen, still very much small in scale, efforts were made to open up North American trade routes but at this stage, the safer already mapped out trade routes of South America (made by the Spanish and Portuguese), these voyages were popularly set from Bristol, partly due to John Cabot’s (a venetian) interest in the Atlantic, therefore fifteenth century trade was focused on South America and the Caribbean. Britain became interesting in Africa as a trade destination due to Spanish and Portuguese success in directly trading with West Africa already, also a West African voyage was much safer due to the shipping routes already having been pioneered as previously mentioned as and faster than travels to the Americas. In 1562, John Hawkins made the first English slave trading voyage, he was familiar with the Canaries where Negros already worked the land, he took three vessels on the voyage, first to Tenerife and then onto Sierra Leone, accordingly through this voyage he acquired 3000 slaves and he sailed onto Hispaniola where he sold all those slaves with apparently prosperous result and success. The Spanish Colonial Empire depended on the trade of vast riches from the huge resources of Central and Lower America, the Caribbean trade was a much more attractive target for England because of this. Privateering profits were huge when preying on venerable Spanish settlements and the lucrative trading fleets, this pirating in the years 1508-1603 resulted in approximately 235 privateers operating around the Caribbean. This improved the experience Britain had of oceanic travel and warfare whilst also garnering great riches for the nation, state sponsored Privateers such as the famous Sir. Drake flourished during this period. Expansion of Britain and Trade By the 1620s Britain had colonized small parts of the Americas, they had colonized, Bermuda, Newfoundland, Barbados, St. Kitts and Jamaica, apart from Newfoundland, these colonies were focused in the Caribbean, Britain became increasingly prominent in the Americas due to the weakening of Portuguese and Spanish power there, those nation’s internal conflicts and wars with the strengthening Dutch led to Britain’s overseas adversaries becoming less problematic. As was the same with Spain and Portugal, sugar production and slavery intrinsically linked, the British slave trade grew in response to the rise of sugar production as a profitable industry. The newly founded West Indies colonies turned to sugar production after experimenting with different cash crops, the expansion of both trades were completely parallel to one another. In 1651, Barbados exported 3,750 tons of sugar to England, expanding to 9525 tons by 1669, in the same period; the black slave population of this colony grew from 20,000 to 30,000. Barbados became the most important catalyst for both sugar production and for imports of Africans, however Barbados was overtaken by Jamaica when it was seized from the Spanish in 1700, these Caribbean islands made Britain the dominant slave producer in the region and the very same amongst the slave trade in the Atlantic. Spread of the slave trade to North America and wider scale expansion of it As the trade increased, it spread further to larger markets, the American colonies such as Virginia survived by growing and selling different cash crops and foods, late into the seventeenth century Virginia became proficient in cultivating Tobacco, this labour intensive plantation crop required large amounts of labour, slaves were cheap and cost effective as a workforce for the plantation owners, thus Britain became more involved in the slave trade as the fledgling American colonies needed slaves to survive, during this time, privateers were replaced by ever larger numbers of slave vessels, well into the thousands as Britain had entered a major new industry through their own Atlantic slave trade. In 1662, The Royal African Company was founded in an attempt to monopolise the shipping of slaves to American colonies, the fact that Britain granted the company the monopoly shows how high demand now was for these slaves in the colonies and the Atlantic triangle trade, wanting their own monopoly of trading slaves to their colonies, in this way, the nation showed its greatest involvement in the trade up until now, however even the company couldn’t satisfy the huge appetite for slaves in the colonies, to try and maintain this monopoly and keep the trade under British control, the Navigation Acts were passed after the 1650s, this system was meant to monitor the trade and to be enforced by the Royal Navy, this act had the aim of cutting out foreign nations in the trade, especially the Dutch whilst enriching Englishmen. The Royal African Company made a number of advancements in the trade up until its Monopoly ended in 1713, within a decade of it being founded, it had secured a line of African trading posts from Senegambia to Benin, from the 1680s the company consistently shipped an average 5250 slaves each year, by its end it had transported approximately 120,000 Africans to the colonies, Britain became involved in the slave trade at first through third party traders such as merchants and privateers, this evolved into more reliable and sophisticated methods as Britain power and colonies grew, alongside the reliance on exotic and expensive cash crops, becoming trading companies which were protected at first by tariffs, laws and monopolies, showing the extent of Britain’s large involvement in the slave trade. Darius Farokhi