Lhe work of historians on slavery and the slave trade has largely contributed to public awareness of the terrible tragedy represented by the deportation and exploitation of millions of human beings torn from the African continent. But if numerous works document or model the major economic role of this trade in the rise of the European economy in the 18e century, very few, for lack of sources, describe its functioning, actors, duration and places, on a micro-economic scale.
This is the interest of the exploitation by historians Anne Ruderman and Amanda Gregg, professors respectively at the London School of Economics and Middlebury College (Vermont), of an extremely rare document: the account books kept by the captain of The Good Society, slave ship from La Rochelle, for the duration of its six-month “campaign”, in 1783 and 1784. Added to the most classic logbook, to correspondence with shipowners and to the archives of the ports of departure and arrival , these books offer an excruciatingly “everyday” vision of what the slave trade was like. They identify, in fact, for each of the 425 slaves purchased, its characteristics, its purchase price (in monetary value, but above all in quantity and type of goods – fabrics, weapons, alcohol, pearls, mirrors, metal tools, brought Europe), the date of purchase and the identity of the seller. Because, as Anne Ruderman said during the presentation of his paper at the Paris School of Economics, on June 15, it is“a Euro-African intercultural trade”.
Trading values
Leaving La Rochelle in July 1783, arriving in the kingdom of Loango (now Angola) in November, the ship The Good Society circulated for six months between a dozen counters near the mouth of the Congo River, before leaving with 416 slaves for Martinique – 12 were killed during a revolt on board –, which he reached in July 1784. No slave is captured directly by the crew, who never stay ashore, except during the day to go to the counter where the transactions take place: rowboats shuttle between the ship anchored in the bay and the counter, loaded with goods in one direction and slaves in the other. The captain does business with 119 different sellers, of whom nearly 90% are African, 40% local notables, 30% “in partnership” (the seller then joins forces with another seller who is better at handling the language or negotiating with Europeans ). But 50% of these sellers sell only one slave, a quarter sell two, 15% three. The largest transaction is for 30 slaves. Hence the length of the campaign.
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