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of the sixteenth-century slave trading ship Santa Margarida in the Portuguese Cape Verde Islands. Not much else is known about Alemam except that on 27 December 1515 Luis Carneiro, a scribe in the Cape Verde customs house at Ribeira Grande, Santiago Island, described him as “captain.” This information appears in entries of the surviving 1513–1516 Cape Verde customs receipt book transcribed from the original Portuguese manuscript into English by historian Trevor Hall (Before Middle Passage, 2015). In outfitting a slave ship and paying customs duty on a captive he imported from West Africa, Alemam shows the growing involvement of non-Iberian Europeans in the early sixteenth-century slave trade in Cape Verde.

In 1462 another non Portuguese ship owner the Genoese Antonio de nolle Antonio de Noli had colonized the uninhabited Cape Verde Islands for Portugal transforming the islands into the center of the expanding Atlantic slave trade ...

Sudanese leader, was the first prominent Bari private merchant, slave trader, and opportunist insurgent warlord. He rose to power during the 1860s by exploiting poisonous dynastic rivalries between Nyigilo and Subek, the royal sons of Lagunu, the unchallenged Bari leader in 1840, and their respective noble offspring. The faction of Nyigilo had enjoyed the support of Catholic missionaries up to their departure in 1860, but thereafter allied with the northern slave traders who at that time were establishing fortified trading operations throughout southern Sudan. It was to become an era, for the first time in Bari history, during which commoner traders such as Alloron found it possible to acquire economic and political power. However, the upstart was often reminded of his humble origins by the epithet “man without rain,” implying that he lacked the arcane fructifying powers of royalty.

The arrival of Turks northern Sudanese and Europeans ...

based in Portugal whose merchant ships traded between the Portuguese Cape Verde Islands and Valencia, Spain. Nothing is known about his family. Barchi’s reason for renown was that during the last two decades of the fifteenth century his ships transported thousands of enslaved Africans from the Cape Verde Islands to Valencia. Although not much is known about Barchi himself, his business opens a window into the working and scope of the Old World Atlantic slave trade from the Portuguese archipelago in Cape Verde Islands, West Africa to Spain.

During the fifteenth century Portugal had a monopoly over European maritime trade with West Africa. Although the Treaty of Alcáçovas (1479) and the protocol of Tordesillas (1494 prohibited non Portuguese ships from trading with sub Saharan West Africa the treaties permitted European merchants to trade with Portuguese islands off the West African mainland The Portuguese crown established customs ...

West African slave trader, was born in all likelihood out of a relationship between a Cape Verdean trader and a native woman. On her mothers’ side Correia descended from the Bijagó, the ruling matrilineage on the island of Orango, the largest and most important in the archipelago off the Guinea coast. Also affectionately known in Guinean Creole, the regional lingua franca, as Mãe Aurélia (Mother Aurelia), Nha Aurélia (Lady Aurelia), or Mamé Correia, she would become the most famous and powerful of all the women traders operating in nineteenth-century Portuguese Guinea, present-day Guinea-Bissau. Situated in West Africa in a region once called the Rivers of Guinea, also known as the Upper Guinea Coast, it was an important entrepôt for the Atlantic slave trade since the 1500s.

Correia s trading career is indissoluble from the transatlantic trafficking and the introduction of peanuts in the Guinea Bissau region as an export ...

, notable Gambian slave trader, was a free black woman and a relatively wealthy merchant who visited the American South in the second half of the eighteenth century, largely but not exclusively to trade in slaves and other things. She was partner to an English merchant with the last name of Lawrence. Fenda Lawrence traveled to the British North American colonies (now the United States) with respect and status as a person of color. At the time she was described in some European sources as a considerable trader in the River Gambia on the Coast of Africa.

Fenda Lawrence most likely met Englishman Lawrence (first name unknown) when he came to the Gambia River to trade. Her status was similar to that of other female merchants in precolonial Gambia (then Senegambia) of the time who had European partners. Like many of these signares as they were called she had ...

domestic slave, slave trader, and merchant prince, was born Adzoviehlo Atiogbe in Agoue in Dahomey (Benin) in 1804 He is also known as Adzoviehlo Atiogbe or Geraldo de Vasconcellos A man of several names he is one of the least understood and most complex characters in modern West African history Geraldo de Vasconcellos probably a Brazilian name given to him by his master in servitude entered into a period of apprenticeship under Brazilian slave trader Cesar Cerquira Lima who had a slave factory warehouse at Vodza in present day Ghana Slaves were kept in the Vodza factory before shipment to various destinations Cesar Cerquira Lima was one of a succession of Brazilian traders who had been establishing factories along the eastern coastline of the Gold Coast in the nineteenth century Geraldo de Vasconcellos became one of Cesar s trusted agents in Anlo who kept the supply of slaves steady ...

warlord, trader, and founder of perhaps the greatest Yao dynasty in Niassa in northern Mozambique, was the grandson of Syungule, head of the Chisyungule lineage. Mataka Nyambi, along with his biggest rival Makanjila, was instrumental in transforming the Niassa Yao from a society of matriclans to one governed by territorial chiefs. In the process, he brought a large population under his control and gained many wives; he is said to have had six hundred wives and numerous children. In about 1875 Mataka (now Mataka I) beheaded his adversary Makanjila.

A fierce drought drove the Niassa Yao to invade and ransack their neighbors for food and, subsequently, slaves in the 1830s Attacks by Nguni raiders have been responsible for their militarization Small and weak matriclans submitted to the stronger territorial chiefs and even sought their protection Mataka Nyambi was both feared and admired for his military prowess In addition trade ...

Rabih al-Zubayr was born in Sudan, probably near Khartoum, though the details of his early life are uncertain. Some believe that he was originally a slave freed by his master, Zubayr Rahma Mansur, while others think he was born free and joined the Turkic-Egyptian army before working for Zubayr, the largest slave-trader in southern Sudan. He joined Zubayr’s company in 1850 and had become a competent military leader by 1875, when the British declared slavery illegal.

When the British forcibly shut down Zubayr s operations four years later Rabih gathered what was left of Zubayr s slave army and established a raiding stronghold in the Azande region to the west During the 1880s Rabih and his army attacked and pillaged groups such as the Banda and Sara In the early 1890s Rabih defeated a French expedition and conquered the Bagirmi state in present day Chad from which he staged ...

wealthy Luso-African merchant, moneylender, entrepreneur, and slave trader in Angola, was born early in the nineteenth century, the daughter of a Portuguese father and a mestiza or mulatta mother. Ana Joaquina dos Santos e Silva, a mulatta or mestiza, became the wealthiest woman merchant and possibly the wealthiest of all merchants in her day in Angola, a colony of Portugal. Little is known of her early years, except that she married in succession two successful Portuguese merchants, both slave traders. When they died, their widow, Ana Joaquina, inherited their properties and became a wealthy entrepreneur on her own.

In the early decades of the nineteenth century Angola s largely coastal colonial society composed of two nuclei at Luanda and Benguela featured an Atlantic slave trading economy This traffic was dominated by merchants of Portugal Brazil and Angola although the wealthiest merchants were Brazilian Luanda s population consisted of ...

religious and political leader in the Gambia, was born in Gunjur in the kingdom of the Kombo. Sillah was a Fula who was originally known as Ibrahim Touray (or Ture); his family originated from the Futa Toro in what is now Northern Senegal; his father, Maley Burama Touray (who died when Sillah was about age twelve) was a Muslim cleric, while his mother, Mbesine Njai, was from Sine in Senegal. Sillah is sometimes called Fode Ibrahim Touray or Kombo Sillah (or slightly different versions of these).

Sillah’s early years were spent studying the Qurʾan in Gunjur and at Pakao in the Casamance in Senegal. He returned to Gunjur around 1850 to work as a Muslim teacher and proselyte, rising to become “amir” (caliph) of Kombo in 1864 which made him the commander of the Marabout forces fighting the traditional ruling class the Soninke When the fighting between the Marabouts ...

trader and matriarch active in Guinea/Conakry, was born to John Frazer at Bangalan Town on the Rio Pongo in Guinea/Conakry. Her father, from Scotland, was associated with Glasgow and Liverpool trading firms along the Windward Coast. He married Phenda, African widow of another trader, at the Isle de Los in 1799. Elizabeth was one of six children (James, Margaret, Elizabeth, Mary Ann, Nancy, and Eleanor). John Frazer maintained residences in both the Pongo and South Carolina, but moved his major center to Charleston in 1807 and then to Florida in 1811 where he died in 1813 Phenda remained behind in the Pongo to manage the Pongo property James and Margaret were sent to England for studies Elizabeth boarded with the Church Missionary Society s mission 1808 1817 in the Pongo and then traveled to Liverpool where she lived for four years in the household of Thomas Powell who ...

runaway slave and slave-raiding warlord, was born with the name Koko around 1750 in the town of Kalangba, later located in the Gbendembu-Gowahun chiefdom in the Sierra Leonean district of Bombali. He belonged to the Loko ethnic community.

According to oral and written accounts Smart accidentally killed one of his brothers and had to flee from Kalangba as a result A group of raiders seized the young man and sold him off to British traders based at Bunce Island on the coast of Sierra Leone Instead of being sold to the Americas like so many unfortunate Africans who were kept in bondage on Bunce Island Gumbu ended up working for British traders His English masters were so impressed by his trading skills that they dubbed him Smart and he used this name for the rest of his life The English traders regularly advanced Smart trade goods such as cloth and ...

Cape Coast, Gold Coast (later Ghana), trader-broker and officer holder, was also referred to in the documents as “Abee Coffu Jantie Seniees,” “Jan Snees,” “Janque Senece,” or “Johan von Sinesen.” The time and place of his birth are not known. Information about him comes from contemporary trading company records (principally Danish, Dutch, and English) and published texts, which cover a period from the 1640s to the 1670s.

Jantie Snees came from a commoner background and is probably to be identified with a man named Jantie van roeye or Jantie son of the boatman who lived in Kormantse a Fante coastal town where the Dutch West Indies Company had a fort Snees was employed by the company as a trading servant or broker in the 1640s By the late 1650s he was a rich merchant living in Little Komenda a coastal town in the Eguafo polity He was one of the ...

Zanzibari merchant, was certainly the most famous and successful of the nineteenth-century Swahili merchants (sometimes called “Arabs”) from the East African island of Zanzibar. From the 1860s to 1890 he led caravans into the African hinterland in search of ivory and slaves establishing market towns and trading posts at Kisangani from the 1880s called Stanley Falls on the Congo and at Kasongo on the Lualaba upper Congo Tippu Tip established a cultural political and commercial zone of influence known as Maniema roughly located between Lakes Tanganyika and Kivu to the east and the Lomami River to the west The caravans of Tippu Tip arrived in eastern Congo shortly before Belgian King Leopold II s declaration of sovereignty for the Congo Free State CFS in that region While Zanzibari and Europeans overlapped and accommodated one another for a few years in the 1880s Zanzibari and CFS commercial and political interests ...

warlord and slave merchant active in the region now known as the Central African Republic. His father, Tikima, was an influential Zande chief of the Nanga clan who married one of his daughters to the Sudanese slave trader and Egyptian official Abd Allab ibn al-Zubayr. This governor visited Tikima’s domains on the Mbomou River around 1860, and his brief visit helped to cement close ties between Tikima and the Khartoum-based slave traders who worked in southern Sudan and the eastern half of the modern Central African Republic. It is unclear how many children Tikima had, but given the common practice of Zande rulers to marry hundreds of women, Zemio Ikpiro must have had numerous potential competitors for the throne once Tikima died around 1872 With the scant amount of historical research on Zande communities in the modern Central African Republic it is unclear how Zemio Ikpiro took power ...