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Article

Alemam, Joham  

Trevor Hall

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
17 September 2020

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 ...

Article

Alloron  

Stephanie Beswick

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

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 ...

Article

Barchi, Cesare de  

Trevor Hall

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
17 September 2020

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 ...

Article

Colston, Edward  

Madge Dresser

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
19 March 2007
Published online:
30 September 2008

Controversial philanthropist and merchant involved in the slave trade. He was the Bristol‐born son of a Bristol merchant who spent his early life in London, but it is in Bristol that he is most famous. A staunch Anglican and Tory, he was briefly MP for the city in 1710. His huge donations to church renovation and school building projects, mainly but not exclusively in Bristol, ensured his reputation as the city's greatest benefactor, as his major statue in the centre and his fine tomb by Michael Rysbrack attest. Several Bristol streets, schools, buildings, and venerable local charities still bear his name, and his birthday is still honoured in civic celebrations.

Colston s relevance to black history lies in the fact that he was involved in the British slave trade and in the trade of slave produced goods By the 1670s he was a City of London merchant trading ...

Article

Hawkins, Sir John  

Erin D. Somerville

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
19 March 2007
Published online:
30 September 2008

The first Englishman to transport African slaves across the Atlantic. The son of a sea merchant and Mayor of Plymouth, Hawkins inherited the family sea business after his father's death. After early voyages to the Canary Islands, he moved to London in 1560 to seek support for voyages to the West Indian colonies, then under tight Spanish control.

Hawkins's first slave trading voyage departed for the west coast of Africa in October 1562. Upon arrival in Upper Guinea, Hawkins raided Portuguese ships for African slaves and other merchandise. Three hundred slaves were brought to Hispaniola, where he illegally sold them to English planters. The financial gains of the expedition were so extensive that Queen Elizabeth I supported an equally profitable second voyage in 1564, which moved over 400 slaves from Sierra Leone. A third slaving voyage in 1567 also supported by the Queen was not as successful ...

Article

Lima, Geraldo de  

Nana Yaw B. Sapong

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

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 ...

Article

Mataka Nyambi  

Rosemary Elizabeth Galli

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

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 ...

Article

Santos e Silva, Ana Joaquina dos  

Douglas Wheeler

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

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 ...

Article

Sessarakoo, William Ansah  

Sheldon Cheek

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
31 January 2019

enslaved West African prince whose celebrated story took place within the context of the intense rivalry between England and France for the lucrative African slave trade. The young African became a kind of pawn of the commercial interests of these two nations along the Gold Coast in West Africa (present-day Ghana). His life enters the arc of the western imagination briefly, for only several years, before returning to the relative obscurity of his origins. Nuanced by the irony that the son of a slave trader had himself been enslaved, Sessarakoo’s story gives a fuller idea of the complexities of the slave trade in Africa.

Sessarakoo was born to a wealthy Fante ruler (ohinne John Bannishee Corrantee Corrantee controlled the area around Annamboe now Anomabu on the coast between Accra and Sekondi and from this position engaged in a lucrative trade in slaves and gold Sessarakoo grew up in ...

Article

Skelton, Elizabeth Frazer  

Bruce L. Mouser

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

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 ...

Article

Snees, Jantie  

Ray A. Kea

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

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 ...