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| Slavery in Rhode Island | |||||
| The Economics of the Rhode Island Slave Trade 1709-1807 | |||||
Between 1709 and 1807, Rhode Island merchants sponsored at least 934 slaving voyages to the coast of Africa. Their ships carried an estimated 106,544 Africans from their homeland to the New World. All together, 204 different Rhode Island citizens owned a share or more in a slave voyage at one time or another. It is evident that the involvement of R.I. citizens in the slave trade was widespread and abundant. For Rhode Islanders, slavery had provided a major new profit sector and an engine for trade in the West Indies. Of the 421 Rhode Island slavers tabulated for the period of 1784 to 1807, 402 or 95% can be identified today by port of ownership. Three hundred and ninety-seven (98.8%) of the vessels were registered in one of the following Rhode Island towns: Bristol, Newport, Providence, and Warren. The remaining vessels were owned by merchants in Little Compton, or North Kingstown. Together, Newport and Bristol accounted for 318 African voyages, or 79.2% of post war trade which they shared equally. Each financed 159 ventures or 39.6% of the joint total. Providence made 55 trips, 13.74% of the total, and tiny Warren, R.I. made 24 trips with 6% of the share. REFERENCE: Jay Coughtry, The Notorious Triangle: Rhode Island and the African Slave Trade, 1700-1807 (CITY:PUBLISHER, 1981) | |||||
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| Rhode Island's Monopolization of the Slave Trade | |||||
During the time that this was going on, Rhode Island was establishing its own trading system that would virtually take control over African slave markets and run its European competitors out of the market. Rum, as a tradable commodity in the late 1600's and early 1700's, was a factor in the establishment of the R.I. slave trade. By 1672, the exportation of brandy was taking place and was the work of profit-seeking English and West Indian interlopers, or illegal participants in the trade. The English based "Royal African Company," had in fact established a monopoly on the slave trade at this time. When British customs began to interfere with the interlopers' trade, seize their vessels, and confiscate the African goods that they returned with, the interlopers began to realize their need for less suspicious goods, and less observable points of debarkation. The interlopers then began to disembark from the West Indies instead of Africa, and substituted rum for brandy in their cargoes. As another precaution, exports began leaving England from Barbooks, instead of London. | |||||
This page was researched and written by Rita Kane '98.
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