Keeping “the Wheel in Motion”- Trans-Atlantic Credit Terms, Slave Prices, And the Geography of Slavery in the British Americas, 1755–1807

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Keeping the wheel in motion:

Trans-Atlantic Credit Terms, SlavePrices, and the Geography of Slavery

in the British Americas, 17551807

NICHOLASRADBURN

This article uses a new dataset of 330 slaving voyages to examine terms of credit

issued for British American slave sales between 1755 and 1807. It shows that

credit terms consistently varied between American colonies, and that slave ship

captains considered these differences when electing where to land enslaved

Africans. Our dataset also shows that credit terms were highly erratic, especially

in the last quarter of the century, contributing to both surges and collapses in the

slave trade to individual colonies, and in the trade as a whole. Four such instances

are examined in detail to show that instability in credit terms played an important

and hitherto unacknowledged role in the volume and direction of Britains trans-

Atlantic slave trade in the second one-half of the eighteenth century.

On 22 May 1775, Kingston attorney Malcolm Laing wrote to an

absentee planter and suggested that a seven-year prohibition on

the slave trade to Jamaica would be happy for this Country.1Laings

extraordinary proposal came not from abolitionist sentiments, but concern

for the standing of Jamaicas credit in Britain. In 1772, a credit crisis had

struck the British Atlantic, dampening the demand for captive Africans in

the recently acquired Windward Isles and consequently pushing slaving

vessels downwind to Jamaica, where slave imports more than doubled

between 1772 and 1775.2From the great quantities of Negroes that has

been sold for two years past, Laing wrote, the planters that purchased arenow distressed by American slave factors who were themselves trying

The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 75, No. 3 (September 2015). The Economic HistoryAssociation. All rights reserved. doi: 10.1017/S0022050715001084

Nicholas Radburn is a Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, Johns Hopkins University, 301Gilman Hall, 3400 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218. E-mail: [email protected]

The author is grateful for the helpful comments of numerous generous readers, especially theparticipants in the 2011 Johns Hopkins Atlantic Research Seminar, Stephen D. Behrendt, DavidEltis, Philip D. Morgan, Justin Roberts, Katherine Smoak, and the JOURNALeditor and anonymousreaders.

1

Derbyshire Record Ofce (hereafter DRO), Fitzherbert Family Papers (hereafter FFP),D239/M/E/16803, Malcolm Laing to Francis Perrin, Kingston, 22 May 1775.

2Data for the forced movement of captive Africans has been obtained from Voyages: TheTrans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database,available from www.slavevoyages.org (hereafter TASTD).All data was accessed on 21 April 2015. In 1772, British agged vessels forcibly disembarked7,564 captive Africans in Jamaica, compared to 17,381 in 1775.


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Credit Terms, Slave Prices, Geography of Slavery 661

to make remittances to keep up their Credit in England. In December

1775, Jamaicas Assembly tried to implement Laings proposal by intro-

ducing a prohibitive duty on slaves brought to the island. British slavetraders successfully petitioned against the duty by arguing that they were

deprived of any other markets in the West India Islands from the low

state of credit there since the year 1772.3

The surge in Jamaicas slave imports in 17721776 illustrates the

importance of credit to the operation of Britains trans-Atlantic slave

trade. British merchants purchased approximately one-half of their

outward cargoes through a chain of credit that connected Englands

manufacturing regions to the major slaving ports of Liverpool, London,

and Bristol (Pearson and Richardson 2008, p. 769). On the African coast,

slave ship captains trusted their goods to African brokers, who them-

selves advanced credit to inland slave sellers (Lovejoy and Richardson

2001). African traders at Bonny and Old Calabar adopted particularly

innovative credit arrangements, enabling them to sell larger numbers

of captives to British slave ships (Behrendt et al. 2010; Lovejoy and

Richardson 2004, 1999). In the specie-poor Americas, slave factors

extended credit to the planters, boosting demand for new slave imports

(Morgan 2005; Price 1991). Credit underpinned every leg of a slaveships voyage.

Historians have paid particular attention to the Bills in the Bottom

trans-Atlantic credit mechanism, which Robin Pearson and David

Richardson (2008) have recently attributed an important role in both the

development of modern nancial institutions, and the success of British

slave traders in the late eighteenth century. First introduced by Liverpool

merchants in the 1750s, slave traders received bills of exchange for the

proceeds of their American slave sales, in the ship, or bottom, that had

delivered the captives (Haggerty 2009; Inikori 2002).4This arrangementdeparted from earlier credit mechanisms, which had only been between

a captain and the planters or a factor, because the bills were drawn on a

British banker (Sheridan 1958; Davies 1952). Bills in the bottom therefore

moved the slave merchants, according to Pearson and Richardson (2008),

3The National Archives, London (hereafter TNAUK), BT6/2, The Memorial of the Merchantstrading to Africa whose names are hereunto subscribed, [1776?].

4Slaving vessels did not, necessarily, return home in ballast, as they sought out freight in

colonial ports. Unlike produce as remittance, however, the slave trader did not possess the cargoshipped via freight, and instead collected a fee for its transport, which was added towards thevoyage prots. See, for example, The papers of William Davenport Co., 17451797 (hereafterPWD), British Records on the Atlantic World, 17001900 (Wakeeld: Microform AcademicPublishers, 1998), Trading Invoices Accounts 17791784, Voyages of the ship Hawke17791782.


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away from personal business networks based on family or kinship (p.

771), to less personal and more formal institutionalised arrangements

for doing business (p. 766), an important step toward modern systemsof nance.

Bills in the bottom also kept the Wheel in motion, as the slave

traders described it, because the bills could be used to nance slaving

voyages, lowering the trades entry costs, and enabling British merchants

to ship more slaves and therefore outpace their foreign rivals.5Bills in

the bottom, argue Pearson and Richardson (2008), promoted the unprec-

edented expansion of [the British slave] trade between 1750 and 1807

(p. 765), and enabled British slavers to escape the pitfalls of colonial

debt security, which had plagued the trade in the 1730s. French slave

traders, by comparison, brought home a portion of their returns as tropical

commodities, and the balance as credit extended directly to the planters.

Debt-stricken Franco-American planters frequently failed to meet their

obligations, making it difcult for French merchants to complet[e] the

triangle (Stein 1979, p.95). Dutch slave traders likewise never solved

the problem of colonial debt security (Morgan 2005). British slave

traders expanded the volume of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and out-

paced their European rivals during the second one-half of the eighteenthcentury, in part, because they used bills in the bottom, an innovative and

relatively stable credit mechanism, to nance slave American sales.

This article contends that short-term shifts in the terms of credit

issued for American slave sales should be considered as an important

variable that helped to shape both the volume and direction of the slave

trade to the British Americas during the last one-half of the eighteenth

century. Using newly collected data on 330 voyages landing captives in

the British-American colonies, c.17551807, it begins by describing the

decision-making process that ship owners and captains used when sellingslaves in the Americas, and then analyzes the lengths of credits issued

for slave sales. It argues that credit terms and slave prices consistently

differed between American colonies, resulting in noticeable changes in

the direction of the British slave trade during periods of economic insta-

bility, as ship captains sought out the most nancially secure markets

in which to land their captive cargoes. Section two uses as case studies

four such instances, which coincided with the opening and closing years

of the American Revolutionary (17751783) and French Revolutionary

(17931802) wars, to illustrate how a lack of credit availability contrib-

uted to shifts in the forced migration of captive Africans within the

Americas.

5Chestnutt ed.1978, 6, p. 89, Henry Laurens to Ross Mill, Charleston, 2 September 1768.


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SECTION 1

The British Americas comprised a number of individual slave markets,all of which depended on a common supply of imported captive Africans.

Within each colony, Guinea factorsport-based agents who sold arriving

captive Africansattempted to draw ships to their markets by writing to

British merchants and advertising potential sales.6The factors also issued

written guarantees to the merchants, which gave the captains employed

by the merchant the option to sell his captive cargo with the factor. The

slave factor agreed in turn to draw bills of exchange for the proceeds of

the sale on a third-party banker in Britain, who guaranteed to accept

pay whatever Bills were brought to him by the captain, as one 1785agreement stated.7 British slave traders accepted a number of guaran-

tees from across the Americas, and within individual colonies, which the

merchant listed in written orders that were handed to the ship captain at the

commencement of his voyage. These sometimes lengthy orders left most

aspects of the voyage to the discretion of the captain, but were extremely

specic with regards to the sale of the slaves, and instructed the captain

to seek out a minimum average slave price and maximum length of

credits at each American market, the captains so called limits.

8

If a ship captain arrived in a colony and the factor agreed to meet the

limits stipulated in the captains orders, the two men arranged the sale by

pricing the captives. The factor separated out the healthy prime slaves

from the sickly, old, and young, whom they designated as refuse.

As one Jamaican slave factor explained, the prime slaves were sold

at prices xed in some measure according to the price of crops; the

season of the year; and the demand for captives prevailing at the time of

the sale. These prime captives were sold at the beginning of the sale,

usually for prices that were graduated according to the age and sex ofthe slaves. The slaves deemed not to be prime were then disposed of

at prices according to their goodness the demand at the time of the

sale, as the Jamaican factor explained, sometimes in large lots at the

end of the sale.9This sale procedure certainly occurred in Jamaica, Saint

6For factors advertising sales to merchants, see for example, TNAUK, HCA30/259, John andAlexander Harvie to James Laroche, Kingston, 3 October 1756.

7TNAUK, James Rogers Paper (hereafter JRP), C107/7, James Baillie Company to James

Rogers, London, 13 April 1785.8For instructions issued to slave ship captains at the outset of the voyage, see for example,

PWD, Trading Invoices Accounts 1764-1779, Voyages of the ship Henry 17671769,Alexander Notthingham Company to Captain Joseph White, Liverpool, 13 July 1767.

9 William Clements Library (hereafter WCL), Tailyour Family Papers (hereafter TFP),Letterbook 17811785, box 7, John Tailyour to John and Alexander Anderson, Kingston, 8 June1785.


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Radburn664

Kitts, Saint Vincent, and South Carolina, and probably throughout the

remainder of the British Atlantic (Radburn 2015; Kelley 2013; Burnard

and Morgan 2001).10Once the sale had been completed the factor calcu-lated the average slave price by dividing the gross proceeds of the sale

by the number of slaves sold, a gure that the ship owners used to decide

where to order their captains in future.

The Guinea factor also drew bills of exchange on his guarantee for the

net proceeds of the sale at the lengths initially stipulated in his agreement

with the captain. Guinea factors calculated the length of their bills, like

slave prices, by taking into account a variety of local and international

variables. They rst assessed how long the bills would take to be covered

by the planters own remittances, and therefore considered the value of

forthcoming crops, the season of the year when they could be shipped

back to Britain, the length of bills given by competing factoring houses

and, importantly, the price of slaves.11The factor needed to extend credit

to planter purchasers, and could raise or lower slaves prices by either

stretching or shortening the termsor as South Carolinian slave factor

Henry Laurens put it in 1764 crimp[ing] the average merely for the

sake of speedy payment.12Factors issued their bills to the slave ship

captain at dates longer than the credits extended to the planters, and intranches to cover the staggered harvest of crops, typically at intervals

of either three, six, or 12 months sight, which commenced when the

slave trading merchant presented the bills to the payee for acceptance or

sight in Britain (Morgan 2005; Price 1991). Both the length of credits

and the prices of slaves were thus closely connected to the specic

economic conditions of the American colony in which the sale took

place.

British merchants considered the lengths of colonial credits when they

decided whether to invest in the slave trade. Slave traders calculatedthe terms of credit issued for American slave sales by adding together

the sight of each bill, and dividing the total by the number of equal

tranches. If a set of bills were issued at three, six, and nine months sight,

10For slave sales in Saint Kitts, see Testimony of James Ramsay,Report of the Lords of theCommittee of Council appointed for the Consideration of all Matters relating to Trade andForeign Plantations. . . . ([London?], 1789), [14142].

11The close connection between the length of bills issued for slave sales, slave prices, and theprice of sugar, is clear in a letter sent by Liverpool merchants John and Thomas Hodgson in June1783. The price of sugar had fallen almost to nothing, they wrote, and so the prices of slaveswould lower very greatly, while the length of bills would extend (TNAUK, T70/1549,John Thomas Hodgson to Richard Miles, Liverpool, 2 June 1783).

12Chestnutt ed.1978, 6, p. 311, Henry Laurens to John Knight, Charleston, 12 June 1764.


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the terms of credit would hence be six months.13Each tranche of bills

could be held until maturity, at which point their full value could be

redeemed, or immediately discounted for cash at a rate of 5 percent forevery 12 months that the bills had left to run at specialist banking houses

established in the major slaving ports of Liverpool, London, and Bristol

(Haggerty 2009; Inikori 2002; King 1972).14B.L. Anderson (1977) found

that British merchants preferred not to discount bills drawn for American

slave sales, even when they extended to several years length. The discount

rate diminished prots, and slave traders considered both the prots to be

earned from a voyage, and the speed at which those prots would be

redeemed, when assessing the success of a venture. Annual prots aver-

aged around 10 percent in the slave trade, and so merchants probably

sought their American returns at no longer than two years sight, except

when super prots could be earned (Inikori 1981; Richardson 1976;

Anstey 1975). Thus, the ultimate yardstick of success or failure in the

slave trade was not, as Anderson (1977, p. 80) found, the achievement

of a healthy rate of return, but the ability of the trader to realize his net

prot quickly and easily on a regular basis via colonial bills of exchange.

The length of bills issued for slave sales was an important consideration

for British merchants when deciding whether to invest their capital in theslave trade.

We can ascertain the actual lengths of credits issued for slave sales

because merchants recorded remittances in their correspondence,

ledgers, and ship accounts, from which a dataset of 330 sales under-

taken between 1755 and 1807 has been produced. Other scholars have

extrapolated credit terms when discussing credit mechanisms used in the

slave trade, but have not produced a comparable annualized data series.

Jacob Price (1991) thought that credit terms averaged between three

and nine months, and shot up to ve years during two slave glut[s] (p.314), the rst in 17751777 and the second in the early 1790s, neither

of which he explored.15Kenneth Morgan (2005) found a linear exten-

sion of credit terms after 1770, with bills running to three years by the

mid-1790s. David Eltis, Frank D. Lewis, and David Richardsons (2005)

13This method of calculating the average lengths of credit terms has been used throughout thisarticle.

14Interest rates remained stable in Britain throughout the period of study at a statutory maximumof 5 percent. Government consols, or bonds, by contrast, typically earned 3 percent interest perannum.

15Behrendt (2001) also identied the gluts, and even suggested that they may have caused largedownturns in the trade, but did not examine them at any length.


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dataset of 1,066 slave prices drawn from all national carriers included

credit terms in 141 instances for British sales in 17551807, which they

used to discount prices to cash equivalents. Where credits could not beobserved, they assumed a linear progression in terms from nine months in

17561775, to 12 months in 17761793, and 15 months in 17941807.16

More recently, Pearson and Richardson (2008) found that credits ranged

from six months in the mid-eighteenth century, to 18 months at the end

of the century, and Sheryllynne Haggerty (2009) determined that bills

extended from 12 months in 1770, to 24 months by 1787. Scholars have

hence found that trans-Atlantic credit terms lengthened over the course of

the second one-half of the eighteenth century in a linear fashion.

Our larger sample of 330 voyages conrms the broad lengthening of

credit terms issued over time, but also reveals that they uctuated consid-

erably in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, before falling in the

opening years of the nineteenth century (Figure 1). When bills in the

bottom was introduced during the 1750s, slaving merchants took the

majority of their receipts in produce, with a small balance in the form of

bills of exchange drawn at just three to four months sight. Credit terms

steadily crept up throughout the 1760s and early 1770s, almost doubling

over the course of ten years, tracking the trades steady expansion. Inthe same period, produce began to disappear from return cargoes, so that

after 1765 the majority of vessels appear to have come home without

produce as remittance, conrming that slave traders readily adopted bills

in the bottom after the Seven Years War. Credits shortened slightly in

the rst one-half of the 1770s, but spiraled with the onset of the American

War, reaching their peak in 1777, when they averaged 26 months. At

the same time, the trade plunged towards its lowest level in the entire

eighteenth century, eventually bottoming out in 1780. From 1780 until

1783, credit terms actually decreased back to their pre-war levels, a resultperhaps of a reduction in debts through a lack of slave sales. After the

American Revolutionary War, slave factors lifted the terms of credit to

21 months, where they stayed with some variations until 1793, when they

surged again and reached their highest recorded peak of 33 months in

1795. Although the sample for the period 17961807 (comprised of 21

voyages) does not allow for rm conclusions, the data available implies

that credit terms may have plunged again. Considered over the entire

period, 17551807, credit terms were relatively low and stable before

1775, and then highly variable thereafter.

16The author is thankful to David Eltis for making his slave price database available.


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At the level of individual slaving markets, credit terms and slave prices

were consistently higher in the productive frontiers of slavery than in

the older, settled colonies. Consider, for example, the various credit

terms and slave prices, adjusted to cash equivalents, offered for captive

Africans in 17651774 and in 17831792, two relatively stable peace-

time periods (Table 1). Slavers could obtain then 38 for a prime male

FIGURE1

CAPTIVE AFRICANS DISEMBARKED IN THE AMERICAS BY BRITISH FLAGGED

VESSELS (NUMBER) VS. AGGREGATE LENGTH OF CREDIT TERMS ISSUED FOR

SLAVE SALES (MONTHS), 17551807

Methodology:The backbone of this sample comprises 89 slaving voyages made in 17581786and recorded in the papers of William Davenport, Liverpool merchant. A further 42 voyageshave been obtained from the papers of John Tailyour, and cover 17831796. The remaining199 voyages come from a variety of sources, principally the Case Southworth, James Rogers,Alexander Houston, Rainford family, and Thomas Lumley papers. By recording the terms ofpayment for each voyage in a database, aggregate credit terms have been calculated. This datasetaccounts for approximately 90,000 Africans disembarked in the British Americas during theperiod, or 5 percent of the total.Sources:TASTD, estimates section, British agged vessels only;TFP; PWD; D/DAV; LRO, 380MD 34, Case Southworth Journal, 17571761; LRO, 387 MD 40-4 Thomas Leyland CoShip Account books; LRO, 387 MD 59, Letter Book of Thomas Leyland, 17861788; LRO, 920/TAR/4/77, Tarleton Family Papers; LRO, MD 219 1, Letterbook of Sparling Bolden, 17881799; LRO, 380 TUO, Tuohy Papers; LRO, 920/CHA/1, Rainford Family Papers; LRO, 387 MD54-55, Letter book, etc. of Robert Bostock, 2 vols.; MMM, Earle Family Papers, William EarlesLetterbook 17601761; MMM, DX/1908/6, Tods to Brassey; Donnan 19321935, 3-4; TNAUK,C109/401, Accounts for the Slave Ships Barbados Packet, Meredith, Snow Juno, Saville andCavendish; TNAUK, T70/1534, T70/1536, T70/1549/1, Detached Papers; TNAUK, E140/2/5,Barlett vs. Campbell; TNAUK, E219/377, Exhibits Re SS Comte du Nord; TNAUK, C114/1-2,C114/154-158, Messrs Thomas Lumley Co., Correspondence and Accounts; TNAUK,E219/340, Taylor v Holmes; TNAUK, C107/1-15, JRP; BRO, G2404, Snow Africas TradingAccounts; NLS, Ms.8895 Alexander Houston Papers, Account Ledger 17941797; Morgan ed.1985, p.105.

0

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

25,000

30,000

35,000

40,000

45,000

50,000

1755 1760 1765 1770 1775 1780 1785 1790 1795 1800 18050

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Aggregate credit terms (months)

Slaves Disembarked (number)


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captive at Barbados and the Leeward Islands and realize their returns

within seven months. Alternatively, they could obtain 42 for a male

slave at the recently acquired Windward Islands, albeit with an average

four month longer wait for the proceeds. At Jamaica, captives sold for

47 a person, helped in part by a sizeable re-export market to nearby

Cuba and Hispaniola, although offset by the longest credit terms in the

Americas. The distinction between regions also applies within Jamaica:

agents in the northwest frontier sold slaves for lengthier credit terms thanthose in the established Kingston market. This pattern repeats in 1783

1792, with higher slave prices at Jamaica, but credit terms much longer.

In both periods, North America offered an inconsistent but sometimes

TABLE1

AVERAGE SLAVE PRICES AND CREDIT TERMS ISSUED FOR SLAVE SALES IN

BRITISH AMERICAN REGIONS, 17651774 AND 17831792

Cash Slave

price,

Sterling

Sample

Size

Average

Credit

Terms,

Months

Sample

Size

Captives

Landed,

Number

17651774

Barbados Leeward Isles 38 14 7 19 83,999

Windward Isles 42 28 11 27 90,862

Jamaica 47 16 14 7 88,592

North America 46 16 8 6 44,759

17831792

Barbados Leeward Isles 48 15 11 11 17,549

Windward Isles 48 36 15 37 125,307

Jamaica 57 62 20 73 116,278

North America 59 2 16 2 6,221

Sources and Methodology:For credit terms, see Figure 1. In some instances, only slave prices orcredit terms were observable, hence the disparity in the sample sizes. Adjusted slave prices aretaken from the TASTD. The authors of the TASTDadjusted the prices to reect the cash sale price

for a prime male slave at Jamaica. That is, for the price differential between the market inwhich the slave was actually sold and the price in Jamaica. Thus, if the captive was sold in one ofthe eastern Caribbean islands we would make a small adjustment upwards to reect the ten extradays sailing time it would take to reach Jamaica. The authors also adjusted prices to constantpounds sterling (that is adjusted for ination), and deated the prices for observable credit terms.The prices therefore allow a true comparison between regions and over time.

The number of captives landed is from TASTD, estimates section, British agged vessels only.Barbados Leeward Islands comprises Barbados, Antigua, Saint Kitts, and Montserrat/Nevis inthe TASTDs Disembarkation regions eld. Windward Islands includes Grenada, Dominica, St.Vincent, and Trinidad/Tobago in the same eld. Jamaica and North America are the Jamaica andMainland North America regions in the TASTD.


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lucrative market for enslaved Africans, as colonial and, later, U.S. legis-

latures frequently opened and closed it to slave ships.17

British slaving merchants considered the lengths of credit when seekingthe most lucrative colony in which to land their captive cargoes. Liverpool

merchant Robert Bostock instructed his slave ship captain in May 1792,

for example, that The Bills at Jamaica are longer sighted, so you must

make your Calculations [where to land the slaves] accordingly. London

slaver Thomas Lumley directed another captain in 1806 to be governed

in your Average [slave price] by the time the Bills may have to run.18

Ship captains appear to have preferred, however, the eastern Caribbean

markets to those in distant Jamaica and North America, forgoing higher

slave prices, and saving on transportation costs (Eltis et al. 2005). Cash

prices at the Windward Islands were ve pounds lower than those to

be earned in Jamaica in the period 17651774, and nine pounds lower

in 17831792. Even so, the number of slaves landed in the Windward

Islands exceeded those landed in Jamaica in both periods.19

Slave ship captains disproportionately landed their captives in the

eastern Caribbean, despite the lower slave prices there, because of the

peculiar geography of the British Americas. After departing Africa,

slave ships followed the Atlantic winds and currents, and arrived inthe eastern Caribbean rst, usually at Barbados (Behrendt 2009).

Captains then visited the markets stipulated in their orders seeking

out a factor who could take them up at their limits, but, because of the

Caribbeans winds and currents, had to visit them in sequence. Trading at

the turn of the nineteenth century, for example, London slavers Thomas

Lumley and Company ordered one of their captains to arrive rst at

Surinam, and then run through 11 other American markets in succes-

sion.20Captains also understood that the longer voyage to Jamaica or

North America could have perilous consequences for the health of the

17The marginal differences in slave prices between colonies were not completely arbitraged byan inter-colonial trade because re-exports of slaves from the British islands went to the neighboringFrench and Spanish islands, where captives could be sold for high prices and, frequently, speciepayment. The exception was the sizeable re-export trade to North America in which captives werebrought up from the Caribbean to satisfy the sometimes lucrative demand (OMalley 2014).

18 LRO, Letterbook, etc. of Robert Bostock (Vol. 2: 17891792), Robert Bostock to Capt.Thomas Flint, Liverpool, 26 May 1792. TNAUK, Thomas Lumley Papers (hereafter TLP),C114/157, Thomas Lumley Co. to Capt. James MacDonald, London, 30 December 1806.

19Barbados and the Leeward Islands, where the planters demand for new captives shrunk

over the course of the eighteenth century, were largely bypassed by slave traders in the period17831792, as captains sought out more lucrative markets in the Windward Islands or Jamaica(Behrendt 2001, pp. 19394).

20TNAUK, TLP, C114/156, Thomas Lumley Co. to Capt. William Beamish Lane, London,12 March 1803.


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slaves. In 1754, for example, John Newton landed his captive Africans

in Saint Kitts because they would drop fast had we another passage

to make (Newton 1962, p. 81). When factors in the eastern Caribbeanmarkets could meet a captains limits, captains tended to land their slaves

there rather than proceed to Jamaica or North America.

Captains also disproportionately landed slaves in the eastern Caribbean

because they relied on incomplete information to guide them as they sought

out markets. Captains did not sail completely blind in the Americas, as

they received news from their owners whilst on the African Coast, and

often upon their arrival at Barbados, where additional orders were lodged

specically to guide them in their sales.21This information was, however,

rarely current; orders dispatched from Britain were at least four months

out of date by the time they reached a slave ship captain. Neither was

information exchanged between colonies necessarily up to date, because

few ships plied a west-east route from Jamaica to the eastern Caribbean

in the face of contrary winds and currents.22

The lack of information did not necessarily cause problems for

merchants and captains in periods of economic stability, when slave

prices and credit terms were approximately the same upon a ships arrival

in the Americas as when it departed Britain. As Liverpool merchantEdgar Corrie explained to Lord Hawkesbury in August 1788, though,

captains searching for safe markets during periods of economic insta-

bility could create gluts in the supply of slaves to certain colonies. If

slave ships arrived in the eastern Caribbean when demand was falling,

Corrie explained, they proceeded towards the ultimate market[s], as

he termed them, of Jamaica or South Carolina, where they hoped to be

taken up at the limits stipulated in their orders.These colonies, which

slave traders did not conceive of as a single unit, were the nal markets

on the trans-Atlantic circuit because of their leeward position at theend of the chain of Caribbean Islands.23Slave ship captains bargaining

power was reduced in the ultimate markets; beating back upwind had

dire consequences for the slaves health, as the voyage could take up

21For an example of orders lodged at Barbados by a merchant, see, MMM, DX/170, George Robert Tod to Capt. Thomas Nuttall, Liverpool, 1 February 1806. For an example of news sentby factors in leeward slaving markets to the eastern Caribbean, see, Hamer ed., 1968,1,p. 315,Henry Laurens to Capt. William Jenkinson, Charleston, 13 August 1755.

22For an example of the lack of communication between the eastern and western Caribbean,see, DRO, FFP, D239/M/E/17180, William Sutherland to John Jaques, Jamaica, 8 October 1795.

23 The Chesapeakes slave trade had shrank substantially in the second one-half of theeighteenth century owing to rapid growth in the population of Creole slaves. Just 1 percentof African captives brought on British agged vessels were hence landed there in 17551807(TASTD, estimates section).


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to a month, almost as long as the Middle Passage.24With other vessels

following the same procedures, the ultimate markets, Corrie stated,

were frequently overdone with negroes. The effect, he explained, wasvery severe for African merchants as factors often refused to take

up a slave ship by issuing guaranteed bills of exchange. Factors agreed

instead to sell the slaves at the risque of the African Merchant, and

send him the Planters bonds as remittances upon the completion of the

sale.25

Planters bonds were issued to British slave traders as remittances for

slave sales throughout the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, but

had been supplanted by bills in the bottom by the time Corrie penned his

letter, except as payments made by planters to factors (Davies 1957). The

planters bonds were, like bills of exchange, drawn at stipulated periods,

and had legal standing against the planters property after the passage

of the Colonial Debts Act of 1732 (Morgan 2005; Price 1991). Slave

traders could therefore sue planters who reneged on their debts, giving

the bonds some standing as remittances for slave sales. However, slave

traders disliked planters bonds because they were drawn on distant prop-

erty shielded by colonial legal systems, making suits difcult to pros-

ecute, especially in Jamaica, where the Colonial Debts Act was looselyenforced (Long 1774, I). Moreover a single slave sale could return

numerous assorted planters bonds, all of which had to be kept track of

and recovered piecemeal over time by the slave trader, an inconvenience

compared to a small bundle of bills of exchange drawn on a single British

banker.

Slaving merchants had similar problems with another type of remit-

tance, not mentioned by Corrie: the factors own promissory notes,

which established a debt only between the factor and the slave trader.

Although promissory notes had less legal protections than the plantersbonds, they tended to be more desirable to slave traders as a form of

remittance because the merchant only had one house to look to, instead

of so many diff[eren]t people, as one London slaver explained to his

captain.26Moreover, British merchants could still circulate promissory

notes; one Jamaican slave factor insisted on issuing his own promissory

24In a petition to the Board of Trade, Liverpools slave traders pointed out that their ships

landed slaves in Jamaica under every disadvantage imposition that may accrue, because thewinds and currents effectually excluded [the ships] from all other markets. (TNAUK, BT6/2,The Memorial of the Merchants in Liverpool, Traders to Africa, [1776?]).

25The British Library (hereafter BL), Liverpool Papers, MS.38416, f.167-69, Edgar Corrie toLord Hawkesbury, Carlisle, 31 August 1788.

26Donnan 1932,3, p. 332, John Fletcher to Peleg Clarke, London, 10 February 1777.


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Radburn672

notes for slave sales he made during the late 1780s, enabling him to save

the commission charged by a British guarantor.27Even so, British slaving

merchants generally disliked remittances that lacked a guaranteeplanters bonds and factors promissory notesbecause they tended to

be less reliable than guaranteed bills, especially when they were drawn at

distant dates in uncertain times. The dangers of receiving unguaranteed

credit instruments prompted Edgar Corrie to identify American remit-

tances as the premier risk posed to British slaving merchants, ahead of

the purchase of captives in Africa, slave mortality, and shifting slave

prices in the West Indies. The latter three, Corrie argued, could reduce

the protability of a voyage, whereas unreliable remittances involves

the entire capital of the Merchant.28

Corries letter helps to explain the uctuating lengths of credits we

observed in our sample of 330 slave sales by connecting them to slave

prices and the geography of the British Atlantic slave markets. The size

of slave prices and the length of bills issued for American slave sales

depended upon market conditions, with the eastern Caribbean typically

offering lower prices and shorter credits, and Jamaica and North America

higher prices and longer credits. Ship captains constrained by winds,

currents, and their ship owners orders, landed a disproportionate numberof captives in the eastern Caribbean when demand was robust there,

particularly during periods of economic stability. When demand fell in

the eastern Caribbean, ship captains sailed downwind to the ultimate

markets, resulting in an escalation in credit lengths and a fall in slave

prices in both regions. When factors in the ultimate markets exhausted

their available credit, slave trading merchants found it difcult to obtain

the short and secure remittances they required to t out their vessels,

reducing the subsequent volume of the trade. Instability in trans-Atlantic

credit terms thus help to shape the contours of Britains slave trade in thelast quarter of the eighteenth century.

SECTION 2

Corrie informed Hawkesbury that periods of instability occurred

frequently in trans-Atlantic credit terms, but did not mention any

specic occurrences. We can discover the periods in question, though, by

cross-referencing our dataset to theTASTD, and identifying periods when

27TNAUK, JRP, C107/8, Francis Grant to James Rogers, Trelawny, Jamaica, 30 December1788.

28BL, Liverpool Papers, MS.38416, f.167, Edgar Corrie to Lord Hawkesbury, Carlisle, 31August 1788. For an analysis of the risks enumerated by Corrie, see Haggerty 2005.


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surges and collapses in the volume of the slave trade to the ultimate

markets coincided with lengthening terms of credit (Figures 1 and 2).

In 17551771, credit terms were sufciently low that they do not seemto have caused major problems for slave traders. From 1802 until 1807,

slave traders likewise had little difculty obtaining credit, thanks to

slave prices being driven up by planters fearful of the imminent abolition

of the trade (Behrendt 2001, p. 174).29In the intervening years, 1772

1801, three periods of instability are striking: the rst in 17721777 and

another in 17821786, both of which would have been within Corries

memory, and a third after the date of Corries letter in 17921796.

Although our sample is too thin to establish it with certainty, qualita-

tive evidence points toward another period of instability in 17991801.

By examining these four periods in detail, we will see how instability in

trans-Atlantic credit terms impacted upon the volume and direction of the

slave trade.

17721777; 17821786

The roots of the instability in trans-Atlantic credit terms in 1772

1777 can be traced to a rapid expansion in the Caribbean plantationeconomy after the Seven Years War (17551763). With produce prices

rising during the silver age of sugar (Pares 1956), planters were eager

to expand their holdings and establish new estates, especially in the

Windward Isles, which had been ceded by the French in 1763 (Quintanilla

2004; Murdoch 1984; Niddrie 1966). Planters took out mortgages from

London banks to purchase property and an enslaved workforce, hoping

to repay the principal with the proceeds from their crops (Smith 2006).In

the one to two years it took to make their rst remittances, however, the

planters borrowed further using the same mortgaged assets as collateral.The expansion in the plantation economy therefore rested on what Simon

D. Smith (2006) calls a debt pyramid and, as a result, instability was

built into the expansion of the colonial trades during the third quarter of

the eighteenth century (p. 220). In June 1772, this speculative bubble

burst when the Glasgow tobacco trade fell into crisis, precipitating a

panic that quickly spread to the American colonies (Hoppit 2002; Price

1980; Sheridan 1960).

29Credit was scarce in the Windward Islands in the nal years of the slave trade. In 1805,for example, the threat of French invasion induced factors to offer their own promissory notestretching to ve or six years in length for slave sales. (TNAUK, TLP, C114/1, AlexanderCockburn to Thomas Lumley and Company, Grenada, 19 December 1805.) Factors in Trinidad,by contast, offered guaranteed bills at just six months length.


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Radburn674

In January 1772, before the crisis had fully erupted, absentee planter

Nathaniel Phillips wrote from London to inform his Jamaican attorneythat Theres no doubt but we shall soon have as many Negroes sent down

to our Island as may be wanted, for the Bills from the new Islands have

not passed assent this year.30In 1773, Jamaicas slave trade had almost

doubled in volume compared to 1772 (Figure 2). In the same period,

shipments of captives to Barbados and Virginia almost disappeared, and

those to the Windward Islands halved.31 According to Kingston slave

factors Bright Millward, in June 1773 Jamaica had not been materi-

ally affected by the credit crisis, blest as it has been this two years

past with good crops which would keep the credit of its bills betterthan heretofore.32By 1775, Jamaicas slave imports matched those of

the rest of British Americas combined, a reversal from 1771, when Laing

had complained that Jamaican planters would have to obtain captives by

directly investing in slave ships.33South Carolina saw a similar expan-

sion, with slave imports almost doubling between 1772 and 1773. A fall

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

1755 1760 1765 1770 1775 1780 1785 1790 1795 1800 1805

FIGURE2

PERCENTAGE OF CAPTIVE AFRICANS DISEMBARKED IN THE ULTIMATE

MARKETS OF JAMAICA AND NORTH AMERICA, 17551807

Source:TASTD, estimates section, British agged vessels only.

30Jamaican Material in the Slebech Papers (hereafter JMSP), British Records Relating toAmerica in Microform, Letterbook 17581778, 11485, Nathanial Phillips to John Davis, London,

2 January 1772.31The shifts in the volume of the slave trade to the various colonies are from TASTD, estimates

section, British agged vessels.32Morgan ed. 2007,p. 444, Bright Millward to Henry Bright, Kingston, 15 June 1773.33DRO, FFP, D239/M/E/16728, Malcolm Laing to Francis Perrin, Kingston, 17 September

1771.


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in demand in the eastern Caribbean stemming from the 1772 credit crisis

thus pushed slavers into the ultimate markets of Jamaica and South

Carolina, where they sought sustained planter demand and secure billsof exchange.

Merchants and planters understood the risk posed to Jamaican and

South Carolinian credit by a sudden increase in slave imports. In March

1773, Henry Laurens wrote to a Liverpool slave that if he would be

cautious this Year of sending Many Negroes to Carolina because of the

planters substantial debts.34 Regardless, Carolinian planters imported

8,189 captives in 1773 and 6,361 in 1774, before the Continental Congress

closed Charleston to British shipping in December 1774.35 In January

1775, Lowbridge Bright dread[ed] the consequence of such numbers [of

slave ships] going down to Jamaica, which island is greatly in debt by

the number already sold there.36Slave ship captain Peleg Clarkearrived

in Montego Bay in March 1775 and found weak demand because the

planters are so Much in Debt from the grate quanty of Neagros that has

bin imported that the Guine Factors Do not incline to take up Guinamen

[sic]. When he completed his sale, Clarke had to accept bills at the

Monstrous length of 17 months, terms matched in the other West India

islands sampled in 1775.37

The onset of the American War exacerbated the strain. Congress

embargo on exports to the West Indies doubled the price of provisions

between 1775 and 1776, particularly in the more specialized Leeward

and Windward Isles, eroding plantation prots (Carrington 2002, 1988;

Sheridan 1976; Ragatz 1928). In July 1776, American privateers began

operating in the Caribbean, capturing sugar ships carrying remittances

back to England, driving up the cost of freight and insurance, and imper-

iling the over-stretched Guinea factors standing with their metropolitan

guarantees (Herzog 1995; Starkey 1990; Jamieson 1983). A tenth of theslaving vessels arriving in the West Indies in 1776, and a quarter in 1777

were also taken and their Africans sold in Martinique for low prices.38

The sale of prize slaves further depressed demand in the Windward

34Hamer et al. eds.1980, 13, p. 628, Henry Laurens to John Knight, Westminster, 17 March1773.

35TASTD, estimates section, British agged vessels.36Morgan ed. 2007, p. 473, Lowbridge Bright to Benjamin Heywood, Bristol, 23 January 1775.

37Donnan 1932, 3, p. 304, Capt. Peleg Clarke to John Fletcher, Montego Bay, 17 March 1775.38The proportion of slave ships captured has been ascertained from the fate eld in the

TASTDof British agged vessels arriving in the Americas in 1776 and 1777. Slaving vessels wereparticularly vulnerable to privateer attack because they did not travel in convoy. For capturedslave ships in the Caribbean, see, TNAUK, SP78/32, ff.303-307, 330-37, 415-19; TNAUK,SP78/302, ff.229-32.


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Radburn676

Islands, which relied in part on visiting French buyers from Martinique

and Guadeloupe to keep up its slave prices. By 1776, the onset of war had

reduced slave prices throughout the British Caribbean by 6 compared totheir 1775 level.39

In 1776/77, factoring houses attempted to prop up slave prices by

stretching the length of bills issued for sales, while some British bankers

removed their guarantees from their colonial correspondents. In January

1776, a London slaving merchant complained that Such is the difcu-

altys [sic] of the times at presant that no body will Engage here or give a

Guarantee.40In May of the same year, another London trader informed

a merchant on the African coast that in light of the lengthening of credits,

falling slave prices, and rapidly rising wartime operating costs, there

would be little trade after these [slave] ships that are already tted out.41

Arriving in Kingston in July 1776, just as privateers began to take their

toll, a slave ship captain received promissory notes from a Jamaican slave

factor, rather to take that than trust to Planters Bonds Witch seems to be

the Present mode for the sale of slaves.42A month later the Hibberts, a

Jamaica factoring house whose bills were thought to be as good as the

Bank in 1774, narrowly averted failure by accepting loans from promi-

nent planters and resolved to sell no more slaves at present except thePlanter Bonds are taken in payment.43At the turn of 1777, Jamaican

factors Scerocold Jackson stopped payment on its outstanding obliga-

tions causing a panic amongst the guarantees, who then refused to accept

West Indian bills of exchange without Value in hand, immediate deliv-

eries of produce to back the bills (OShaughnessy 2000).44Five years

later, two slave factors publicly brawled in Savanna-la-Mar, Jamaica,

after the collapse of their rm, brought about by the protest of bills drawn

for slave sales made in 1776/77.45

39The prices of slaves have been ascertained from the Sterling cash price in Jamaica eld inthe TASTD for British agged vessels arriving in the Americas in 1775 and 1776.

40Donnan 1932, 3, p. 312, John Fletcher to Capt. Peleg Clarke, London, 29 January 1776.41TNAUK, T70/1534, George Burton to Richard Miles, London, 29 May 1776.42TNAUK, T70/1534, Capt. James Charles to Richard Miles, Liverpool, 14 November 1776.43Donnan 1932, 3, p. 292, John Fletcher to Capt. Peleg Clarke, London, 30 July 1774; TNAUK,

T70/1534, Ross Mill to David Mill, London, 1 August 1776. For the Hibberts near failure, seealso, TNAUK, T70/1534, J Mill to David Mill, London, 26 September 1776; JMSP, Letterbook17581778, 11485, Nathanial Phillips to Hibbert, Purrier Horton, Kingston, 29 May 1776;Ibid., 30 March 1777.

44Donnan 1932, 3, p. 327, John Fletcher to Peleg Clarke, London, 10 February 1777. For thepanic among Jamaican factoring houses, see, TNAUK, T70/1534, John Cockburn to David Mill,Bristol, 30 November 1776.

45The Cornwall Chronicle, Montego Bay, Jamaica, 15 June 1782, p. 1; Ibid., 22 June 1782,p. 1.


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These reports of failing West Indian credit are conrmed by our

sample of 27 slave sales made between 1775 and 1777. In 1775, all 11

sampled ventures received their returns in guaranteed but lengthy bills ofexchange. A year later, only four of eight ventures received guaranteed

bills, one of which was protested when brought for acceptance, while two

ventures received planters bonds, another silver coin, and one promissory

notes issued by the factor. In 1777, one-half of the eight sampled ventures

received guaranteed bills, and the other one-half promissory notes. Seven

of the eight vessels sampled in 1777 traded in the eastern Caribbean, so

it is difcult to ascertain whether Jamaican factors were issuing planters

bonds, as the reports claimed. Those vessels returning from Kingston in

1776, however, failed to obtain guaranteed bills, implying that the terms

of remittance had shifted there. Moreover, in April 1777, Peleg Clarke

elected to trade at Montego Bay because Kingston factors, including the

Hibberts, were mediating planters bonds.46 As Corrie had described,

then, shifting market conditions in the Americasparticularly the loss

of South Carolina as an ultimate market and falling demand stemming

from the 1772 crisis and the American Warobliged slave factors to

either stretch the length of bills of exchange, issue their own promissory

notes, or mediate planters bonds.The experience of William Davenport, a Liverpool merchant who

owned shares in 23 slaving voyages in 17741777, illuminates the

manifest difculties that failure to obtain short and secure remittances

posed for British slaving merchants (Richardson 2004). In May 1777,

Davenports captain, Peter Potter sailed into Barbados with 397 captives

in the shipBadger, but could not be taken up at his limits. Potter took his

ship to Dominica instead and consigned his human cargo to slave factors

Vance, Caldwell, Vance (VCV), who wrote to Davenport that they

never had so much trouble in a Sale due to the ready availability of prizeslaves at Martinique and low demand in the British islands. As a result,

they managed so low an average of 26 sterling per slave, a signicant

drop from the 33 sterling Potter had received for each captive during

the Badgersprevious voyage to Dominica in November 1775.47More

alarmingly, VCV made their remittances with ungauranteed promissory

46Donnan 1932, 3, p. 327, Peleg Clarke to John Westmorland Co., Montego Bay, 25 April1777.

47For theBadgers slave sales, see MMM, William Davenport Papers D/DAV/10 (hereafterD/DAV), VCV to William Davenport, Dominica, 23 July 1777; MMM, D/DAV/7, Peter Potterto William Davenport, Dominica, 5 November 1775; PWD, Trading Invoices Accounts 17721785, Voyages of the ships Badger and Fox 17721778.


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Radburn678

notes at 30 months length, which, Davenport complained, made it impos-

sible to raise money to t out ships.48Davenport continued to wrangle

for his money until May 1792, when he nally wrote off the Badgersaccount, along with the voyages of theHector, Swift, andDreadnaught,

all of which had traded at Dominica during the war.49Sixteen years after

his vessels had sailed, Davenports ledger revealed that his personal

liability from the four voyages was 1,600, a withering blow given that

his prots from 22 voyages made in 17721774 had amounted to 1,700

(Richardson 1976).

By 1779, Davenport had to request an extension on his obligations,

because British bankers refused to discount bills of more than six months

in length, and his remittances from slave sales were at such long credit.50

However, a cache of stockpiled trade goods and the expectation of plum-

meting slave prices on the African coast drew Davenport back to the slave

trade.51 In March 1779, Davenport wrote to Guinea factors attempting

to establish the terms of payment which was the only objection we

have in tting out ships to Africa.52Eventually, he secured a guarantee

through a factoring rm based in Old Harbor, Jamaica, to whom he

promised three slave ships. Upon the return of the vessels, Davenport

was horried to nd that the bills had been issued at 30 months length,terms that he thought a prohibition of the Trade, given the restrictions

it placed on the circulation of his capital.53

Other British slaving merchants faced similar liquidity problems.

While Davenport struggled to obtain his returns, a consortium of nine

Liverpool merchants led by Thomas Foxcroft attempted to recover the

proceeds from their slaverLaurel, which hadalso traded to Dominica in

January 1777.54Sparling Bolden, another Liverpool rm, had received

guaranteed Jamaican bills for their vessel Juba in August 1774, which

were subsequently protested when the guarantors Scerocold Jacksonfailed, at which point Sparling Bolden withdrew from the slave trade.

After 18 years fruitlessly chasing down their returns, Sparling Bolden

managed to sell their debt at ten shillings on the pound, a reasonable return

48MMM, D/DAV/1, William Davenport to VCV, Liverpool, 28 February 1779.49KUL, DDP, Ledger Book 17881797, f.20. For Davenports attempts to recover his debts,

see his correspondence with VCV and their executor, James Morson, in MMM, D/DAV/8.50MMM, D/DAV/1, William Davenport to John Sowerby, Liverpool, 30 March 1779.51MMM, D/DAV/1, William Davenport to Charles Ford, Liverpool, 23 March 1779.52MMM, D/DAV/1, William Davenport to William Thompson Co, Liverpool, 1 March

1779.53MMM, D/DAV/1, William Davenport to William Thompson Co, Liverpool, 1 August

1780.54MMM, D/DAV/1, William Davenport to VCV, Liverpool 28 February 1779.


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on bills they thought worthless.55George Burton, a London merchant,

complained in 1783 that he could do nothing because his capital was

all locked up in Jamaica by slaving voyages made in 1774.56Thesemens experiences were not exceptional: three-quarters of Liverpools

slaving merchants in 1776 had left the trade by 1784, whereas one-half

the investors in slave ships in 1784 continued in the business in 1790.57

In the immediate aftermath of the American Revolutionary War, 1782

1786, British merchants rapidly returned to the slave trade, but experi-

enced similar problems of instability in colonial credits that had aficted

the trade in 17721777. In March 1784, planters, including those in

South Carolina, which had been re-opened to slave imports, were, in one

merchants estimation, in the utmost distress for [slaves], and disposed

to give good Prices.58Factoring rms briey shortened their terms of

credit and raised slave prices.59Slave traders were disappointed in 1785,

however, when South Carolina was closed to slave imports, and credit

terms raised to 24 months in the Caribbean, what one London slaver

called confounded long winded credits.60The lengthening of credits

deterred some merchants from investing in the trade. In October 1785,

for example, textile suppliers Sargeant Chambers Company commis-

erated with James Rogers, a Bristol slave trader, because Bills extendedto such unreasonable lengths, which is certainly a great disadvantage

to the [slave] Trade. Eight months later, the same rm wrote to lament

the fact that Rogers had declined tting out two slave ships because of the

lengths of American bills.61Others followed Rogers in withdrawing their

capital from the trade: between 1784 and 1786 the overall volume of the

slave trade decreased by almost a third, almost all of which occurred in

the ultimate market of Jamaica, where slave imports fell by a quarter in

1785, and then halved in 1786 (Figures 1 and 2).

55For Sparling Bolden, see Schoeld 1964; LRO, MD/219/1, Letterbook of Sparling Bolden, 17881799,John Sparling to William Daggers, Liverpool, 11 August 1790; Ibid., WilliamBolden to William Daggers, Liverpool, 16 October 1792.

56TNAUK, T70/1549/2, George Burton to Richard Miles, London, 15 March 1783.57The loss of Liverpool merchants has been ascertained by comparing owners of slave ships

listed in the TASTDsVessel owners eld in 1774, 1784, and 1790.58TNAUK, E/219/377, Miles Barber to James Penny, London, 11 March 1784. For similar

sentiments, see TNAUK, T70/1549/1, John Thomas Hodgson to Richard Miles, Liverpool, 28September 1783.

59For the post-war slave trade, see the letters from John and Thomas Hodgson to Richard Miles

within TNAUK, T70/1542, T70/1545, and T70/1549. For the exceptionally high prots earned byslave traders in 1782/83, see also Inikori 1981; Richardson 1976.

60Bristol Record Ofce, Charles Bell Papers, 30189 (2), Richard Miles to Charles Bell, London,6 September 1785.

61TNAUK, JRP, C107/7, Sargeant Chambers Co. to James Rogers, London, 15 October1785; Ibid., 14 July 1786.


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Radburn680

Between 1772 and 1786, instability in trans-Atlantic credit terms thus

shifted captive Africans into ultimate markets in the Americas on

two occasions, and caused liquidity problems for British slave tradingmerchants. In the wake of the 1772 credit crisis, merchants diverted

slaves to Jamaica and South Carolina away from the eastern Caribbean;

in the immediate aftermath of the American War an almost identical

but much smaller crisis also occurred, as merchants sent their vessels

to Jamaica following the closure of South Carolina to the slave trade.

In both instances, slave factors lengthened their bills of exchange and,

during the American War, mediated the planters bonds or issued their

own promissory notes. By relying on the quick circulation of receipts

above large capital stocks, British slaving merchant left themselves open

to such swift changes in the terms of remittance, obliging many to with-

draw their investment, and contributing to the trades decline to its lowest

level in the eighteenth century. As experienced Liverpool slaveship

captain Robert Norris wrote in September 1777: tis not ye American

War, tis not the state of ye trade on ye Coast of Africa but merely the low

ebb of W[e]st India Credit that occasions a temporary stagnation of ye

[slave] Trade.62

17921796; 17991801

Jamaicas slave trade experienced another boom and bust in 1792

1796 that was fueled by shifts in trans-Atlantic credit terms. Concerned

that the supply of Africans would be cut off by the abolitionist campaign

in Parliament, and enjoying access to a larger market for their sugar in the

wake of the 1791 Saint Domingue slave revolt, planter demand drove up

the prices of enslaved Africans throughout the British Caribbean (Ryden

2009; Eltis and Richardson 2004; Sheridan 1983; Klein 1978). Spurredby favorable American markets conditions, British slave traders landed

42,191 captive Africans in the Caribbean during 1793, the trades largest

level to date.63The onset of an Atlantic-wide credit crisis in February

1793 and the simultaneous outbreak of war with France dampened the

planters demand for captive Africans. In June 1793, when the credit

crisis struck the West Indies, John Tailyour, an absentee Jamaican

slave factor, heard from his company Taylor, Ballantine & Fairlie

(TB&F) that most of the guarantees are stopped to Windward[,] expect

62TNAUK, T70/1534, Robert Norris to Richard Miles, Commenda, 4 September 1777.63The volume of the slave trade in 1793 is from TASTD

vessels.


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the bills [in Jamaica] will be still longer.64 Deliveries of captives to

Jamaicanow the sole ultimate market for British ships given South

Carolinas closure to slave imports in 1785increased by 50 percentbetween 1792 and 1793, so that the island absorbed two-thirds of the

enslaved Africans brought to the British Americas in 1793 (Figure 2).

Marveling at the surge in slave imports, Tailyour opined that three-

quarters of the vessels trading at Kingston in 1793 had been diverted

from their original intended markets, including the north side of Jamaica

where Simon Taylor, his sugar planting cousin informed him, they

give their [promissory] notes for the sale of the Cargoes, they have been

glutted, and their credits are stopped.65Kingston factors responded to

the credit crisis and the inux of slaves by stretching the lengths of the

bills they issued for slave sales from 15 to 24 months before and after

June 1793.

British merchants found themselves strained by the credit crisis, and

elected to withdraw their investment from the slave trade. Clearances

from Liverpool, by far Britains largest slaving port, plummeted from 128

vessels in 1792 to 49 in 1793, the majority dispatched either before the

credit crisis or in the closing months of the year.66Liverpool slave traders

Tarleton and Rigg, writing to Tailyour, attributed the fall to the parlousstate of West India markets: the slow sales, low averages, above all

no returns in Billswhich took place in the course of [1793], have deterred

some disabledothers from adventuring to Africa at present.67 One

of those deterred from the trade was Liverpudlian Ralph Fisher, who

notied Tailyour that he would dispatch one of his unemployed slave

ships only if he could obtain a sufcient guarantee in this country, for

bills at a short period for it was impossible to carry on the trade for

bills at the periods [the factors] have been giving.68Liverpool merchant

John Dawson, possibly the worlds largest individual slave trader, verged

64WCL, TFP, box 6, TBF to John Tailyour, Kingston, 19 June 1793. Tailyour changed hisname to Taylor when he entered business in 1785, to honor his cousin Simon Taylor (Radburn2015). Tailyours name has been retained as it was originally spelt for the sake of clarity with hiscousin. For Simon Taylor, see Sheridan 1971.

65Taylor and Vanneck-Arcedeckne Papers (hereafter TVAP),Plantation Life in the CaribbeanSeries: Pt. 1, Jamaica, c. 17651848, microlm reel 15, XIV, John Tailyour to Simon Taylor,Teddington, 1 October 1793. WCL, TFP, box 7, Simon Taylor to John Tailyour, Kingston, 16October 1793. Imports of captives to Jamaicas out-ports fell from 7,946 people in 1793, to just374 in 1794. Those to Kingston, by contrast, fell from 19,049 to 12,332 (TASTD, British agged

vessels).66The number of ships tted out from Liverpool is from the TASTD. The time when the ship

was tted out is from theDate voyage began eld.67WCL, TFP, box 6, Tarleton Rigg to John Tailyour, Liverpool, 17 February 1794 (emphasis

in the original).68WCL, TFP, box 3, Ralph Fisher to John Tailyour, Liverpool, 14 January 1794.


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Radburn682

on bankruptcy in 1793, and in the next year was seeking cash or short

bills from American slave sales so as to maintain liquidity (Rawley

2005).69Bristol slaver James Rogers business collapsed, leaving debts of100,000, and substantially diminishing his towns tightly concentrated

slave trade (Morgan 2003; Richardson 1987, p. 4). Writing to a British

friend in May 1793, Simon Taylor thought that the lengthening terms of

credits for slave sales in Jamaica, coupled with the failures of 5 of the

most Capital African Houses meant that there will be very few [slave]

ships tted out during the Warr [sic].70

Although some British merchants were setback, others were lured back

into the trade by the capture of several French islands, which promised

lucrative new markets for enslaved Africans.71Edgar Corrie, now acting

as Tailyours Liverpool agent, wrote to him that With new markets

opening I expect that every Negroe carried for sale in 1794 will be

wanted And the factors will receive the most immediate safest payment

for the rst supplies to the new markets.72Slaving merchants anticipated

a British capture of Saint Dominguewhich had imported more slaves

than the entirety of British Caribbean in 1790coupled with the recent

acquisition of Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Saint Lucia would provide

an outlet for captives.73

Moreover, in Liverpool the Common Councilmanaged to curtail the deleterious effects of the credit crisis by the end of

1793 by injecting capital into the money markets (Hyde, et al.1951). In

April 1794, Liverpool merchants tted out vessels with great spirit, in

anticipation of ready sales for captive Africans in the Americas.74Between

July 1794 and March 1795, however, the re-capture of Guadeloupe by the

French, insurrections in Saint Vincent, Dominica, and Grenada, and the

British armys decimation by a yellow fever outbreak in Saint Domingue

substantially reduced the markets available to slave ships arriving in the

West Indies (Duffy 1987; Geggus 1979). Captains steered their slaveships to Jamaica instead, where factors pushed their credit terms to 30

months in September 1794.

69WCL, TFP, box 2, Edgar Corrie to John Tailyour, Liverpool, 15 February 1794.70TVAP, VANNECK-ARC/3A/1793/12, Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, Kingston,

23 May 1793.71Britain captured Tobago in April 1793, Martinique in March 1794, and Guadeloupe and

Saint Lucia in April 1794. The British army and navy conducted numerous campaigns in SaintDomingue from 1793 until 1798 (Duffy 1987).

72WCL, TFP, box 2, Edgar Corrie to John Tailyour, Liverpool, 27 January 1794.73For Liverpool merchants expectations for the captured French markets see WCL, TFP, box

2, Edgar Corrie to John Tailyour, Liverpool, 6 January 1794, 25 January 1794, 27 January 1794,1 February 1794, and 15 February 1794.

74WCL, TFP, box 2, Edgar Corrie to John Tailyour, Liverpool, 28 April 1794.


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Tailyours correspondence details the tension that the extension of

credit terms in 17931795 placed upon William Miles, his British guar-

antee (Morgan 1985). In April 1794, Miles thought the West Indies to bein the worst danger he had seen in his 40 years engaged in trade: I see

nothing but Ruin attending the present appearance of things, Miles wrote,

suggesting Tailyour make a Dead Stand in the African Line.75A state-

ment of account sent to Tailyour in September 1794 revealed a balance

outstanding to Miles of 202,315 sterling for slave sales, a burden that

had a visible effect upon [Miles] health and spirits.76With the time lag

in communications, and vessels continuing to arrive in Jamaica holding

a guarantee for his company, TBF took up another 14 slaving vessels

in late 1794 and early 1795. In March 1795, Miles, beset by constant

nervous complaints stemming from his large outstanding debts, ordered

Tailyour to put a nal stop to all further Sales of African Ships.77TBF

nally ceased drawing bills on Miles in the same month and instead issued

their own promissory notes for slave sales, a procedure followed by some

other Kingston rms.78In 1796, Jamaicas share of slave imports almost

halved compared to the previous year, as captains stopped at more lucra-

tive markets to windward, such as Demerara and Trinidad, which were

captured in 1795 and 1796 respectively (Figure 2). Slave ship captainsavoided the war-torn Windward Island, however, where Alexander

Houston and Company, guarantee for Munro McFarlane Company,

Grenadas principal slave factoring rm, collapsed in 1795, shortly

followed by the Baillie family company, who had sold large numbers of

slaves in the eastern Caribbean in the early 1790s (Hamilton 2005).79

A smaller credit crisis also occurred in 17991801, briey increasing

the volume of Jamaicas slave trade. In September 1799, John Tailyours

brother Robert, a partner in the London West India house Taylor, Hughan

Renny, reported to him that there had been several bankruptcies latelyin London, stemming from a panic in Hamburg, Germany.80The crisis

soon spread to American markets: by November, there was no sale for

75WCL, TFP, box 5, William Miles to John Tailyour, Bristol, 15 April 1794.76WCL, TFP, box 5, William Miles to John Tailyour, Bristol, 24 September 1794.77WCL, TFP, box 5, William Miles to John Tailyour, Bristol, 23 March 1795.78 See, for example, advertisements for the sale of the ships Toms and Nancy by William

Daggers and Co. and Thomas Hinde and Co., respectively (The Royal Gazette, Kingston, Jamaica,10 August 1795, p. 9; 14 August 1795, p. 9).

79Just 5,313 captives were landed in the Windward Islands in 17951797, compared to the10,778 Africans that had been disembarked there in 1793 alone (TASTD, estimates section,British agged vessels).

80WCL, TFP, box 6, Robert Tailyour to John Tailyour, London, 9 September 1799.


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W[e]st Ind[ia] Produce almost at any price, in London, and by February

1800 hardly any bills from the W[e]st Indies were accepted.81As in

other periods of scarce credit, Jamaicas share of the slave trade spikedas slave ships bypassed markets in the eastern Caribbean. In 1799, 30

percent of the captives brought to the British Americas were landed in

Jamaica, increasing to 50 percent in 1800. Taylor, Hughan Renny had

tted out four slave ships in February 1799, before the onset of the crisis,

with great hopes for prots.82By October 1800, when one of their ships

reached Jamaica, they rued their investment: bills of exchange issued for

slave sales had leapt in Kingston from an average 17 months at the begin-

ning of the year, to 30 months. It certainly would never answer, Robert

Tailyour told his brother, to be tting out slave ships and receiving Bills

at 30 Months for the remittances.83 By 1802, several large Kingston

slave factoring rms were reported to be suffering substantial losses from

bad planter debts, some amounting to as much as 35,000 sterling.84In

that year, Jamaicas share of the slave trade halved, to 25 percent of the

British trade (Figure 2).

Examining four periods of instability in trans-Atlantic credit terms

17721777, 17821786, 17921796, and 17991801thus shows why

British merchants found it difcult to obtain short and secure remit-tances during periods of nancial uncertainty. When large numbers of

captives were carried to slaving markets, factors stretched the length

of credits, hoping to prop up slave prices and draw reticent planters to

slave sales. With lengthy bills drawn on them in uncertain times, metro-

politan guarantors tried to limit their exposure to risk by withdrawing

their guarantees from their colonial partners, and insisted on the rapid

collection of outstanding debts, aiming to avoid paying slave-trading

merchants out of their own funds. When guarantees withdrew their

backing, factors either issued promissory notes or mediated plantersbonds. In response, British slave trading merchants dispatched their

vessels to other markets, or abandoned the trade entirely, contributing to

noticeable shifts in the volume and direction of the trans-Atlantic slave

trade.

81WCL, TFP, box 6, Robert Tailyour to John Tailyour, London, 11 November 1799; Ibid., 17February 1800.

82For Taylor, Hughan and Rennys slave trading investments, see WCL, TFP, box 6, Robert

Tailyour to John Tailyour, London, 22 February 179920 May 1801.83WCL, TFP, box 6, Robert Tailyour to John Tailyour, London, 20 March 1801.84 WCL, TFP, box 2, David Dick to John Tailyour, Kingston, 14 February 1802. Hardy,

Pennock Brittan, one of the Kingston factoring rms, had its affairs fall into a deranged statein 1800 and, as a result, they mediated planters bonds for the sale of the Duke of Clarenceshuman cargo. For the ship owners attempts to recover the debts seven years later, see, MMM,DX/1908/6, George Robert Todd to Capt. Thomas Brassey, Liverpool, 3 December 1807.


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CONCLUSION

Our sample of 330 slave sales and our case studies indicate that historianshave been right to attribute the innovative bills in the bottom credit mech-

anism an important role in shaping Britains trans-Atlantic slave trade. In

the long run, bills in the bottom was, as Pearson and Richardson (2008)

have argued, a successful underpinning to the trade, enabling sustained

growth over the course of the late eighteenth century, particularly into

new areas of plantation agriculture, such as the Windward Islands and,

later, Trinidad and Demerara. The long-term success of the arrangement

masks, however, considerable short-term instability, which also helped

to shape the geographic distribution of Britains slave trade in the lastquarter of the eighteenth century. During several economic and military

crises, ship captains chose to land Africans in the ultimate markets

of Jamaica and South Carolina, where factors stretched the lengths

of credits, issued slave traders with promissory notes, or mediated the

planters bonds. British slave traders struggled to circulate these lengthy

or unreliable credit instruments, making it difcult for them to cover their

obligations to the tradesmen who supplied their cargoes, and therefore

remain in the business. As Edgar Corrie summarized, British slave tradersrequired a choice of markets to obtain short and secure remittances,

and to conne the [slave trade] strictly to limited markets must produce

consequences more fatal to the African Merchant than the Abolition of the

Trade.85If British slave trading merchants relied on a chain of credit to

nance their ventures, then that chain was frequently strained, and some-

times broken, in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.

Given the weakness of the relationship between slave trading merchants,

factoring houses, and guarantees, we should hence be cautious of viewing

the bills in the bottom credit as a particularly modern nancial instrument.Bills in the bottom was certainly, as numerous historians have pointed

out, an innovation on the remittance mechanisms used by Dutch and the

French slave traders, as the guarantee provided a third-party security in

Britain (Haggerty 2009; Pearson and Richardson 2008; Morgan 2007;

Price 1991). As we have seen, though, guarantees frequently broke their

connections with their American partners when they wanted to avoid risk

during economic crises; as one author described in 1795, bills of exchange

returned from slave sales were circulated in Liverpool solely on the faith

that the guarantee would honor them (Wallace 1795, p. 232). Like mostearly-modern nancial mechanisms, then, bills in the bottom relied upon

85BL, Liverpool Papers, MS.38416, f.167, Edgar Corrie to Lord Hawkesbury, Carlisle, 31August 1788.


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Radburn686

fragile trans-Atlantic trust networks that broke down during periods of

economic uncertainty. The British, like the French and the Dutch, there-

fore struggled to complete the triangle at certain key periods during thelate-eighteenth century, shaping the forced-migration of captive Africans

to individual colonies, and contributing to surges and collapses in the

overall volume of the slave trade. Britains trans-Atlantic slave trade was

thus a wheel of commerce kept in motion by the supply of credit.

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