Lecture 2             Key Terms

The History of the International Slave Trade

1860 Slave Statistics In the United States

31,443,321 Americans / 3,953,761 are slaves (12.5%)
 
27,489,560 Free of which 488,000 are Blacks (12% of ttl. Black pop)
 
1 in 70 Americans owned slaves – or 1.5 of the American free population
 
4.8 percent of Southerners owned one or more slaves
 
1860 US Census: 393,975 named persons held 3,950,546 unnamed slaves, a mathematical average of about ten slaves per holder. most actually held only one or two slaves.

Owners of 200 or more slaves = less than 1% of all slaveholders (fewer than 4,000 persons)

1 in 7,000 free persons (0.015% population) held an estimated 20–30% of all slaves (800,000 to 1,200,000 slaves).

 

Atlantic Slave Trade 1520-1870

  • 1520 - 1870:  40,000 slave shipments between Africa and the Western Hemisphere

  • 11 million African slaves transported of which 9.5 million survived the voyage. 

  • Approximately 15 percent of slaves die – 15 percent of European crews die as well

  • 361,000 (3.8 percent) to mainland North America - primarily Virginia and Carolinas  

  • 4 million were transported to Brazil (by Portugal);
    2.5 million to the Spanish Empire including Cuba (by Spain); 
    2 million to the British West Indies, Barbados and Jamaica (by Britain);
    1.2 million to the French West Indies
    (by France);
    remaining to Dutch East Indies and Europe (by Netherlands, Danes, Swedes, and others)

Link:  slave trade maps

St. Paul  (Ephesians 6:5)  “...be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ.”

Servus

St. Mathilde (St. Matilda)

Ashanti Confederacy

Timbuktu

King Tegbesu of Dahomey

  • 1710 European slave traders paid £17 pounds per slave ($2,700 today)

  • 1760  £20 pounds  ($3,200)

  • Slaves sold for £28 – £35  ( $4,480 - $5,600) in Virginia 1700-1750

Captain John Hawkins 1562

Royal African Company (RAC)

Slave Code

South Seas Company

Bence Island (Bunce Island)  

Slaves transported into the Thirteen Colonies (primarily Virginia and the Carolinas)  

  • 1700-1725:    37,000

  • 1726-1750:    96,000

  • 1751-1775:  116,900

  • total of 263,200 prior to American Revolution of 1776

Quakers (Religious Society of Friends)

Enlightenment

Justinian Code (Justinian's Institutes)

Sir William Blackstone
Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769)

Granville Sharp

Habeas Corpus Act 1679

Jonathan Strong Case

Continental Congress (1774)

slave boycott

Abolition of the Slave Trade Act (1807)

Slavery Abolition Act (1833)