Slave-Trading Ports: Towards an Atlantic-Wide Perspective

Occasional 11 10 INTRODUCT ION Dav id Ell is & David Ric hards on, ' West Africa and the Transatlantic Slave Trade: new evi dence of long­ru n trends ', Slavery & AbolitIOn, 18 ( 199 7), 16­35 . 6 As regards written sources onl y, fo r example, sign ific ant relevant material exists in at least 13 languages: Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French, English, DanLsh, Germ an, Itali an, Lati n (used in some Euro pean missionary records) , Arab ic, Turkish, Hausa and YO nl ba quite apa rt from numerous other Afric an languages in whi ch oral materi al mi g ht be co llected. 7 The inaugural meeti ng in the series was the workshop on ' The Afri can Diaspora and the Ni geri an Hinterl and : Towards a Research Agenda ' , held at York University, Feb. 1996. Subsequent meeti ngs have al so included con ferences/workshops on ' West AtTica and the Am ericas: Reperc ussions of the Slave Trade' , Univers ity of the West Indies , Mona, la ma ica, Feb . 1997 (organ ized by Maureen Warne r­Lewis); ' Rethi nking the Afr ican Diaspora: The Making of a Black Atlan tic World in the Bight of Benin and Brazil', Emory University, Atlanta, USi\, April 1998 (organized by Kristin Mann); ' La ruta do escravo en lI is panoamerica ', Universi ty of Costa R ica, San Jose, Feb. 1999 (organized by Ri na Caceres); and 'Slavery and the AfIi can Diaspo ra in the Land of Is lam ', N orth western Univers ity, US A, April 1999 (organ i7.ed by Joh n Hunwick). 8 K.O. Dike, Trade and PolitiCS III the Niger De lta 1830 ·1 884 (Oxford, 1956). 9 N.!.. Gayi bor, Le Genyi (Lome, 199 0); E.1 . A1agoa The Small, Brave City State .· A history of Nembe­Brass (lbadan, 1964); A. J.l1. Latham , Old Calabar 1600­1891 (Oxford , 1973); Ralph A. Austen & Jonathan Derrick, Middlemen of the Cameroons Rivers (Cambridge, 1999) 10 Caroline Sorense n­Gil mour, ' Bada gry 1784­ 1862' (Ull1 versity of Stirli ng, 1995), WE . WllIi boko, ' New Calaba r and the Forces of Change , c3. 1850­1 94 5 ' (Un iv ers ity o f Birmingham, 199 1); Susan M. Hargreaves, ' The Po litical Economy of Nineteenth Century Bonny ' (U niversity of Binni ngham, 1987). I 1 There is substanti al research on Lagos, but With regar d to the post­slave trade era: A.G. Hopkins , ' An Econ omic History of Lagos , 188 0­1914' (Ph.D. thes is, Universi ty of Lo ndo n, 1964). 12 Finn Fuglestad, ' La questionnement du "port" de Ouidall (Cote des Esc!aves)', in Oystei n Rian, Finn Erhard Johannesen, Oystein Sorensen & Finn Fuglestad (eds), Revolusjon og Resonnement: Festskrifl ti! Kare Tonnesson (Osl o, (995 ), 125, 36. 13 See further Robin Law, ' Between the sea and the lagoons: the. interacti on of maritime and inlan d navigation on the precolonial Slave Coast', Cahiers dEludes Africmnes, 29 (1 989), 2 09­37. 14 Three of the new quarters grew up around the princ ipal EUIopean (French, Englis h and Portuguese) trading estab li shments; fi ve were fo unded by prom inent individua l traders; one was settled by returned ex­slaves from Brazi l; and two represent the administrative and military esta blishment installed after the Dahomian conq uest of the town in 1727, Lo control what was already a major com mercial centre. see Robin Law, 'Ouidah. a precol on ial urban com muni ty in coast West Africa', in Dav id Anderson & Richard Rathbone (e ds), Africa 's Urban Past (London, fo rthcom ing 1999) . 15 cr, more generally, Paul E. Lovej oy, Transformations in Slavery: A history of slavery In Afr ica (C ambri dge, 1983) . 16 For the case of the Bight of Ben in, see Robin Law, '''Here is no resi sting the country": the realities of power in Afro­European relations on the West African "Slave Coas!'''. fti nerario, 18 /2 (1 994), 50­64 . 17 Rob in Law & Kristin Mann, ' West Africa in the Atlantic community: the case of the Slave ｃｯ ｴＧ＠ ｡Ｎｾ＠ Ｌ＠ William & Mary Quarterly, 56 (1999), 306­44 . 18 Ira Berl in,' From Creole to African: Atlan tic Creoles.and the origins of Afri can­American society in main land North America ' , Wi lliam & Mary Quarterly , 53 ( 1996), 2 5 \ ­88. 5 19 David Eltis, Econom.lc Growth and the End ing of the Transatlantic Slave Tra de (New York, 198 7) , 158­9 20 Similar fi ssions occurred in some of the ports of the Bight of Biafra, as for example the notorious ' massacre' (actually an inter­ward civil war) In Old Calabar in 1767 and (in a later period, after the end of the Atlant ic slave trade) the secessions of Jaja from Bon ny in 1869 and of Will Braid from New Calabar in 1879. 21 I lowever, recent researc h suggests th at the main mec hanism for the enforcement of credit extended by Europeans in Old Calabar during th e slave trade was the •pa....1ling' of persons, who could be taken in li eu of slaves in the event of default: Paul E. Lovejoy & David Ri cb ardson, 'Tr ust, pawnship and Atlanti c history : the foundations of the Old Calabar slave trade ' , American Hisrorical ReView, 102 (1999), 333­55. It may be, therefore, that Ekpe, alth ough emp loyed by AfTicans to enforce the set11ement of debts earlier, only became central in this role for Europeans a.ner the end of the slave trade, when they would no lo nger accept hwnan pawns. 22 for the impli cations of this chan ge more generally, see Robin Law (ed .), Fro m Slave Trade to '[, eg il lmate ' Commerce : The commercIal trallsitlOll in nllleleenth­ceniury We st Africa (Cambridge, 1995), comprisi ng papers from an earlier (April J 99 3) conference of the Centre of Commonweal th Studies of the University of Stirling; Martin Lynn, Commerce and Economic Chang e in West Af rica: The p alm oil trade in tlte IlInereenth centllry (Cambridge, 1997). 23 C r. Law, ' Introduction' , in From Slave Trade 10 'Legllimate'Commerce, 10- 11. 2 4 Cf I­It\tlne d' Alme ida­Topo r, ' La "sClection" des vi lles dan s Ie systeme co lo ni ale ', Connaissance du Tie rs­Monde , 3 ( 1984), 29­39. 25 Though Bonny was to re­emerge in the post­colonial period in a new role , as a terminal for the Nigerian oil industry. 26 Cf Elisee Soumonni, ' The neglected local source material for studying the slave trade in Dahomey ', in Law, Source Maleria l fo r StudYing the Slave Trade , 79,89. 2 7 Antera Duke's diary was p ubl ished in Daryll Forde (cd. ), Eflk Trade rs of O ld Calabar (London, 1951). For Bonny, see Susarl M. Hargreaves, ' Indigenous wrinen sources for the history of Bonny' , HIS tory In Africa, 16 (1989), 185­95 28 For hi storical memory in another coastal port, where there seems to be less reluctance to confron t the slave­trading past , see Robin Law, ' Me mory. oblivi on and return in commemoration of the AtJanlic Slave Trade in Ouidah (Republic of Benin)' , Harriet Tubman Seminar on African Slavery, York University, fe·b. 1999 29 For an anthology of some of the most substantlal of these ex­slave narratives, see Philip D. Curtin (ed.), Afri ca Remembered· Narratives by West Africans from the era of Ihe Slave Trade (Madison WI , 1967 ). 30 Samuel Moore, The ]lICerestmg NarratIVe of Mahommah G BaquaquO, a Native of Zoogoo III ,he Inter ior of Afri ca (Detroi t, 185 4), text reproduced in Allan D. Austin , African Mus lims in Antebellum America: A sourceb ook (N ew York , 198 4), 585­65 4; Zora Neale Hursto n, 'Cu djoe's own story of the last Afri can slaver ' , J ournal of Negro History, 12 (1927), 648­63 The former, a native of Djougou in the interior (in northern Benin), was exported through Oui dah to Brazil c.1 84 5; the latter, captured in a Dahomian campaign against ' Togo' (seemingly !toko, in Yorubaland to the eas t, rather than Togo to the west), passed through Ouidah in \859 , to slavery in Alabam a, US A. AN i\.TLANTIC­WLDE PERSPECTtVE &ave-Trading Ports: Towards an AtJantic-Wide 13 this paper is un clear, though our assumption is that, as the Brazilian and Angolan ports named above were maj or participants in the slave trade in 1676­1832, their underrepresentation means that our data probably understate actual concentration levels of 4 Perspective, 1676-1832 DAVID ELTlS, PAUL E. LOVEJOY & DAVID RlCHARDSON The evidence on transat lantic slavi ng voyages suggests that the slave trade was highly concentrated in terms of the ports where slave ships were outfitted in Western Europe and the Americas and of the embarkat ion points on the African coast where slaves were boarded on ships for the Americas. I In this paper we examine the patterns of concentration of slaving acti vities at the ports around the Atlantic basin as a preliminary study of the li nkages between slave ports in Europe, Africa and the Americas. In so doing, we attempt to demonstrate that the African slave­supplying regions, as conventional ly defined, were integrated economically in to the early modern Atlantic world through a rel atively few kc) places on the African coast. Studies of slave ports have until now very largely focused on the history of slav ing activ ities of speci fic European and American ports. A lengthy list of such studies is now available.2 TIlcse show that there was considemblc variation in the pattern and level of port in vo lvement in slaving. Whereas ports in Europe were almost excl usive ly concerned with fi tting out slave ships for Africa, large proportions of American ports acted as centres bolll for the dispatch of ships to Africa and for the disembarkation of slaves after their Atlantic crossing. At the same time, in both Europe and America, hierarchics ofslave ports emerged as levels of involvement in outfitting ships varied throu gh time or, in the Americas, 1l1e part played by pom as disembarkation and reshipment centres for slaves changed. As far as we know, however, no attempt has yet been made to explore pallerns ofconccntralion ofEuropean and American port involvement in filling out slave voyages from an Allantic­wide perspective. Nor has any attemp t been made to do thc same for patterns of slave embarkation in Africa or to look at linkages between slave ports around the Atlantic. It is on these issues that th is paper will foc us. ThSl!.aper seeks to highlight patterns of concentration of ship departures to Africa and ofplaces ofembarkation of slaves in Africa between 1676 and 1832. These werc the peak: years ofthe transatlantic slave trade, accounting for p erhaps 85% of all Atlantic slaving voyages. They include periods ofmaj or expansion or recovcry in slavi.ng activily, notably in 1670­90, 17 13­40, 1748­75, 1783­93, and 181 5­30. Drawing on a dataset fOL9yer 27.000 slaving voyages, our analysis uses evidence relating to port ofdeparture for some 20,500 voyages and lor place of embarkation ofslaves in AfricaIor some 15,000 yoyages.' These are large voyage samples but do not, ofcourse, cover the total number of voyages undertaken in 1676­1832. It should also be noted that there arc some biases in our data. Specilical ly, they under­representlhe Portuguese­Brazilian slave trade in tcrms of both ports of departure of ships and African places of embarkation of slaves. This means that our data understate the importance of ports such as Salvador de Bah ia and Rio de Janeiro as departure points for ships as we ll as Angolan ports such as Luanda and Benguela as embarkation centres for slaves. Precisely what this imp lies for lhe fmdings presented in 12 departures and embarkation In the first part of this paper we look at patterns of concentration of port involvement / in equipping or organizing slave voyages to Africa and the factors that influenced Illese. In / the second, we examine evidence on and possible explanations of the distribution of slave embarkation among ports in Afr ica during thc same peri od . finally, we very briefly' explore the impli.cations ofour Endings for historical understanding ofAfrica's contribution to the developmcnt of the Atlantic world before 1850. European and American ports Port involvement in slaving in Western Europe and Atl antic America was a pervasive activity, as large numbers of ports participated in slave trafficking at some point in their history. The scale and duration of this participation varied widely, however, as specific studies of the British, Dutch, French and North Amcrican slave trades have shown .s In each of these trades, as we ll as in the portuguese­Brazilian, a few ports were substantial ly invo lved in slav ing for long periods whi le many others had more brief assoc iations with it. nlike American ports, which often doub led as departure points for slave ships and disembarkation centres for slav­es, the principal function of European ports was to prov ide capitai and labour to run the tradc rather than to sell or employ the labour generated by it. Many of the ships and tradc goods employed in the European­based slave trades were produced in Europe, but ships and goods produced in the Americas as well as textiles an d other goods produced in Asia were also important in sustaining Europcan slave trafficking. l>articularly, th ough by no means only, in Europe, therefore, slave ports were places l.inking !lows ofeapilal. goods and people between four contincnts. Success in slaving, we argue, required specific human resources and forms oflrnowledge, the supply of wh ich was subject to market imperfections and geographical constraints. This encouraged the concentration of organization of slave voyages at a few ports in each of the nations in volved in the trade. As actual leve1s of concentration varied to some degrec between nations, the overall pattern of concentration of activity among the ports involved in slaving depended on each naiion's share of the total traffic. The earliest European slave­traders weTC the portuguese, and though our know ledge of how the initial portuguese trade was organized is very incomplete. Lisbon seems to hav'e dominated Portugal's slave trade until Bahia in Brazi.l began to emerge as a major slave port in the later sbcteenth eentury6 The latter, in tum, remained a leading ' portuguese' slave port during lht: following two centuries, though its relative position waned from the1 eighteenth century [n the face of expanding ship clearances to Africa from Rio de Janeiro. Other Braziliarl ports also entered the slave trade at times, reinforcing Lisbon 's decline as an OUUltting centre for slave ships. Despite these other entrants, however, the organization of slave voyages in the portuguese­Brazilian sector continued until the closure of the traffic in the mid­nineteenth century to be dominated by a few ports, with Bahia arld Rio de Janeiro heading the group. Among Europe's slave trades, that of portugal was unique in the extent to wh ich organization of voyages migrated across the Atl antic. Tnis apart, however, the pattern of 14 DAVID ELTIS, PA UL E. LOVEJOY & DAVID RI CllARDSON concentration in outfitting voyages anticipated th at followed by all other national carriers of slaves. Postma has shown thaI the seventeenth.century Dutch slave trade was primarily organized by traders based at Amsterdam, though by the early eighteenth century the porL's control of the trade had begu n to decline.8 In 1675­ 1738, Amsterdam accounted for no more than 36.5% of th e slaves purchased by Dutch shi ps. By comparison, ships fro m ports in Zeeland accounted for 28.4% an d ships from Ro tterdam an d other ports in Maze fo r 13 .5%. Furth er erosion of Amsterdam's position occurred from the 1730s ｡ｾ＠ outfitting of D utch slave sh ips came to be heavily concentrated at the Walcbcren Island ports of M iddelburg and V lissingen in Zeeland. In the period 1730­ 1803, when Dutch ships arc estimated to have purchased just over 250,000 slaves, sh ips from Walchercn Island ports accounted for some 77% of these purchases. A similar picture emerges when one looks at the French and British slave trades. In the FrenCh case, Nantes was comfortab ly the largest French slave port in the eighteenth ccntury. accountin g for ovcr 1,400 or more than 40% of French slaving voyages in 170793 9 The grip on French slaving of the Loire port was rather stronger before 1750 than later as slaving activity at other French ports grew in the sccond half of the century. Noteworthy expansions occurred at La Rochelle, Le Havre, and fmal ly Bordeaux. Together these three ports accounted for a further 1,219 eighteen th-century voyages. most of them undertaken after 1750. 10 In total, the leading four of the twenty-one French ports involved in fi tting out slave ships for Africa were responsible Fo r some 79% of F rench s laying voyages in 1707-93 . Moreover, it appears that the pattern establis hed before the Revolutionary Wars was resumed during the illegal phase of the French slave trade 'from 18 15 onwards as N antes continued to lead the way as France's maj or single centre of slaving H lJn like the French, British ports effectively abstained from fi tting out s laving voyages afier Parliament abolished the British slavc trade in 1807. In the century and a half be [ore i807,h;;wever, Hritish slave-trading revolved around a few ports. In the seventeenth century, ships fi tted out in London dominated British slaving, th ough recent research has shown th at London 's control of the trade at that time was not so complete as is sometimes thought.12 London 's influence over British slaving still remained strong in the early decades of the eighteenth century, as data compi led by Rich ardson have shown ." But the data also show that by 1730 Bristol had overtaken London as Britain's premier slave port. Moreover, within a decade of usurping London 's position, Bristol itselF lost its primacy in British slaving to Liyerpool. From the 1740s onwards, the Merseyside port retained and indeed strengthened its ascendancy over British s laving, despite the fact th at in the third quarter of the century outfitting of slave ships increased at several other British or British colonial ports. loe lattcr included Lancaster and Whitehaven in north-west England and Newport in Rhode Island. 14 Overall, shi ps dispatched from London, Bristol and Liverpool accounted for probab ly about 90% of all British and British Empire slaving voyages in 1660-1807, with Liverpool, by virtue of its dominan ce duri ng th e pcriod after 1740, earning the dubious honour of being Britain 's premier slave port. From this brief review of the leading slavi ng nations, it appears that in each case the fitting out of ships for Afr ica was normally conce ntrated at a few ports. Research shows th at the same pattern was also to be found in lesser sla ving nations. For examp le, Copenhagen domin ated the Danish slave trade, whi le Newport and Bristol in Rho de AN ATLANTIC-WIDE PERSPECTIVE 15 Islan d were together respo ns ible for a large proport ion of lhe slave voyages dispatched from the United States in ) 783 - 1808. 15 Our review of the organization of slave voyages in the leading carriers also high lights so me additional features of American and European port involvement in the trade. Three deserve to be noted. First, the early years of slaving activity in the case of Ule Portugu ese. Dutch , British and Danish carriers were dominated by the nation's capital and principal fin ancial centre. In Denmark, Copenhagen retained its dominance over the nation 's slave trade. but elsewhere th e capital city's infl uence over the trade declined in time in the face o f challenges from other ports. This is not 10 say that Lisbon, Amsterdam, and London abandoned th e slave trade; in each case, in fact, they seem to have retained some connection with the trade in other ways, including finance, whi le merchants at other ports assumed res ponsi bility for the management of voyages.16 In this respect, the role of Lisbon. Amsterd am, and London in the slave trade appears to have changed rather than declined. Second, from the late seventeenth century expansion of slaving very largely depended on the rise ofnew American an d European slave ports. No table am ong thcsc were Bristo l, Liverpool, Nantes and Walcheren Island portS in Europe an d, in the Americas Bahia, Ri o de Janeiro and Newport, Rhode Island. Likc Lisbon, Amsterdam. and London before them, each of these new entran ts became at some point their l1ation's leading slave port. Moreover, with the exception o f Bristol, wh ich began to decli ne as a slave port within a decade or so of assuming national ascendan cy, all the other major new entrants had long and substantial associations with the slave trade. Indeed, it is possib le th at in each cas e fittin g out ships for Ule slave trade may have absorbed higher proportions ortheir commercial energies than was the case in Lisbon, Amsterdam, or London. Eac h of latter was invo lved in a wider ran ge of other trades than their Sllccessors before they assumed control of their nation's slave trade. When describi ng Liverpool as 'the attracti ve African meteor on the overcast shores of the Mersey' and Nantes as ' vill e de negriers ', James Popc-Hennesscy and Gaston Martin eaeh remind us, therefore, th at the pursuit of the slave tratTic had a considerable impact on their history. l? Third, outside the leading ports, a lengthy list of oUler po rts in wcstem Europe an d the Americas became involved at times in fi tti ng ou t ships for slavin g voyages. Among these were Bordeaux, Lancaster. La Rochelle, Le Havre and Wh itehaven. each o f which became significant participants in slaving for some lime after 1750. The evidence shows, however, that over lilly years earlier ports such as Bridgetown, Barbados. and Sl Malo had been significant centres for fitting out slave voyages, wh ile yet others, inc lud ing Bristol, Rhode to join Bordeaux and Lancaster in organ iLin g voyages in the Island, an d Havana, ｾ･ｲ＠ century after 1750. Throughout its last two centuries, the slave trade attrac ted th e attenti on of new merchant-investor groups outside the principal slave ports. bu t the merchants of Bristol, Rhode Island, excepted, none of these merchant gro ups was able to mount a serious challenge for the leadership of their nation's slave tradc. '" Indee d, in most cases, their history of involvement in the slave trade proved relatively short-li ved aTld modest in scale, in part perhaps because some merchants concerned chose to relocate to th e ports of th eir more successful rivals. 19 1n only a few American and Europ ean ports, t.herefore, was there a commitment to large-scale participation in the slave trade fo r more than a one or two generations. Taking the picture generated by existing nat ional stud ies into account, how concen trated 16 DAVID ELrcs , PAUL F. LOVEJOY & DAVID RICI [ARDSON AN ATLI\NTtC-WIDE PERSPECTIV E was slave-trading among European and American ports as a who le? \1oreover, as some ports Sllccccded in challenging earlier national leaders in the trade, did levels ofconcentration in thc organization of voyages change through time? We may depict patterns ofconcen tration ofslave voyages among Arnerican and European ports by drawing a series of Lorenz curves. These curves p lot the distri bution of voyages dispatched againSL th e total number of ports in volved in fi ttin g them out. II' an the ports in vo lved had sent equal numbers of ships into the slave trade, then th e Lorenz curve wou ld be a straight 45 degrees li ne. The extent to which the curve or line deviates from 45 of the level ofinequali ty among ports in the distribution degrees thus provides a ｭ･｡ｾｵｲ＠ o f voyages dispatched. If one port had con trolled all slave voyages. the line wou ld have followed the h orizontal axis before turning 90 degrees along the vertical axis. Lorenz curves have been produced for six sub-periods between 1676 and 1832. These are presented in Appendix 1. They show that in evcry sub-period a few ports accounted for most of the voyages dispatched. In othe r words, concentration levels of port involvement in fitt ing out slavc ships were high, with in most peri ods nine ou t of every ten voyages being dispatched from about one in five of the ports involved. This paltern is remarkably stable, specially when one recalls the changing political climate surrounding the trade, the number o f nati ons involved, and shifts in the distri bution of voyages between nations as we ll as between ports within nations. Because of inadequate data we cannot as yet examine concentration patterns before 1676, when the trade was much smaller, or after 1832, when, for two decades, it continued at high levels. There is no reason to believe, however, that the picture before 1676 or after 1832 wou ld diverge Significantly /Tom that shown here. It is probably safe to conclude, therefore, that, desp ite changes in political attitu des towards the slave trade after the I 780s, the outfilting of slave ships was typical ly highly concentrated among European and American ports. Describing this p icture of concentration in outLining voyages is easier than explaining it. In the search for explanations, it is important to distinguish the factors that promote change in the location ofan activity from those that encourage its continuing location at particular places. Thus, in the case of Britain, lower wage rates and othcr cost advantages arc believed to have led to the relocation ofslaving activity from London to ports such as Bristol and Liverpool. 20 In some cases, growth in the overall scale ofslaving in combination with the growth of other trades at existing slave ports may have increased pressures on local port facilities or costs, thus creating opportunities for new ports to enter the slave trade. No t unnaturally, therefore, explain ing changes in location of an activity tends to lead one to focu s on the cost factors promoting such ehangc. In contrast, explaining the geographical concentration ofan activity at a few places requires one to focus more on the disadvantages of change or, to put it another way, on the factors that promote inertia. Il is with this aspect of the fitting out of slave ships that this paper is concerned rather than the changing position o f individual ports in the trade through lime. Those theorizing about the location of economic activity, such as Blair, have claimed thai. of the factors invo lved, 'i nertia is perhaps the strongest locational factor, yet [it] is often unrecognized ' . B lair notes that 'once a firm is established at a location, many forces operate to keep it there, even when a ncw facility is required' . He suggests that the same set of factors that supported the origi nal choice of location may, of course, continue to operate, but also argues that tlIe economic and social environment with in the area where the acti vity is located may evolve to reinforce the initial choice.21 This is consistent with 17 claims by Gemery and Hogcndorn, who have observed that among 'the reasons why slav ing tended to concentrate in particu lar ports was the external economy of avai lable market knowledge generated by the continuous retum flow ofslaving captains' Y Impl ici t in this observation is an assumption that success in slaving hinged, among other things, upon in formation specific to the trade and that lowest-cost access to such information, and thus entry into the tradc, was through location at an established slave port. In th is analysis. th e specifics of market information in slaving served to inhibit the entry of new ports or merchants into it and, at the same time, helped to create within it self-reinforcing forces ofconcentration . To some extent, the mercanti list policies pursued by stales across western Europe hindered the operation of market forces and restricted levels of concentration in slaving acti vity among European an d American ports below what they would otherwise have been . The polities of nation states may thus have moderated Ule centripetal tendencies implicit in tile economics o f informati on in relation to s laving. But such tendencies were reinforced by other factors. These includ ed the character of African demand for trade goods; the growth of local industries to accommodate such demands; the integration of bills arising from payments for s laves into financial systems; and the establishment of commercial networks based on personal re lations and trust. 2J Such networks shaped the nows of market inFormation to whi ch Gemery and Hogendorn refer, and were important sources of economies in transaction costs in slaving. Renewed from one generation to another, they were. we wou ld argue, vital in allowing merchants at a smal l minority of European and American slave ports to sustain their influence over the outfitting ofships for Africa The outfitting of slaving voyages, we believe, tended to gravitate toward those po rts wherc the best resources, skills and facilities for organi zing long-distance trade were located. This was the case, we wou ld argue, regardless o f the local or national forms that were adopted for financing and organizing slave voyages. 2' Although most slaving voyages were financed by means of informal partnerships of merchan ts, European states before the 1730s ollen granted monopo l ies over their trade to Africa to chartered companies or other consortia of merchants. Such measures may have inhibited entry inLo slaving by merchants outside the monopoly, but it is likely th at holders o f monopolies wou ld stili tend to base their operations at those locations best equipped for dispatching slave ships La Africa. Where granted, the monopolies applied to theAfrican coast, nol to the location ofactivity within European states, and, as we have seen, the basic pattern o f concentration ofslaving did nOl change much after 1725 when most ofthe chartered companies had lost their monopoly rights. In the fmal analysis, therefore, market forces, not po litics, were decisive in shapi ng concentration levels of slaving at ports in Europe and the Americas. African ports As in other parts o f tlle Atlantic, slave-trading was a pervasive activity in western Africa, especially at the height o f the export slave trade in 1660-1840. Numerous places became involved in the shipment of slaves to the Americas. Some were on the open coast; others were on lagoons; yct others were in estuaries or on islands in ri verso Compared to Europe and America, where ports usually had reasonably we ll-dermed facilities andjurisd ictions, the application of the term ' port' to places of embarkation of slaves in Atlantic raises some problems. Some of the places identified were imprecise. In addition, some p laces J8 DAVID ELTlS, PAUL E. LOVEJOY & DAVID RlCllARDSON were located very close or even adj acent to other embarkation centres and shared the same hinterland. Depending to some extent on th ose who invested in them, embarkation points also varied widely in terms of their infrastructure or faci lities. Some developed in tandem with or in the wake of in vestment by European companies in forts and castles, whereas many others relied al most totally on local capital for the development of fac ilities. Either way, local control over slave deli very to ports tended to remain unchallenged and the fac ilities that werc built alAfrican slave ports were almost invariably cruder than those to in be found at major American and Europcan ports at th at time. In the majority of ｣｡ ｾ･ｳＬ＠ fact, ships were loaded fTOm the beach or at primitive landings. Ship captains were ollen forced to re ly on local boating and other shipping services to ferry slaves from the shore. The s lave trade prompted the growth of labour-intensive anci llary activities at many places in Atlantic Africa, but for vari ous reasons local investment in mare permanent structures was limited. Discussions oUhe distribution ofslave shipments in Africa have until now centred on regions rather than ports, whereas our focus is on the ports within the diITerent regions. West-Central Africa south of Cape Lopez was the single most important regional source of slaves shipped to the Americas, but the relative importance of other regions shilled through ti me. Senegambia and th e Gold Coast made larger than normal contributions before 1730 and the Bight of Biafra and the upper Guinea coast after the 1740s.25 As a result, there were, as in Europe and the Americas, important shills through ti me in the contribution ofports in some African regions to aggregate levels of slave shipments. Table I: Identi fied Slave Departures from Ports in Senegambia and Upper Guinea PORT Gambia/James Fort Senegal/St Louis Sierra Leone Cape Mount lies de Los Galinh as Bassa/Grand Gorce Ri o Pongo Bance Island Bissau Sherbro Cacheu Mcsurado Bananas Islands Cape Verde Islands Rio Nunez Sestos Cap Laholl Man o Junk SLAVES 91 ,800 46,600 32,000 35, 100 34.500 28,700 24,200 11 ,100 13,800 10.200 7.800 8,600 4,900 5,300 4,500 3,000 3,400 2,000 1,800 500 1.1 00 PERCENT 24.3 12.3 8.5 9.3 9.1 7.6 6.4 2.9 3.7 2.7 2.1 2.3 1.3 1.4 1.2 0.8 0.9 0.5 0.5 0.1 0. 3 SHlPS 60 1 2 77 174 166 141 114 110 82 74 52 47 42 29 29 27 21 16 11 10 6 5 19 AN ATLANTIC-WIDE PERSPECTrVE PER CENT 29.0 13.4 8.4 8.0 6.8 5.5 5.3 4.0 3.6 2. 5 2.3 2.0 1.4 1.4 1.3 1. 0 0.8 0.5 0.5 0.3 0.2 Casamance River Kissi Cess Bassam/Grand Bissagos Albreda Other To tal Iden titi cd 800 400 700 800 400 500 3,200 377,700 0.2 0. 1 0.2 0.2 0. 1 0.1 0.8 4 3 3 3 3 3 21 2,074 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.1 0. 1 0.1 1.0 Data relating to identifiabl e ports of departure of slaves from various regions in AU antic Africa are presented in Tables I-V. It should be noted that only ports that supplied whole shiploads orslaves or are believed to have acted as the principal embarkation point ofslaves on a voyage are incl uded in these tables. In each region, a few po rts tended to account for a large proportion ofslave departures, though concentration levels among ports within regions varied. As Table I shows, at Senegambia and th e upper Gu inea coast, which purely for purposes of analysis here are combined, James Fort in Gambia and St Louis in Senegal accounted for over 42% of known slave ship departures. The remain ing departures were spread among a further 25 or more ports. Interestingly, Goree, whose ro le in the slave trade has sometimes been exaggerated, accounted fo r only 4% of known ship departures from Senegambia and the upper Gu inea coast. 26 Specific analysis of ship departures from th e area south of the Gambia also reveals much lower concentration levels of slave shipments than in Senegambia itself. For example, Sierra Leone and the Windward Coast of upper Guinea only emerged as a major source of slaves aller 1750, and then their participation in the trade depended upon a series o[relatively small embarkation points, rather than one or two major ports. Hence the invo lvement of the upper Guinea coast paralleled developments in Europe at this time when a number of smal ler ports began to dispatch ships to Africa. There are indicati ons that merchan ts at some of these smaller western European and American ports directed high proportions of their ships to the upper Guinea coastY Table II: Identified Slave Departures from Ports on the Gold Coast PORT Anomabu Capc Coast Accra/ Christiansborg Kormantin Elmina Apam Alampi Other Total Identified SLAVES 129,900 102,800 22,300 4,400 3,800 3,300 1,300 700 267,700 PER CENT 48.5 38.1 8.3 1.6 1.4 1.2 0.5 0.3 SHlPS 485 456 80 15 14 11 5 4 1,072 PER CENT 45 .2 42.5 7.6 1.4 1.3 1.0 0.5 0.4 A1tllOugh James Fort and St Louis were notable shipping points for slaves in Senegambia and the upper Gu inea coast, their general importance as slave ports in Atl anti c Africa pales in comparison with some of the ports furth er south. Tab les II-IV re veal, in fact, 20 DAVLD ELTIS, PAUL E. LOVEJOY & DAVID RlCHARDSON AN AT LANTIC-WIDE PERSPECTIVE patterns ofconcentration in slaving in other regions, with a few ports tending to overshadow the rest in terms of slave departures. The data in Tab le II show Ihat almost 87% of the slaves whose port of embarkation on the Gold Coast has been identified left from Anomabu and Cape CoasL As these were located only 10 km apart, and were very close to Kormantin to the east and Elmina to the west, a narrow stretch ofcoast accounted for most slaves leaving the Gold Coast. Accra (including Christiansborg) was the centre of a second point of embarkation for slaves, but its importance was far behind Cape Coast and Anomabu. Other forts and castles along the coastlargcly served to feed slaves to tile major embarkation pOints. region is unrecorded, jt is likely that over one milli on slaves were shipped from the beach at Oujdah alone in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Table m: Identified Slave Departures from Ports in the Bight of Benin PORT OuidaIJ Lagos Porto-NovolEkpe Al l ada (OffTa, Jakin) Popo (GrandlPetit or Linle) Badagry Benin Keta Total Identi.fied SLAVES 272,500 73,200 57,400 44,000 PER CENT 51.3 13.8 10.8 8.2 SHIPS 763 206 150 121 29,800 26,100 25,800 2,500 53 1,300 5.6 4.9 4.9 0.4 106 73 99 12 1,530 PER CENT 49.9 13 .5 9.8 7.9 6.9 4.8 6.5 0.8 In the Bight of Benin, slave-trading ports were spread along the lagoons that stretched fTom the Vol ta River to the Niger Delta As Robin Law has emphasized, these ports were focused on the lagoons behind the coast, there being no nalural harbours or inlets for ships.llI Slaves were loaded on ships fTom the beach. and the location of such load ing points changed, depending upon the political fortunes of Allada, DalJomcy, and Oyo, the major states that dominated the 'S lave Coast' from the late seventeenth century through the early nineteenth century.29 Final sales and the transfer of slaves to ships nonetheless tended to be heavily concentrated at any time at a few placcs. According to Table fII, OuidaIJ alone accounted for over 51 % of the slaves embarked in the Bight of Benin between 1676 and 1832. Until the 1720s OuidaIJ was part ofthe Hueda kingdom, with ｩｌｾ＠ capital at Savi, tho ugh its main source of slaves in the period 1671-1724 was through Allada. OITra and Jakin were also early slave embarkation points, the latter becoming important only aller the deslruction ofOffra in 1692 and remaining so until it, in tum. was destroyed in 1732. The conquest of Ouidah by DalJomey in 1727 and the subsequent disruption of slave supply from Oyo to OuidaIJ that this caused tended to promote trade through other outlets such as Badagry, though sh ipments of slaves rrom Oyo through OuidaIJ recovered between the 1750s and I 770s. By this time, however, other places to the east began to attract some trade away from OuidaIJ. PortO-Novo, established by refugees fTom Allada after the latter 's deslruetion in 1724, began to export slaves from the 1750s and became the leading port for Oyo at the end of the century. In addition, Lagos began to attract slave ships by the 17805 and assumed major importance in the nineteenth century. Despite these changes in the location of the region'5 export slave trade, shipments of slaves from Ouidall far outstripped those of any of its ri vals in the Bight of Benin. When allowance is made for the large number of slaves whose place ofembarkation in the 21 Table IV: Identified Slave Departures from Ports in the Bight of Biafra PORT Bonny Old Calabar Elem Kalabari Cameroons Gabon Cape Lopez Rio Brass Rio Nun Bi.mbia Other Total identified SLAVES 384,000 205,600 66,800 26,800 24.500 7,600 4,700 2,200 2,200 1,200 727,600 PER CENT 52.8 28.3 9.2 4.0 3.4 1.0 0.6 0.3 0.3 0.2 SHIPS 1,048 699 23 8 166 108 30 16 9 9 6 2,279 PER CENT 46.0 30.7 10.4 5.1 4.7 1.3 0.7 0.4 0.4 0.3 In the Bight ofBiafra, New Calabar (Elem Kalabari) was an important shipping centre for slaves in the seventeenth century, but by the eighteenth century Old Calabar and Bonny emerged as the leading ports. Bonny, in fact, tended to dominate slave shipments from the Bight ofBiafra after 1740 as much as Ouidah did in the Bight of Benin, though its advantage over Old Calabar, its nearest rival, was less marked than OuidaIJ 's.'" According to the figures given in Table IV, Bonny a.lone accoU11ted for nearly 53% of the slaves embarked in the Bight of Biafra while Old Calabar accounted for over 28%. As New Calabar accounted for a further 9% of slave shipments fTOm the Bight of Biafra, nine out of every ten slaves taken from this region in 1676·1832 would appear, therefore, to have embarked on board ship at one of these three ports. Table V: Slave Departures from Angola and West·Central Africa PORT Cabinda Luanda Benguela Malembo Congo Ambriz Loango Nova Redonda Mayomba Ambona Other Total Identified SLAVES 272,800 213 ,500 205,700 116,600 100,800 80,500 77,900 2,4DO 2,200 900 5,600 1,078,800 PER CENT 25 .3 19.8 19.1 10.8 9.3 7. 5 7. 2 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.5 SHIPS 648 544 453 314 283 196 21 1 8 7 3 12 2,679 PERCENT 24.2 20.3 16.9 11.7 10.6 7.3 7.9 0.3 0.3 0.1 0.4 Note : The relative importance of trade from from Luanda and possibly Benguela is almost certainly understated in this Table, as noted in the texl. 23 DAVID ELI IS, PAUL E. LOVEJOY & DAVID RICHARDSON AN ATLANTIC· WIDE PERSPECTIVE T he informati on contained in the dataset that und erlies our an alysis understates the importance of Luanda and Benguela in West-Central Africa as s lave embarkat ion centres. As a resul t, it is possible that th e data on ports of embarkation of slav es shown in Table V do not fu lly reveal the degree to which the slave trade was concentrated with in thi s region. Table V shows that Luanda an d Benguela were not al one in shipping large nu mbers of slaves from west-central Afii ca Cabinda was amajor slave embarkation point. Signi ficant numbers of slaves also passed through Malem bo, Congo, Ambriz and Loango . O ther research, however, suggests that Luanda alone shipped over one mi llion sla ves in 170 J18 10 and that a further 388,700 were shipped from Benguela 3 ! L uan da was. in fact, the most important single sl ave port in Africa durin g the history of the Atl antic tra mc and Bengu ela probab ly figured among the ten leading African slave ports. Together with Cabi nd a. Luanda and Bengue la perhaps acco unted for over two-thi rd s of all slavcs taken fro m west-central Afr ica. Concentration levels of slave embarkation in this rcgion wc re, therefore, plain ly much greater than along the upper Guinea coast an d more akin to those foun d on the Gold Coast and in th e Bights of Benin and Biafra. This rev iew of regional evidence suggests some preliminary conclusions regarding patterns of slave departures among ports in Atlantic Africa. First., concentration Ie vc ls of slave dcpart ures varied among A fr ican regions, with th e lowest concentrations occurring at ports along the upper Guinea coast and the high est levels of concentration on the Gold Coast, in th e Bights of Benin and Biafra and in West-Cen tral Africa. Sccond. sh ills in th e re lative importance of particu lar ports as embarkation centres for slaves occurred, but in most regi ons a smal l num ber ofpo rts tend ed consistently to dominate sl ave shipments fo r long periods of time. These patterns of embarkation demonstrate that th e regional focus ofE ur opean slaving activity on the African coast was in fact mu ch more concentratcd than previously thought, thereby highlighting th e history of particular ports. Third, from the data on slave and shi p departures given in Tab les I-V, it appears that in most rcgions the maj or shipping centres had larger sharcs of slave embari>ati on than ship departures. In other words, ships trading at th e major slave ports were normally larger and tcn ded to embark greater num bers of slaves than those trading elsewhere. Co ncen tration leve ls in ship departures fro m African slave ports were thus reinforced by differenccs in mean sh ip size. Moreover, loading times vari ed at different poin ts along the African coast. These changed through time, but in general the bigger ports in the Bights of Benin and Biafra tended to tum ships round more quickly than elsewhere. Having reviewed concentration levels of slave departures among po rts with in di fferent Afri can regions, what were concentration levels of departures at ports throughout all of Atlantic Africa? Moreover, how do these levels compare with tho se rclating to sl ave ship departures for Africa and wh at, if any, were the connections between thc two') Some answers to these questions are provided by an other set of Lorenz curves that relate th e distribution slave embarkation to the number of known slave ports in Atlantic Africa between 1676 and 1825 . Based on 25-year periods, these Lorenz curves arc shown in Appendix II. Although there are some problems in the consolidation of data used for th ese curves, it appears that in every period no less than 70% of th e slaves were shipped from some 20% of the ports involved in the trade. Such figure s, howeve r, hide important temporal variations. Thus, in 170 I-50 the proportion embarked at thc leading 20% of ports rose to over 80% but then appears to have fallen in the second hal f of the century. These variations in concentration ratios rel1ected in creased pressure on the capacity of ports to accommodate export demand for slaves at the he ight of the trade. fhis resulted in the cntry of many smaller ports into the trade, especially on the upper Guinea coast. Despite the ap parent lowering of concentration ratios in 175 1- 1800 for the trad e as a whole, the Lrade still remained heavi ly concentrated, especially in so me regi ons, such as the Bight o f Biafra. Overall, about three-quarters o f all ｳｬ ｡ｶ ･ｾ＠ shi pped from Atlanti c Africa between 1676 an d 1825 were loaded at fewer than twenty ports, w ith L uanda., Ouidah, Bonny, Cab in da, Benguela, Old Calabar, An omabu and Cape Coast being consisten tl y among the most important embarkation centres, cspecially after 1700. In comparing pattem.s of ship departures to Africa wi th those of slave em barkal ion in Africa, we need to note that the number of voyages for which we have embarkation data is less than for ship departures and Ulat em barkation data under-record the contribution of leading slave ports such as Luanda. G iven the latter 's importance, it is likely that our data understate to some degree concentration levels of slave embarkat ion. In addition, the degree of concentration of activity at ports suggested by Tables I-V fails fully to rel1ect temporal changes or the proxim ity of some ports to each other in Africa. Th ese issues need to be kept in mind when comparing the shape of LorenL curves relating to ship departures for Africa and the embark ation of slaves at th e African coast. Comparisons between the figures in Appendices I and II reveal some differences in the shapes of the two sets of LorenL curves. For exanlple, even allowin g fo r bias in the slave embarkation data, the embarkation curve in the late eighteenth century was much shallower than that of sh ip departures. In other words, concentration ratios fo r departures for Africa appear to have been higher at that time than for slave departures at the AfTican coast. This discrepancy in concentration levels perhaps refle cted Liverpool's growing dom inance not only of the British but of the whole European slave trade as the F rench and Dutch sectors of the trade collapsed in 1793 -18 15. Differences in the shapes of the Lorenz curves arc also apparent in other periods, but are on th e who le smal ler. In some periods, indeed, it is not the d ifference but the similarity in the shape of curves that catches th e eye. This, we believe, is an important fi nding . It suggests that, while one cannot assume that the factors determ ining the shapes of the two sets of curves were identical, the theories that help to explain patterns of ship departures to Africa may also help to account for patterns of 22 concentrati ons o f slave embarkation in Africa. We make no attempt here to explain Ule relative position of individual African ports as slave emb arkation centres. In our view, however, concentrations of slave embarkation at a few ports naturally refl ected the economic advantages of those p orts in supplying slaves for export, wheth er in terms of loading timcs of ships, the ability to handl e the largest ships, or in other waysn Such advantages, in tum, refl ected the proximity of ports to large stocks of potential slaves, access to in land slave markets, and the impact of local political conditions on trade relations. The particular combinations of factors that all owed individual p laces to develop as slaving ports varied, of course, from one port to another. The Gold Coast had its series of permanen t, coastal forts and fac tories, while the lagoon system behind the shore in the Bight of Benin facilitated transport and therefore th e bul king of slaves. At Bonny an d Old Calabar, the largest ships co uld remain in protected waters wh ile slaves were brought from inland markets in large riverboats and canoes. Wh atever the specific combinations offactors were, we believe, nonetheless, that 24 AN ATLANTlC-WLDE PERSP ECTIVE DAVID ELTlS , PAUL E. LOVEJOY & DAVLD RICHARDSON they were almost certain ly rein forced by external economics in market knowledge stemming from ilie commercial and personal ties that tr affic king in s laves itself helped to consol idate or promote among Afr ican merchants or between them and sh ippers of slaves.All slaving ports had links to inland supp lies o f slaves. The lagoon system ofthe Bight of Benin, the N iger Delta and the Cros s Ri ver all prov ided access by water into th e interior an d and commercial networks in the hin terlands ofthe major connections with trade ､ｩ｡ｳｰｯｲｾ＠ ports in the Bigh ts. It was a p attern repeated, wiili local varian ts, elsewhere. Thc resul ting trade networks allowed continu ity in flows of market information as we ll as slaves, thereby helpin g to susta in and consolidate the control o f particular ports over ilie slave traffi c.]3 Moreover, iliose who benefited fr om knowledge derived through internal networks also pro fited from external economies in market information generated by regular dealings with shippers of slaves . Con tacts and ties forged thro ugh such dealings helped to ensure iliat the risks and costs associated with trade at those ports woul d be lower th an e lsewhere, iliereby reinforcing trade concentrati ons. Moreover, regularity in contact meant that, at the ports of departure of ships in western Europe and America, merc hants had access to the most up-to -date kn owledge of market cond itions at the leading ports in Africa. Such kn owledge allowed morc informed decisi ons to be made about the composition an d val ues of trade goods to be shipped as well as a better assessment of the risks ass ociated with investment in voyages. Perhaps even more important, however, were the personal and other ties th at developed bet ween sellers and shippers of slaves at Africrul ports. Studies of E uropean trading companies have shown that the residen t agents in Africa of such organizations sometimes developed links with local traders that persisted even beyond th eir period in the company's service.:l4 Ties of this sort were by no means confined to the environs of company forts and castles. On th e contrary, regular dealings by Europeans with oilier ports promoted personal ties and other bonds o f trust with African trading famil ies that, alone or, more often, in conjunction with othe r local arrangements, contributed to impro ved security or reduced the 'moral hazard' in credit relations at the leading slave pOrts. 35 As with commerc ial dealings in Europe and Am erica, the personal ties that came to link suppliers and sellers of slaves in Africa, ruld also th e latter an d shippers of slaves, were, th erefore, probably major factors in encouraging continuities in concentration of slave shipments from a small minority of African ports. Conclusion European and American investmen t in slaving voyages and the associated growth ofslave ports were important elements in ilie expansion of th e Atlantic economy in the two centuries before 1850. Slave-trading was pervasive throughout the Atlantic basin in 1650185 0, but this paper has shown that the outfitting of voyages for Africa and the embarkation of slaves at the African coast were both concen trated at a small proportion of the ports that became involved in slave trafficking. Though European and African states intervened in slaving, we believe that, on balance, this may have done more to impede thall promote concentrations in activity. Overall, we would argue, market forces and, more specifically, th e pcrsonal and commercial networks through which th ey were mediated, were crucial in explain ing patterns of concentration of slave-trading. As principals in an activity that led in the course of the two centuries before 1850 to the 25 shipment of some 10 million enslaved Afri cans to the Americas, merchants at ports sllch as Liverpool , Nantes, Rio de Janeiro, Old CaJ abar, Bonny, Ouidah and Luanda profited from their dominance of slaving. 10 some cases, indeed, the prosperity o f such ports crune 3 to be c losely identifi ed by contemporaries with slave trafficking. • But it would be shortsighted to view the rise o f individual slave ports or even patterns of concentration of slaving activity in Europe, the Americas and Africa in isolation. For as nodal points in the transatlantic movement o f African labour to the Americas, ilie leading s lave ports and, even more importantly, linkages between them, were vital to the commercial integration of the Atlanti c world . In th is context, it is important to note that thc movement of slaves across the Atl antic was far from random. It was, instead, dependen t to some extent on patterns of influence o f parti cular nati onal groups or sub­groups of shi ppers of slaves at different ports on the African coast. We know, for examp le, that traders from Nantes, Bahia an d Rio de Janeiro took disproportionate shares of the slaves taken from the Bight of Ben in in 1700­ 1850 whereas traders from Bristol and L iverpoo l took very large 37 proportions o f those carried from ports in tile Bight 0 1 Biafra before 1807. The search for explanations of these oilier pattc rn s ofconcentration ofslaving activity has still barely begun, though, once again, we suspect thal economic theories re lating to trust, networks, and locational inertia wi ll probably offer some useful insights inlo such patterns. Whatever their causes were, we believe th at explain ing patterns of concentration of slaving activity is crucial ifwe are fu lly to understand how the slave trade developed and how it contributed to the economic growth and development of the Atlantic world before 1850. NOTES For an introduction to Atlantic ports, but curiously none in Africa, during the era of the tranS ­Atlantic slave trade, see Fran klin W. Knight & Peggy K. Liss (eds), Atlantic Port Cities Economy, culture and society in the AtlanilC world, 1650­1 850 (\Vloxv ille, 1991), esp ecially Allan 1. Kuethe, ' Havana in the eighteenth century ' , 13 ­3 9; Anne PerotinDumon, ' Cabotage, contraband, and corsai rs: the port cities of Guadeloupe and their inhabitants, 1650­1800' , 58­86; David Geggus, 'The major port lawns of Saint Domingue in the later eighteenth century', 87­1 16; B.W Higman, 'Jamaican port towns in the early nineteenth century' , 117­1 48; Guadalupe Jimenez Codinach, ' Vera Cruz and the House of Gordon and Murphy' , 149­167; Lance R. Grah n, 'Cartagena and its hi nterl and in the eighteenth century ', 168­ 195 ; A J. R. Russell­Wood, ' Ports of colonial Brazil' , 196­239 ; Susan M. Socolow, ' Buenos Aires: Atlantic port and hinterland in the eighteenth century', 240­26 1; Jacob M. Price, 'Summation: the American panorama of Atlantic port cities ' , 262­276. Also see Jaco b Price, ' Economic fun ction and the growth of American port towns in the eighteenth century' , Perspectives in American History, 8 (1 974), 123­86. 2 See, for example, Gaston Manin, Nantes au XVlIIe sii!Cle: I'ere des migrlers (1714­ 1774), (Paris, 1931) ; Jean Mettas , Repertoire des expeditions nfigrieres ｦｲ｡ｮｾ ｡ｩｳ･＠ au X VIIle siixle, cd. Serge & Michele Daget (2 vols, Paris, 1978­84); Jean­Mi chel Deveau, La traite Rochelaise (Paris, 1990); Eric Saugera, Bordeau:c: p ort negrier, XVJ!e­XIXe sieeles (Paris, 1995) ; Maurice M. Schofield, 'The slave trade from Lancashire and Cheshire ports outside Liverpool', Transactions of the Historical Society of Lancashire & Cheshire 126 (19 76), 30­73; James A. Rawley, The Trans­Atlantic Slave Trade · A history (New York, 1981 ); Nigel Tattersfield, The Forgotten Trade (London, 1991 ); Melinda Elder, The Slave Trade and the Economic Development of Eighteenth Century Lancaster (Hali fax, 1992); Johannes Postma, The Dutch and the Atlalltic Slave Trade (Cambridge, 1990) ; David Ri chardson 26 DAVID ELTlS, PAUL E LOVEJOY & DAVID RlCIIARDSON (cd.), Bris/ol, Africa and the Slave Tr ade to Amer ica (4 vol s, Bristol, 1986-96); Jay Cough try, Notorious Triangle : Rhode Island and the African Slave Trade 1700­1807 (Philadelphia, 1981 ); Per O. Hemaes, Slaves. Danes. and African Coast Society (Trondheim, 199 5); Manolo Garcia Floren tino, Em costas negras.· uma historia do trafico de escravos entre a Africa e 0 Rio de JallelrO (Se culos XVIII e XIX) (SlIo Paulo, 1997) . 3 . David Eltis, Stephen D. Behrendt, David Ri ch ardson & Herbert S . KJein (eds), The Transatlantic Slave Trade. 1527-1867: A Database (Cambridge, 1999). 4 It should also be noted that the wind system of the south A1lanlic helped to keep some parts of the Brazilian slave trade separate from the rest: see Joseph C Miller; Way of Dea/h: Merchan/ capilalism and the Angolan slaw! trade (London, 1988), 3 19-24; Stephen D. Behrendt, David Eltis & Davi d Richardson, 'Out of Africa: the origins of enslaved Africans entering the Atlantic world, 1660-1809 ', paper presented at the Conference on Black Di asporas in the Western Hemisphere, Austrnl ian National University, 1998. Without this, the slave trade might have been even more concentrated, at least in terms of port of organization of voyages . David Richardson , ' The eighteenth-century British slave trade: estimates of its volume an d coastal distribution in Africa', Research in Economic llistory, 12 (19 89), 151-9 5; Mettas, RepertOire; Postma, DlItch & Atlannc Slave Trade. 6 Stuart B. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in /he Formation of Bra=iliall Society: BahIa, 1550­ 1835 (Cam bridge, 1985), 340-5 . 7 Miller, Way of Death , Florentino, Em ｣ｯ ｳｴ ｡Ｎｾ＠ negras. 8 Postma, Dutch & Atlall/ic Slave Trade, 128­34. 9 Mettas, Repertoire, i . 10 Ibid., ii. I \ Serge Daget, Repertoire des expeditions migrieres fram;atses Ii la traJte i/legale (J 8141850) (Nan tes, \ 988) \ 2 Kenneth G. Davies, The Royal African Company (London, 1957); Rawley, Trans­Atlantic Slave Trade , chap.l O; David Ellis, 'The British transatJantic slave trade before 1714', in Robert Paquet1e & Stanley L. Engerman (eds), The Lesser AntIlles in /he Age of European ExpanSIOn (Gainesv ille, Florida, 1996), \ 82-205 . 13 Ric hardson, 'E ighteenth-century British slave trade'. 14 Elder, Slave Trade & Lancaster; David Richardson & M.M. Schofield, ' Whitehaven and the eighteenth-century British slave trade', Transactions of the Cumberland & Westmorland ntiquarian & Archae ological SOCiety, 102 ( 1992), 183-204; C oughtry, Rhode Island Slave Trade. 15 Por the dominance of Rhode Island 's trade by Newport and Bristol, see Coughtry, Rhode Island Slave Trade. On the Danish trade and its concentration at Copenhagen, see Hernaes, Slaves, Danes & African Coast SOciety. 16 On the sh in in Lond on's role in the British slave trade, see Richard B. Sheridan, ' The commerc ial and financial organizati on of the British slave trade, 1750-1807 ', Economic History ReVIew, II ( 1957-8), 249 -63 . 17 James Pope-Hennessey, Sins of the Fathers: A stlldy of the Atlantic slave traders, 14411807 (London, 1967); Martin, Nantes au XVIIJe siecle. I 8 It is worth noting that Portuguese, rather than Span ish , traders probably dom inated the slave trade from Havana. 19 Some Lancas ter-based traders relo cated to Li verp ool in the late eighteenth cenlury: Elder, Slave Trade & Lancaster, 193. 20 There is some discuss ion on Liverpool's rise and the factors behind it in Davi d Richardson, ' The British Empire and the Atlantic Slave Trade ', in P.J. Mars hall (ed.), Oxford fllst ory of the British Empire: The eighteenth century (Ox ford, 1998), 448 . 21 John P. Blai r, Urban and Regional Economics (Boston, 1991 ), 2 1. 22 II. A. Gemery & l .S. Hogendorn, 'Introduction', in Gemery & Il ogendorn (eds .), The Uncommon Market: Essays in the economic history of the Atlantic Slave Trade (New York , 1979), 13. 27 AN AT LANTIC-WIDE PERSPECTIV E 23 On the bill system that underpinned the Li verpool slave trade, see B.L. Anderson, 'The Lancashire bill system and its practitioners', in W.II.Chaloner & B.M.RatcllfIe (eds), Trade and Transpo rt: Essays in honour ofT.S. Willan (Manchester, 1977),59-77. Th is builds on and amp li fies Ashton's thesis: TS. Ashton , 'The bill of exchange and private banks in Lan cashire, 1790-1830', Economic T­listory Review, 15 ( 1945), 25-3 5. On trust and its relati onshi p lo commercial aClivi ty, see Francis Pukuyama, Trust: Th e social virtlies and the creation of prosperity (London, 1995) . 24 It is worth nothing thal our explanation of concentration in organizing voyages does nol rely on arguments relating to the capital requirements of the trade. Capital barriers to entry are sometimes invoked to explain the tendency towards oligopoly or dominance of an activity by a few fi rms, and might therefore be seen to be relevant to explaining concentration in organi7ing slave voyages at a few ports. By the standards of the day, slaving voyages were certainly not inexpensive enterprises. Figures for the British trade reveal that mean outlays on slaving voyages rose from som e £3,000-£ 5,000 before 1720 to £8 ,000-£l 2,00 () by 1790 : David Richardson, The British Slave Trade : performance, prices and profits (forthcoming). This rise in outlays was noLwlique to the British trade. Raising such sums may have been easier for merchants at ports such as London and J\rnsterdam, but we doubt that capital shortage per se was a major factor inhibiting merchants at most ports in Europe and the Americas from entering the trade. Pooling of capital by merchants to finan ce slave voyages was a common device. More important perhaps than capital mobilizalion in shaping concentration patterns was the problem of maintaining the liquidJty or circulation of capital. In this context access to, ar k.nowledge of, commercial and finan ci al networks may have given some advantages to merchants in established slave ports over their competitors. 25 A regional approach underlay Philip D. Curtin's pioneering census of the trade: The Atlantic Slave Trade.' A census (Madison, 1969). This established the relative importance of dillerent regions in terms of the degree to which the slave trade was concentrated, and how the relative importance of these regions changed through time. The approach was further explored in Paul E. Lovejoy, Transf ormations in Slavery: A hIstory of slavery In Africa (Cambridge, 1983), Patrick Manning, Slavery and African Life (Cambridge, 1990), & John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World (Cambridge, rev. ed., 1998). 26 for Senegambia, see Philip D. Curtin, Economic Change in Precolonial Africa: Senegambia in the era of the Slave Trade (Madison , 1975); Boubacar Barry, Senegambta and the Atlantic Slave Trade (Cambridge , 1988); James Searing, West African Slavery and Atlantic Commerce: The Senegal River valley, 1700­1 860 (Cambridge, 1993); Djibril Samb (ed. ), Goree et I 'esclavage (Dakar, 1997) . 2 7 This was so, fo r example, in the case of traders from Lancaster, Honfleur, and Newport, Rhode Island; see Elder, Slave Trade & Lancaster, 57 ; Jean Mettas, 'HontIeur et )a traite d 'Histoire d'Ou/re­Me r, 60 ( 1973), 5-26; des noirs au XVIUe siecle', Revue ｆｲ｡ｮｾｩｳ･＠ Mettas, RepertOire, ii ; Coughtry, Rhode Island Slave Trade . 28 Robin Law, ' Between the sea and the lagoons: The interaction of maritime and inland navigation on the pre-colonial Slave Coast', Cahiers d'Etudes africames. 29 (19 89), 209-37. 29 The literature on the Bi ght of Benin is extens ive ; see, in add it ion to the papers by Gayi bor, Soumonni, Law, Jones, VidegJa and Mann, in this volume: Robin Law, The Slave Coast of West /ifrica, 1550­1750.' The impact of the Slave Trade on an African Society (Oxford, 199 1) ; Cas imir Agbo, Histoire de Ouidah du XVle au XXe siecle (Av ignon, 1959) ; Caro line Sorensen-Gilmo ur, 'Badagry 1784-1863: The Political and Commercial History of a Pre colonial Lagoonside C ommu ni ty in Southwes t Nigeria ', (Ph.D. thesis, University of Stirling, 1995): A. Aki ndele & C. Aguessy, Contribution I'etude de f'histoire de l 'ancien royaume de Porto­Novo (Dakar, 195 3); Kristin Mann, 'The world the slave traders made: Lagos, c.1 760- 1850' , paper presented at the UNESCO/SSHRCC Summer Institute on 'Identifying Ens laved Afri cans ', York University, July/A ug . 1997. a 28 30 A.J.lI. Latham, Old Calabar 1600­ 189 /: The Impact of the imernatlonal economy upon a traditional society (Oxford, 1973); Kannan K, Na ir , Politics alld SocIety in South Eastern Nigeria, 1841­1906 (Lon don, 1972); Monday Efiongh Noah , Old Caiabar: The city states and the Europeans 1800­1885 (Uyo, Nigeria, 1980); K,O, Dike, Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta, 1830­1885 (Oxford, 1959); Susan Hargreaves, ' The Political Eco nomy of Nineteenth Centu ry Bonny: A Study of Power, Authority, Leg itima cy and Ideology in a Delta Tradi ng Community from 1790- 191 4' (Ph D, thesis , University of Birmingham, 198 7); Paul E. Lovej oy & David Ri chardson, ' Trust, pawnship and Atlantic history : the institutional foundations of the Old Calabar slave trade ' , American llistory Review, 102 (19 99), 333 -55, 3 I Jose Curto, ' A quantitative reassessmen t of the legal Portuguese slave trade from Luanda, Angola, 171 0-1830', N rican Economic fllstory, 20 (l992), 1-25; id. , 'The legal Portuguese slave trade from Benguela, Angola, 1730-1828: a quantitative re-appraisal', Africa 16 (Sao Paulo, 1993), 101-16 ; Joseph C. Miller, 'The political economy of the Angolan slave trade in th e eighteenth century' , The Indiana iflstorical Review. 15 , 112 (l 988/90), 152-8 7, 32 For in formation on loadi ng times , albeit on aggregate or regional bases, see Postm a, utch & Atlantic Slave Trade, 142; David Ellis & David Richardson, ' Productivity in the Transatlantic Slave T rade ', Explorations in Econom Ic History, 32 ( 1995 ), 478 , 33 On market arrangements for slaves within West Afri ca, see Paul E, Lovej oy & J, S. Hogendom, ' Slave marketing in West Afri ca' , in Gernery & Ho gendorn , Uncommon Market, 34 See, for example, Margaret Priestley, West Afr ican Trade and Coast SOCiety: A f amily study (Oxford, 1969) . This examines the career of Richard Brew, an offic ial of the British Company of Merchants Trading to Africa in lhe 17505, who went on 10 develop his own trading empi re from his res idence Castle Brew at Anomabu . 35 See, for example, Lovejoy & Richardson, 'Trust, pawn ship and Atlantic history' , which focuses on connections between Liverpool, Bristol and Efik traders at Old Calabar c,17401807 , These cOJUlections are also explored in Stephen D. Behrendt, ' The Diary of Anlera Duke and the eighteenth­century Old CaJabar slave trade to the Americas ', unpublished paper. 36 Old Calabar's dependence on slaving was highlighted in 1805 during a visit (0 the town by a representative of the British !\£rican Associ ation, Mr Nicholls. Arriving at Calabar in January, Nicholls wrote that he was met with great suspicion by a prominent local official , Egbo Yo ung Eyambo, who, he alleged, claimed that ' if I came from Mr Wilberforce they [i.e. local traders] would kill me': Robin Hallett (ed ,), Records of the African Association, ] 788­183 1 (London, 1964 ), 198, A similar link between slavin g and the fortunes of Liverpo ol was observed by c.ontemporaries , The maj or Liverpool merchant, Thomas Leyland, referred in 17 86 to the Afric an trade as ' the principal business of this Port' : Liverpool Re cord Offi ce, 387 MD 59 , Leyland Letter book , 24 June 1786, T hom as Leyland to Justin Bren nan, Liverpool's identification with the slave trade was also tlle subject of a rebuke by the actor George Frederi ck Cooke to his audience at the Theatre Royal, Liverpool, in th e early nineteenth century, Hissed while perfoIITling Richard 1lI, Cooke is said to have left the stage, claiming that he was not prepared to take such abuse when 'there is not a brick in your damned town but which is cemented by the blood of a negro ' : Eri c M idwinter, Old Liverpool (Newton Abbot, 19 71), 29. Midwinter also notes that such was the sensi tivity of Liverpool to its involvement in the slave trade by the late eighteenth century that 'the play Oroonoko was banned because it refl ected adversely on the slave trade and Liverpool's partici paLio n in it', 37 For an indicali on of vari ati ons by nationality in the distribution of slaving in Atlantic !\£rica, see David Richardson, 'Slave exports from West an d West­Central Africa, 170018 10: new estimates of volume and distribution' , Journa l of Afri can flistory, 30 (1 989), 13­17; David Ellis & Davi d Richardson, ' West Africa and the Transatlantic Slave Trade: new ev idence of long­run trends', in Eltis & Richardson (eds), Routes to Slavery.' Direction, ethnicity and mortality in the Atlantic Slave Trade (Lon don, 1997), 19­21. 29 AN ATLANTIC­WIDE P ERSPECTIVE DAV[J) ELTIS, PAUL E, LOVEJOY & DAVID RICHARDSON APPENDIX I Frequency of Slaving at European and American Ports, 1676­1832 (LoreJlZ curve) Lorenz Curve of S lave Ship Departures in the Atlantic World, 1676­1700 100,0 ! so 0 ;s"' Cl. ｾ＠ ｾ＠ .0 ｾ 0; ''"0" ,,)0 '" '"'"c " '" 20 0 Cl. ---------- ｾ 00 .. .. 800 <00 0 10.0 0.0 Percentage ofVo)"ges Ｘ ｬｊｹ ｮｾ＠ roo HlO O 81"""s Lorenz Curve of Slave Voyage Departures in the Atlantic World, 1701­25 100 0 I t!o .o I i "'0 '" "­ ｾ＠ c " I roo ! <5 ''"" 0 ./ <o a a> c'"'" ｾ＠ '" n. 1II0 ./0- on ｾ ｯ＠ ... 0 10' ｐＮｲ｣ ｮ ｴ ｾ ｾＮ＠ 110 • orvo'fOges Bur'"9 SIa­,•• '"0 ."". 30 31 D AVID ELTIS, PA UL E. LOVEJOY & DAVID RICHARDSON AN ATLANTIC· WIDE PERSPECTIVE Lorenz Curve of Slave Ship Departures in the Atlantic World, J 676-1700 Lorenz Curve of Slave Voyage Departures in the Atlantic World, 1776­1800 U,IU .U 1000 (I .. ... r 0 0.. ｾ＠ t: r so. 80' ... Q 0 ;; g 40.., E e f I 20 .0 ! / / l'! " .0 , ｾ＠ ｾ＠ 0- '" CJ '0 "'.0 ｾ＠ '" !'! e :;; / a. ­­­­­­­_ 20 .0 / ... i a. // " , ..-.- ' • 0 2D.O .... ............. - - ---_.--- . .,...,.­/ 00.11 BOO / O. 100 .01 e." 40.0 20" 0.0 100.0 00 Percentage olSlaving Voyages Departing Percentage of81"';n9 voyages Departlns Lorenz Curve of Slave Voyage Departures in the Atlantic World, 1801 ·1825 Lorenz Curve of Slave Voyage Departures in tbe Atlantic World, 1701­25 100 0 'INU so 0 SO,[) '" ., '" t: " t: Q. 0 0.. ｾ＠ :; I 000 g 0 "'" g ｾ＠ Q. I .,,, .. I ｾ＠ 00 1!l 0 00 ... ­ ­­ ---ｾ＠ .. .. 0 Percentage ofSIil'<ing Voyapes Departln. // ｾ＠ eoo t: g ) 0 0 " :? ." ｾ＠ ;;; .i Q. / / 200 /" ./ . ­ ­.... /' gg . .. OO.(} 100.0 0.0 '00 40. ­­­­­­_._­ ­............ --' / . 0. ercentage of SlaVIng Voyage s Oeparting soo .00 • 32 33 AN ATLANTIC-W ID E PERSPECTIVE DAVID ELliS , PAU L E. LOVEJOY & DAV1D RlCllARDSON Lorenz Curve of Voyages Purchasing Slaves in Major African Ports, 1726-1750 APPENDIXD Frequency ofSlaving at European at African Ports, 1676-1825 (Lorenz Curve) ,00 " Lorenz Curve of Voyages Purchasing Slaves in Major African Ports, 1676-1700 / Ｎｲｾ＠ ""'" I Q. ｾ＠ 11)" ｾ＠ c I V> t: ....,o ) eo :; t: '"g "'0 '" <0 "'" 1: ｾ＠ .I i "" .. 20 <OJ """ '".,. c ｾ＠ '» "- 10 (1 .. ,,, co ) '" &: <> __ . .. , , Ｔｉｊｾ＠ Percentage or Ships ｂｕＢｾｲＬ＠ 100 .0 ",u 4IIJll 51..... 5 .....---._-,----"'" eo .0 100 Percentage of SlaVing Voyages Departing Lorenz Curve of Voyages Purchasing Slaves in Major African Ports, 1701-1725 Lorenz Curve of Voyages Purchasing Slaves in Major African Ports, 1751 ­1775 100 0 Ｇ ｯ＠ ｾＮ Ｍ Ｍｾ＠ .00 so , I '" '§ ! ... ｾ＠ => t: .0.0 ••• " ! t1 '" Cl i 0 '"g' 400 '" -2'" C ｾ＠ ...:;; / / :>: l reo o. ""'. i H 00 L 00 10.0 "".0 coo Percenlag e ofSlaV109 Voya ges Deparung '00 100 0 J OD ...­­­­ 10. elD "'. Pe'cenlage 01 \foyage. BLJylnQ 51..... SOu "'" , 34 DAVID ELTIS, PAUL E. LOV EJOY & DAVID RICHARDSON 2s villes negrieres de I'ancienne Cote des Lorenz Curve of Voyages Purchasing Slaves in Major African Ports, 1801-1825 'COO ! ,.< I ." ｾ＠ I I:L ｾ＠ ｾ＠ / " OJ" " ｾ＠ '"'"" "Il" '" '" ｾ＠ <L Ｌｾ＠ ,. -- 00 " 0 <O D --- 00" 000 P." en'.g. or voY"9.' Buymg ｾｉＢＧﾷ 100 0 .. Lorenz Curve of Voyages Purchasing Slaves in Major African Ports, 1776-1800 100.[1 . ) 5 CL ｾ＠ ｾ＠ 00 . / I .. i / , " '"""0 o4O ,tI w co C ｾ＠ '" :;; Q ". . ., ./ / ' /"'//' til. .., --" / ... PSltentag8 ()r Voyage s Buyiog E:aves se o '00< Esclaves d' Ada it Grand-Popo N.L. GAYLBOR La lraite negriere fut, on Ie sait, I'un des phenomenes majeurs ayan l profondemenl atrectc IccontinenL noirdu xvre au XIXc siecle. Elle s' inscra rapidement dans Ie circuit traditionnel d'echanges locaux et TI!gionaux, qu' eUe ne TI!ussil pourtanl pas adetronermalgre I' impression falJaci euse qui ressorl des ccnts des spccialistes.' E lJe sut parailleurs s ' imposer par son ample ur et les intercts qU' ell e generaaussi bien sur Ie continentqu· a travers les reseaux qui se nouerent pour en assurer la survie a travers l'Europe et l'Amcrique. ElJe modifla en pr%ndeur la physionomie des zones cotieres, lieux privill!gies de ees echanges incgaux, ou apparuren t, te lJes des vil Jes-champignons, des agglomerations netS et vivant de ces transactions. Comment ces cites apparurent-elles sur Ia Cote occidentale des Esclaves'? Quelle fUl leur evolution au coutS de eelte periode? Tels sont les questions auxquellcs ceUe etude tiichera d' apporler des rcponses. Des l' instauration du commerce lriangul aire sur la Cote des Esclaves, au XVTi: siecle, plusieurs agglomerations eotieres de communautes de pceheurs a faib le revenu se sont rapidement devcloppees en voyant leur populati on gonner par I'affiux d ' un grand nombre de pcrsonnes desireuses de pro liter des retombees de ce nouveau tralic. D'autres agglomerations s' edi fierent, parfois ephemeres, sur ces si tes, nees du contact entre les negriers et les populations pourvoyeuses de ｣｡ｰ ｴｩｦＮ ｾ Ｎ＠ Les infonnations nous manquen t pour decrire dans Ie detail les diverses etapes de I'evolution de ces cites ainsi que les principales aCli vi tes connexes qui s'y merraient, liees Ii la traite. C'esi que, en cc qui concerne l'cspace situc entre les fleuves Volta et Mono, les prineipales nati ons negrieres ayan t fait de ces regions leur lieu de predilection sont Ie Danemark et accessoiremcnt la Hollande, pays avec lesquels nous n 'avons, de nos jours, pratiquement au cune relation d'ordre academique permett.ant aux ehercheurs d 'y aller travai l1er dans les archives . II y a quelques annees, Ie piOfesseur A. VaIl Dantzig a tradu it et public en angJais une partie des archives ho llandaises concernant cetie pcriode.' La richesse des informations sur l' evo lution historique, sociale et economique des villes cotiercs de ceUc region augure bien de Ia qual itc de ces archives pour la reconstitution du passe de l'ancienne Cote des Esclaves. Ce travai l sans preccdent n' a pas encore etc efTeetue pour les archives danoises. On imagine done aisement I'ampleur du travai l a accomplir de ce cote, quan d on sait que les Danois furent les seuls negriers qu.i firen ! de cette partie de la cote oucst-africaine leur chasse garde-e. L' inaccessibilite de ccs archives les rend pratiquement inutil isables pour Ics cherchcurs africains, en raiso n de la barrierc linguistique et de l'absencc d'accords de cooperation entre Ie Danemark et les pays concemes (Togo, Benin). Le peu d' infonnations auxquelles nous avons pu avoir acces l'a etc grace a l'amabilite du Dr Sandra Greene qui, ayant beneficie d 'une bourse Fullbright dans les annees 1975, a pu apprendre Ie dan ois pour trav ailler sur les Anlo. 3 Enlin, les archi ves anglaises, tres ri ches egalcment, sont 35