The Atlantic Slave Trade to Maranhão, 1680–1846: Volume, Routes and Organisation
2008; Frank Cass & Co.; Volume: 29; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/01440390802486507
ISSN1743-9523
Autores Tópico(s)Caribbean history, culture, and politics
ResumoAbstract Maranhão has the best documented slave trade in all Portuguese America. However, it is one of the least studied branches of the Atlantic slave trade. This article provides an assessment of the volume, routes and organisation of the slave trade to Maranhão, in northern Brazil. It shows that, although small in scale, the slave trade to Maranhão displayed important features concerning the routes and organisation of the Atlantic slave trade. Finally, because of the late European occupation and relative isolation, the slave trade to Maranhão offers ideal conditions for observing the rise and fall of African slavery in the New World. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Mrs Suzan Eltis for her help in reviewing my English and the readers of Slavery and Abolition for their comments on the earlier draft of this article. All interpretations and conclusions reached here are, of course, my responsibility. I dedicate this article to my grandfather Alvaro Domingues da Silva, a Maranhense. Notes See, e.g., Lopes, A Escravatura, 140; Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 112. I derived this idea from Meredith John's work The Plantation Slaves of Trinidad, 1783–1816: A Mathematical and Demographic Enquiry, where Trinidad presents a similar example, but in the British sphere. I would like to thank Dr David Eltis and Dr Paul Lachance for bringing this work to my attention. The Portuguese had attempted to settle at Maranhão in 1534, but without success (see Hemming, Red Gold, 198–216; Gomes, O Índio na História, 113–138). Eltis, 'Volume and Structure of the Transatlantic Slave Trade', Table 3. Estimates for select periods, especially for the era of the company rule, are more abundant. For the pre-CGGPM period, see Lopes, A Escravatura, 136; Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 18–23; Goulart, Escravidão Africana no Brasil, 123–125. During the CGGPM period, the major references are: Mendes da Cunha Saraiva, 'As Companhias Gerais de Comércio e Navegação para o Brasil'; Lopes, A Escravatura, 137–138; Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 31–190; Dias, Fomento e Mercantilismo, 1: 459–498; MacLachlan, 'African Slave Trade and Economic Development', 112–145; Mettas, 'La Traite Portugaise'. Finally, concerning the period after the CGGPM, see Lopes, A Escravatura, 139–140; Goulart, Escravidão Africana no Brasil, 269–272; Curtin, Atlantic Slave Trade, 208, 240; Rebelo, Relações entre Angola e Brasil, Table 2; Miller, 'Legal Portuguese Slaving from Angola', 135–176; Miller, 'Numbers, Origins and Destinations of Slaves'; Eltis, 'Volume and Structure of the Transatlantic Slave Trade'. Eltis et al., Voyages. Voyages refers to the forthcoming second edition. Authors of the first edition were David Eltis, David Richardson, Stephen Behrendt and Herbert Klein (see Eltis et al., Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade). While overall the Voyages database is still incomplete, the material on Maranhão to which I have contributed is not likely to change prior to publication. Lopes calls the individual investors 'asientistas', as the holders of the contract to supply slaves to the Spanish America. Maurício Goulart disagrees with calling them asientistas, because the size of the slave trade the Portuguese merchants planned to Maranhão was incomparably small (see Lopes, A Escravatura, 136; Goulart, Escravidão Africana no Brasil, 125). See Lopes, A Escravatura, 136; Goulart, Escravidão Africana no Brasil, 124–125; Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 20; MacLachlan, 'African Slave Trade and Economic Development', Note 4; Salvador, Os Magnatas do Tráfico Negreiro, 56, 103, 172. The names were cross-listed with the names available in Carreira's work (see Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 18). Bezena e Baldez were actually António de Barros Bezerra and Manuel Preto Valdez. The company was called Companhia de Cachéu, Rios e Comércio da Guiné in 1676. In 1682, it became Companhia do Estanco do Maranhão. Lopes, A Escravatura, 136; Goulart, Escravidão Africana no Brasil, 124–125. Goulart, Escravidão Africana no Brasil, 124. Alden, 'Indian versus Black Slavery', 102. Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 19. The only obligation stated was that the company should never sell slaves to heretics. Carreira transcribed the contract of the company (Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 305–308) – see article 3. Carreira commented and transcribed excerpts of the letters in the text (Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 19–29). Voyage id number 41226. The name of the company in this voyage appears as Companhia da Guiné. '[N]a consederação de ser mui útil este provimento para esses moradores e conveniente o continuar-se a respeito do grande benefício que lograrão como serviço destes negros' (Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 22). Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 22, Note. 22. '[D]iez mil toneladas, estimadas cada una de ellas en tres pieças de India de la medida regular de 7 quartas, nó siendo viejos ni con deffectos … à razon de ciento y doze pesos y medios por cada tonelada de escravo' (Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 19, 23). Boxer, Golden Age of Brazil, 35. MacLachlan seems to disregard the influences of the gold discovery in the prices of slaves in the Amazon captaincies (see MacLachlan, 'African Slave Trade and Economic Development', 115–116). Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 29. Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 29; Alden, 'Indian versus Black Slavery', 94–95. See, e.g., Antonil, Cultura e Opulência do Brasil, 184–186; Parscau, 'A invasão francesa de 1711', 135. Karasch, 'Central Africans in Central Brazil', 124–129. Alden, 'Indian versus Black Slavery', 113. See the entire text for the problems related to indigenous versus black slavery in Maranhão. Calculated from the variable SLAMIMP (imputed number of slaves disembarked). The number of slaves (200) was broken down in smaller shipments (see Alden, 'Indian versus Black Slavery', 105, Note 53). E.g., only 87 slaves were dispatched by 1709 (see voyage id number 41229 in the database and Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, Maranhão, box 12, document 1247). I considered only 113 slaves in 1706. Especially after the Crown ordered the shipment of slaves to Maranhão and Pará be divided equally in the beginning of the eighteenth century (see MacLachlan, 'African Slave Trade and Economic Development', 117). Dias' assertion that there was no African slavery in the captaincies of Maranhão and Pará before the establishment of the Companhia Geral do Grão-Pará e Maranhão was a mistake (see Dias, Fomento e Mercantilismo, 1: 461). Dias, Fomento e Mercantilismo, 1: 149–206, 397–458. Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação. The works revised by Carreira were mainly by Cunha Saraiva ('As Companhias Gerais de Comércio e Navegação para o Brasil'), Lopes (A Escravatura) and Dias (Fomento e Mercantilismo). As regards the works based on his assessments, see, e.g., MacLachlan ('African Slave Trade and Economic Development') and Mettas ('La Traite Portugaise'). It should be noted that only Carreira presented an annual series of slaves embarked to and disembarked at Maranhão. Most of the studies usually present a sum of all slaves embarked to and disembarked at Maranhão, in particular, or to all northern captaincies of Brazil, during the whole period of the company's monopoly. Concerning the Atlantic slave trade to Maranhão the organisers accessed the files of the company in Lisbon, Portugal, available in the Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo, Arquivo Histórico do Ministério das Finanças and the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino. They also incorporated data from archives in Luanda, as the Biblioteca Municipal de Luanda, and in Brazil, as the Arquivo Público do Pará, through the catalog compiled by Anaíza Vergolino-Henry and Arthur Napoleão Figueiredo (A Presença Africana na Amazônia Colonial). Finally, they also used Herbert Klein's databases on the slave trade (Klein, The Middle Passage). Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 95–100. Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 48–50. Jean Mettas employed some of this documentation in his 1975 article (Mettas, 'La Traite Portugaise'). In addition to the bibliographical references and archives cited in Note 32 above, the database's team also consulted the Arquivo Histórico Nacional de Angola, Arquivo Nacional do Rio de Janeiro, Arquivo Estadual João Emerenciano (Pernambuco), Biblioteca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro, Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa, Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, and the Public Record Office (London). Regarding the contributions of various researchers, see in addition to the references cited in Note 32: Medeiro dos Santos, 'Relações de Angola com o Rio de Janeiro'; Conrad, World of Sorrow; Frutuoso et al., O Movimento do Porto de Lisboa; Bethell, Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade. The database also benefited from data made available by Dr Manolo Florentino and Dr José Capela. Rodrigues, De Costa a Costa, 284. Available at the Secretaria de Planejamento do Estado do Maranhão under the title 'Livro de termo de visita da saúde de São Luís, 1779–1795'. Bethell, A Abolição do Comércio Brasileiro de Escravos, 31–35. As evidence, see the sugar colonies in the British Caribbean, which yielded high values in compensation payments made to masters as late as 1834. E.g., in the British Honduras, the average compensation for adult slaves could reach £60.9 sterling per slave. Predial unattached field laborers in the same island could yield even higher amounts (£82 sterling, on average) (see Higman, Slave Populations, 79, Table 4.3). Slenes, 'Brazilian Internal Slave Trade', 325–366. 1819: Souza e Silva, 'Investigações sobre os Recenseamentos da População do Império tentados desde os Tempos Coloniais', Attachment D, 31–33; 1838 and 1823: Marcílio, 'Accroissement de la Population', 15. It is possible that the natural rates of increase were not negative if we take as example the cotton plantations of the southern United States, which in fact presented positive rates of natural increase. As in the plantations of the American South, cotton was Maranhão's main staple for much of the eighteenth century and part of the nineteenth as well. More studies about slavery in Maranhão are necessary before an estimate of the scale of this early slave exports becomes feasible. In the 1860s, the Brazilian government engaged in a project of gradual emancipation of slaves financed by the state treasury. Variola was endemic in Maranhão, which suffered periodic outbreaks. In 1866, Lafayette Rodrigues Pereira, president of the province, published a state report in which he provides a brief history of the major outbreaks of variola that had occurred in Maranhão. He noted that these were particularly harsh in the years 1621, 1662, 1695, 1784, 1799, 1836 and between 1854 and 1855 (see Maranhão, Relatorio 1866, 29–30). According to presidential reports, in 1861 the slave population of Maranhão numbered 84,755, and in 1874 it had decreased to 73,245. The reports are completely silent regarding slave imports into Maranhão, while in contrast they provide regular information about the number of slaves exported in the interprovincial slave trade. Between 1846 and 1869, e.g., the presidential reports show that Maranhão exported an average of 355 slaves per year (see Maranhão, Relatorio 1861; Maranhão, Relatorio 1871; Maranhão, Relatorio 1874). After 1815, the Voyages database has records on 106 voyages between Africa and Maranhão. Ninety-four have information on the outcome of the voyages and only six (6.4 per cent) seem to have been captured either by British, Brazilian or Portuguese forces. As Carreira points out, it is important to exercise great care when using the company's shipping records. He transcribed part of these records in Appendixes N and O of his book (see Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 95–100). For the slave trade between Bahia and Costa da Mina, the major reference work is still Verger (Fluxo e Refluxo do Tráfico de Escravos, 19–51). Asiwaju and Law, 'From the Volta to the Niger', 437. See Carney, Black Rice; Carney, 'Rice and Memory'. According to Judith Carney, specialists have failed to test for the presence of African rice in both Brazil and Suriname (see Carney. 'Rice and Memory', Note 84). Dias, Fomento e Mercantilismo, 1: 430–436. I calculated the concentration using only records with some indication of identity of owners. Individuals in society were considered separately from the voyages they sponsored by themselves. Counting both as a single venture would inevitably increase the degree of concentration of ownership to even higher levels! The database has records on 170 voyages between 1788 and 1815, but only 107 of these have a known port of departure (62.9 per cent). Jorge Pedreira has compiled lists of Lisbon's major merchants for the years between 1790 and 1822 (see Pereira, Os Homens de Negócio da Praça de Lisboa de Pombal ao Vintismo, 189–190, Table 3.11). According to the database, after 1815, about 62.9 per cent of the slaves disembarked at Maranhão from Africa were delivered by vessels departing from Brazilian ports. Adelman, Sovereignty and Revolution, 65–83. Additional informationNotes on contributorsDaniel B. Domingues da SilvaDaniel B. Domingues da Silva is a PhD candidate at Emory University.
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