Negotiating Abolition: Cape Town and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
2013; Frank Cass & Co.; Volume: 34; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/0144039x.2012.759672
ISSN1743-9523
Autores Tópico(s)South African History and Culture
ResumoAbstractThe city of Cape Town owes its origins to its role as a refreshment station for Dutch East India Company (VOC) vessels. Yet 'the fairest Cape' was also a half-way station for slave ships making their way from the south-western Indian Ocean to the Americas. This article examines the role of the Cape in the slave trade from Mozambique to the Americas during the 17 years following the Act of Abolition. While the Act effectively ended the importation of slaves to the Cape, it initially had little or no impact on the movement of slave ships through Table Bay. Despite Britain's opposition to the slave trade, the frequency with which slave vessels stopped at the Cape in the first few years after the implementation of the Act almost equalled the frequency with which they had called at the port in the last years of VOC rule. It was only when Britain tightened restrictions on the trade that the number of slavers visiting Table Bay declined and then finally halted in 1824. The conflicting interests of different branches of the British state limited the suppression of the trade, particularly in wartime. But the implementation of abolition was also retarded by negotiations over the parameters of international law and by the equivocations of a slave colony and its administration. This article aims both to bring the Cape into the history of the 'Trans-Atlantic' slave trade and to contribute to the broader history of the legal provisions behind abolition. Notes1 Cape Archives. Colonial Office (CO) 4437 'Report of the Committee appointed by Government to inquire into the illegal importation of Negros by proclamation of 29 April 1808'; CA.CO 6080 'Register of ship arrivals at the Cape of Good Hope', 1808–1811'; Shipping lists in the annual Cape Almanac (CA); José Capela, O Tráfico de escravos nos portos de Moçambique (Lisbon: Edições Afrontamento, 2002), 326–31.2 Michael Reidy, 'The Admission of Slaves and "Prize Slaves" into the Cape Colony, 1787–1818' (MA thesis: University of Cape Town, 1997), 69–75.3 George Dow, Slave Ships and Slaving (Salem, MA: Marine Research Society, 1927), 260–65.4 Holger Kern, 'Strategies of Legal Change: Great Britain, International Law, and the Abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade', Journal of the History of International Law 6 (2004): 236. See also a similar ruling in the case of the Amedie, an American slaver seized at this time in the West Indies. Lauren Benton, 'Abolition and Imperial Law, 1790–1820', The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 39, no. 3 (2011): 361.5 About 30 'green slaves' on the Restaurador were exchanged for a small number of skilled slaves who had proved troublesome to their owners at the Cape. See the voluminous correspondence in CO 3866.537.6 House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (HCPP) (50) 1812–1813, 'Further papers relating to the slave trade: viz. On the subject of the slave trade at the Cape, and at the Isle of France', Earl of Caledon to Lord Castlereagh, 15 December 1807; Caledon to Castlereagh, 4 February 1808, in G. M. Theal, ed., Records of the Cape Colony (RCC) (London: Clowes Printers for the Government of the Cape Colony, 1897–1905), VI, 272; CA. Government House (GH) 1/3 Castlereagh to Caledon, 4 March 1808.7 The National Archives (TNA). Admiralty (ADM) 1/60 a list of vessels detained by the squadron stationed at the Cape of Good Hope between 11 January and 8 February 1808; British minister, Rio de Janeiro, Lord Strangford to Castlereagh, 15 February 1813, enclosed in H. Hamilton to Henry Goulburn, 10 May 1813, in Theal, ed., RCC, IX, 181–82; Caledon to Castlereagh, 15 December 1807 and 4 February 1808, in HCPP (50) 1812–1813, 'Further papers relating to the slave trade'. Cape Town Gazette (CTG) 7, 19–20 February, 16 April 1808; Cape Almanac 1809.8 CTG, 16 April 1808; CO 4437 'Report of the Committee appointed by Government to inquire into the illegal importation of Negros'.9 Caledon to Castlereagh, 18 May 1808, Caledon to Castlereagh, 20 May 1808, Castlereagh to Caledon, 12 May 1809, in Theal, ed., RCC, VI, 331, 498; A.B. Edwards, 'A Conflict of Jurisdiction', Codicillus XIII, 1 (1972): 42–3.10 Leslie Bethell, Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 8–9; Capela, O Tráfico, 80–2.11 TNA. Foreign Office (FO) 63.124 H.M. consul at Bahia to Strangford, 15 May 1812.12 Manuel Florentino, 'About the Slaving Business in Rio de Janeiro, 1790–1830', in Pour l'histoire du Brésil, eds. F. Crouzet, P. Bonuichon, and D. Rolland (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2000), 402–3.13 Whereas the slave mortality rate on the run from Angola to Brazil was around 9 per cent at this time, it averaged close to 24 per cent on the route from Mozambique to Rio de la Plata or Brazil. Herbert Klein, The Atlantic Slave Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 71; Alex Borucki, 'The Slave Trade to the Río de la Plata. 1772–1812: Trans-imperial Networks and Atlantic Warfare', Colonial Latin American Review 20, no. 1 (2011): 88, 95–6; Jean-Pierre Tardieu, La traite des noirs entre l'océan indien et Montevideo (Uruguay). Fin du XVIIIe siècle et debut du XIXe (Paris and St Denis: L'Harmatan, 2010), 14, 23, 82.14 David Eltis, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 250–1; Klein, Atlantic Slave Trade, 71–2.15 Cape Almanac, 1813. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (STDB) contains information on the Resolução (no. 7055) and the Eneas (no.7054), http://slavevoyages.org.16 HCPP (41) 1812–1813 'Papers relating to the slave trade in Mozambique, Madagascar and Mauritius', vice-Admiral Stopford to J.W. Croker, 29 January 1812.17 HCPP (41) 1812–1813 Stopford to Croker, 6 March 1812; Kern, 'Strategies of Legal Change', 238; Benton, 'Abolition and Imperial Law', 359–60.18 James Bandinel, Some Account of the Trade in Slaves from Africa as Connected with Europe and America (London: Longman, 1842), 128–9.19 CTG, 25 January 1812; Cape Almanac, 1813; Gazetta do Rio de Janeiro, 25 March 1812. STDB No.7056 (Feliz Dias).20 The Cape Almanac recorded 431 slaves. The Cape Town Gazette gave the number as 451. The collector of customs found only 373 slaves on board the Restaurador when he boarded the vessel. Charles Blair, 'Return of the Slaves Imported into This Colony since the 1st January 1808' in Theal, ed., RCC, XV, 212.21 FO 63.123 Statement by Manoel Dias, 29 January 1812, in Strangford to Castlereagh, 16 August 1812.22 HCPP (41) 1812–1813 Papers relating to the slave trade, Stopford to Croker, 6 March 1812; F.-S. Constancio, Remonstrances des négociants du Brésil contre les insultes fait aux pavillon Portugais, et contre la saisie violente et tyrannique de plusieurs de leurs navires, par les officiers de la Marine Anglaise (Paris: Perronneau, 1814), 73–7.23 FO 63.124 Samuel Merrington to Strangford, 26 July 1812, in Strangford to Castlereagh, 30 September 1812. The 'paper' reported on by Merrington was probably a copy of a summary of legal texts drawn up by the African Institution. This pamphlet was the cause of numerous captures that would later be overturned at great cost to the British treasury, see Kern, 'Strategies of Legal Change', 237–9. See also CO 3887.86 Memorial of Manuel Jozé Dias to Sir John Cradock, February 1812. Guimarães would later send Sp$2554 to Cape Town to retrieve the ship's documents and launch an appeal, TNA. High Court of Admiralty (HCA) 42/491/1029.24 Discrepancies in the number of slaves attributed to the Restaurador indicate that as many as 78 may have been sold illegally while the ship lay at anchor. See Note 20.25 FO 63.123 Conde de Galveias to Strangford, 24 April 1812, in Strangford to Castlereagh, 2 May 1812.26 FO 63.123 Strangford to Castlereagh, 2 May 1812. Constancio, Remonstrances des négociants, 77–9. On the consternation at Mozambique caused by the seizures, see Prior, Voyage along the eastern coast of Africa to Mozambique, Johanna and Quiloa in the Nisus frigate (London: Phillips, 1819), 39.27 The Gazetta do Rio de Janeiro of 25 March 1812 recorded 469 slaves on the Resolução of whom 119 died during the Trans-Atlantic crossing. The Cape Almanac of 1813 recorded 430 on the vessel when in Table Bay. It seems likely that the supercargo inflated the size of the human cargo for insurance purposes. Both publications noted 172 slaves on the Eneas, with the Gazetta recording that 36 had died during the Middle Passage. For the Resolução, see STDB 7014, the Eneas, STDB 7054, and the Providente, STDB 7094.28 Cruz e Almeida made an 83 per cent profit from the 12:690$000 reis invested in the 1812 slave-trading expedition. Florentino, 'About the Slaving Business', 402–3. Between 1813 and 1816, the mortality among the slaves on the Feliz Dias would be kept at under 9 per cent. The voyages are recorded in the Cape Almanac (1814–1817) and the STDB (nos. 49778, 49780 and 49783).29 Gazetta do Rio de Janeiro, 20 February 1813; STDB 7094; Manuel Florentino, Tráfico, Cativeiro e Liberdade: Rio de Janeiro, séculos XVII-XIX (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2005), 73.30 CO 3887.102 W.W. Bird to Craddock, 19 February 1812; Cradock to Strangford, 22 April 1812, and Strangford to Castlereagh, 2 May 1812, in Theal, ed., RCC, IX, 165–6; Strangford to Castlereagh, 19 October 1813, in Theal, ed., RCC, IX, 252; Strangford to Castlereagh, 14 September 1813, enclosed in Hamilton to Goulburn, 15 December 1813, in Theal, ed., RCC, IX, 280–1; Strangford to Cradock, 1 September 1813, and George Kekewich to Cradock, 26 March 1814, enclosed in Cradock to Bathurst, 17 April 1814, in Theal, ed., RCC, IX, 487–8.31 FO 63.123 Strangford to Castlereagh, 2 May 1812; FO 63.124 Strangford to Castlereagh, 16 August 1812; ibid., H.M. consul, Bahia, to Strangford, 15 May 1812; FO 63.125 Strangford to Castlereagh, 10 November 1812.32 FO 63.123 Conde de Galveias to Strangford, 24 April 1812, in Strangford to Castlereagh, 2 May 1812.33 Sir John Cradock to Lord Bathurst, 11 December 1812, in Theal, ed., RCC, IX, 39–40; Bathurst to Cradock, 17 April 1813, in Theal, ed., RCC, IX, 163.34 Lord Bathurst to Sir John Cradock, 13 July 1812, in Theal, ed., RCC, VIII, 469.35 CTG, 28 November 1812.36 House of Commons Debates, 24, 1812, cc.198, 201.37 Collector of Customs to Cradock, 20 April 1813, in Theal, ed., RCC, IX, 165; Robert Ross 'Last years of the Slave Trade to the Cape Colony' Slavery and Abolition 9, no. 3 (1988): 212.38 Strangford to Castlereagh, 15 February 1813, in Theal, ed., RCC, IX, 181.39 Cradock to Bathurst, 24 January 1813, in Theal, ed., RCC, IX, 129.40 Blair, 'Return of the Slaves Imported into This Colony', 212; HCPP 1813–1814 (289) 'A return of all ships or vessels brought into port in the colonies of Great Britain, specifying the date of their condemnation; the number of slaves of each sex condemned on board'; STDB 49777.41 CTG, February 1813. Blair, 'A Return of the Slaves', 212–3; HCPP 1813–1814 (342) 'Papers relating to slave ships condemned under the Acts for the Abolition of the Slave Trade', 3. Earlier voyages of the Elizabeth are noted in the Cape Almanac and the STDB 49777.42 Strangford to Castlereagh, 15 February 1813, enclosed in H. Hamilton to H. Goulburn, 10 May 1813, in Theal, ed., RCC, IX, 181.43 Castlereagh to Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, 6 May 1813, enclosure 3 in Hamilton to Goulburn, 15 December 1813, in Theal, ed., RCC, IX, 280.44 FO 63.144 Castlereagh to Strangford, 11 October 1813, and (most secret) Castlereagh to Strangford, 11 October 1813.45 Bathurst to Cradock, 16 December 1813, in Theal, ed., RCC, IX, 284.46 C.K. Webster, The Foreign Policy of Castlereagh 1815–1832 (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1925), 456.47 The Foreign Slave Trade Bill passed through the House of Commons in May 1815, but was defeated in the Upper House the next month. House of Commons, 5 May 1815, 31, cc.167; ibid., 16 June cc.848–51; ibid., 30 June cc. 1064.48 Cape Almanac 1816; Blair, 7 January 1823, 'Return of the Slaves Imported into This Colony', 212; FO 308/1, 23, 62, 70, 93–5, 289, 316, 369.49 See particularly the minutes of the proceedings of the Anglo-Portuguese mixed commission in London, FO 308/1 and FO 308/2, in Note 48. See also the vice-admiralty records in HCA 42/506/1164.50 HCPP 1847 (653) Returns Relative to the Slave Trade, 8.51 Cape Almanac, 1818.52 See STDB 49239 and 49786.53 Captain José dos Santos Ferreira to Lord Charles Somerset, 26 February 1818, in Theal, ed., RCC, XI, 461–2.54 CA.CO 4840 Somerset's Letter Book, 1818, Charles Bird to Thomas Rowles, 16 February 1818, 71; Bird to Lt Gardiner, 23 and 27 February 1818, 91, 105.55 This amounted to £1250.3s.6d. Commissioner Alexander Marsden to George Canning, 17 March 1823, in FO 308/2, 233–4. See also 182 and FO 308/1, 227, 287, 313, 328, 331, 335. It is unclear whether Joseph Short was obliged to pay this sum, although deemed responsible for his 'imprudent step'. CO 4840, 109, Bird to Harrington, 3 March 1818; Owen to Croker, 9 October 1823, in HCPP, Fresh Evidence of the Continuance of the Slave Trade (London, n.d., 1824?), 2.56 FO 308/1/42–43 Commissary judges, Mixed Commission, London, 9 December 1819; Somerset to Bathurst, 21 May 1818, in Theal, ed., RCC, XII, 7. I have accepted the date given by the Cape Almanac, 1819.57 CA.GH 1/23 C. Robinson and R. Gifford, 'Case of the Paquet Real' in Colonial Agent to Somerset, 28 November 1818.58 CA.GH 23/5 Somerset to Bathurst, 13 May 1818. Partly reprinted in Theal, ed., RCC, XII, 3.59 Colonial Secretary to Collector of Customs, 19 May 1818, in Theal, ed., RCC, XII, 5.60 FO 308/1, 42–3 Demand for indemnification, Paquet Real, 9 December 1819.61 R.G. Thorne, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1790–1820 (London: Secker & Warburg, 1986), III, 208; Gentleman's Magazine, 161, 1836, 433.62 Fiscal to Colonial Secretary, 2 May 1818. For Somerset's prompting of the fiscal, see Colonial Secretary to Fiscal, 1 May 1818, both in Theal, ed., RCC, XI, 477–80.63 Somerset to Bathurst, 21 May 1818, in Theal, ed., RCC, XII, 7–8; D.J. Hulsebosch, 'Somerset's Case at the Bar: Securing the Pure Air of English Jurisdiction within the British Empire', Texas Wesleyan Review 13 (2006–2007): 702–3.64 Somerset to Bathurst, 21 May 1818, and memorial of J.M. Gomes, 22 May 1818, in Theal, ed., RCC, XII, 7–8, 11–12.65 James Arbuthnot to Rt Hon Mr Vansittart, 13 August 1818, enclosed in Arbuthnot to H. Goulburn, 21 August 1818, in Theal, ed., RCC, XII, 29–32.66 CA.GH 1/23 His Majesty's Law Servants' report to Earl Bathurst on 'the intent and meanings of the several laws passed for the Abolition of the slave trade', 27 August 1818, in Bathurst to Somerset, 29 August 1818. Reference was made to clauses 5 and 6 of the anti-slave trade law of 23 May 1806 (46 Geo 3. C. 52); ibid., Colonial Agent to Somerset, 28 November 1818.67 Denyssen to Somerset, 23 March 1824, in Theal, ed., RCC, XII, 158, 166.68 FO 308/1 Commissary judges Marsden and A.J. da Costa, 7 December 1819, case docket, 28, 40, 42.69 Barrow to Plampin, 8 June 1819, in Barrow to W. Hamilton (Admiralty), 8 June 1819, in British and Foreign State Papers 9, 1821–1822, 227; Castlereagh to Lords of the Admiralty, 12 July 1819, in British and Foreign State Papers 9, 1821–1822, 229; W.E.F. Ward, The Royal Navy and the Slavers (London: Allen & Unwin, 1969), 94–6.70 Reidy, 'The Admission of Slaves', Appendix I; STDB Dos Hermanos (49787), General Cavalante (48825).71 Sir Rufane Donkin to Bathurst, 16 February 1820, in Theal, ed., RCC, XII, 26; Cape Almanac, 1821. The fate of the São José remains uncertain, STDB 49790.72 Cape Almanac, 1822, 1823.73 Cape Almanac, 1817; STDB 49784; STDB 49971.74 Eltis, Economic Growth, 83.75 Patrick Harries, "The Hobgoblins of the Middle Passage": The Cape and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade', in The End of Slavery in Africa and the Americas: A Comparative Approach, eds. U. Schmieder, K. Füllberg-Stolberg, and M. Zeuske (Berlin: LitVerlag, 2011), 27–50.
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